January 2020
Bio Note:
In my retirement from teaching, I am happily engaged most days in taking photographs and making poems. I live in Glens Falls,
NY with my wife Lee Shippey. My newest book of poems is The Honey of Earth, from Terrapin Books. An anthology of poems about
small town America, Local News, was also recently published by MWPH Books. My co-editor is VV contributing editor Tom Montag.
More detail on my doings on my website: https://www.davidgrahampoet.com/
Author's Note: Since this issue’s Poetic License column centers around haiku, I thought I would offer a few of my own fledgling efforts in the form. Verse-Virtual veterans will know that editor Firestone Feinberg is resistant to “Asian forms” generally, and haiku in particular. So I feel I should mention that Firestone did agree to make an exception to his rule in order to see what I had to say.
Author's Note: Since this issue’s Poetic License column centers around haiku, I thought I would offer a few of my own fledgling efforts in the form. Verse-Virtual veterans will know that editor Firestone Feinberg is resistant to “Asian forms” generally, and haiku in particular. So I feel I should mention that Firestone did agree to make an exception to his rule in order to see what I had to say.
Five Haiku
six newspapers
scattered across the porch
of my dead neighbor
board meeting—
thunder
erases the vote
life preserver
on its peg
all winter
holding the door
open for me
the blind man smiles
early November—
lake glinting
through bare trees
©2020 David Graham
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -FF