The Unknown Poet

      More Letters From Paradise

         The Unknown Poet

 I am a 76 year old unknown poet,retired and living in Hawaii. For six years after living in Hawaii, and sending emails about our experiences, I felt obsolete with the coming of "Face Book." I had my collection printed,and a financial failure. But, so did Thoreau. So, I crept back into my shell, and was silent for the next two years. Then suddenly following my brain operations,(that was probably it) I began writing again. I have been writing seriously since my time in the Navy. Poems, short stories etc. I felt that I had been killed by the internet. But now, I realize now that, how many people buy books of poetry anyway? And so, if Walt Whitman, would have used the internet if it had been invented, why not me? I then embrace the internet,"Face Book" and others that I don't understand. I sing its praises, that which I had long rejected. And you are certainly less costly. 
My poems do not rhyme. I have no gift for rhyme. To those who do, I tip my hat to Rudyard Kipling, AE Houseman, Robert Service, and many others.  And then there is the old master, Robert Frost. Frost once wrote that blank verse that didn't rhyme, was like playing tennis without a net. That may well be true, but we should remember the ancient Greek poet Homer, whose poems didn't rhyme either. And what about Walt Whitman, whose poems ran through several editions of his "Leaves of Grass"?
My mentors have been Alan Ginsberg, Ken Patchen, and the "Beat Generation" poets of San Francisco. I greatly admire the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes,and  Ezra Pound. Plus many others, who are without rhyme. 
My credentials are the experiences of my rich life, the places I have seen, and the people I have met. So, in my future letters,don't be surprised to find that I have slipped in  some of my early poems in with the adventures Tonto and I have here in Hawaii.
            Aloha
            Grant