After reading a poem like this one, I would expect to enjoy reading a few comments that light up other ways of 'seeing' the poem...yet, the way steemit operates, it seems all those who would want to comment, either have not the time, or else they have moved on.
I cannot help feeling sorry for them, for they are the losers. - and I am glad I am still here and able to respond.
But after life
Has broken us
Can we at least
Make art?
...and just how many understand what is meant - or what art means for some of us?
To me, one of those things that define us as sapient human beings is Art. All talents , whether they inspire us or just make us think, are a sacred gift we must treasure, or else it will wither and fade away.
I am glad you are still here, Arthur, and responding - that is why we write as Dylan Thomas said,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
I've been right next to you - lol, what I mean is, I've been spending a lot of time reading Her Thirties and I am getting close to the end.
Unfortunately you are causing me some anxiety. Whenever I am enjoying a story and have become involved with the characters, as I see I am coming close to the end, I get anxious, wishing it would not end, or that there is a sequel.
A question if I may? I've understood (maybe I am wrong) that you were a professor but are not anymore. I find it difficult to visualise a professor who is not one anymore, as I've been told that with their way of life and tenure, they are sort of wrapped in cottonwool and cut off from the harshness of life. If it is so, then surely it wouuld be traumatic giving all that up?
Ha ha, when I read your comment the other day about reading Her Thirties, I went back to revisit it - ended up reading and re-editing 44 chapters - I was sitting in my front room with music softly playing in the background and reliving that same lucid dream. I'll be doing the same thing later tonight. Sorry for some of the formatting errors in the steemit copy but I was writing it as I posted - a chapter a day.
I was a curriculum dean in a high school - the closest I got to university teaching was being a Research Assistant for a Psychology Prof, but that gave me access to the staff lounges and the behind the scenes daily life of the university and in my case, the medical building at U of T. It came in handy when I wrote A Familiar Rain, a novel set on a university campus. As for missing the classroom and teaching experience, I just was out for breakfast today with my old staff - I left teaching 11 years ago in Jan 2008, and it seems they still consider me a friend - very humbling....