"I told my father I wanted to be a poet and he said, 'For that you went to college?' which is something like my half-brother, older than me by years, once said to me, "Poetry...what good is it? Does it put food in your mother?" When I received $50 for a poem I went to a restaurant and had a hamburger and paused before I took the first bite and said to my brother, who wasn't there but in mind, "Jack, sometimes it puts food in your mouth." But that is not why we do it. It's an absurd thought. I older half-brother also claimed that evening at the supper table near Seattle, he was Senior Vice-President of Weyerhaeuser, that Pablo Picasso couldn't paint. His wife drank a liter of white wine almost every night before going to bed; I understood why. Jack was a recovered alcoholic. I understood that too. That said, he had cases of Pepsi-Cola in the garage. I left Washington, having had my fill of him. I liked his wife. She defended my mother who was visiting them once when Jack scolded her for using his bathroom. We don't all think about money. Poet Bert Meyers was once a gilder and housepainter before he began teaching poetry at Claremont Graduate School where he befriended Benjamin Saltman who went on to become a great poet. Ben once paid my tuition when I didn't have the money. I ended up starting a small press and published Benjamin Saltman's "The Book of Moss," a fine collection of poems, and later, 21 years after he died, his book, "A Termite Memoir," in 2018. I haven't made much money during my life and I don't give a damn. Nicholas Campbell
William Stafford once said, "We're only as good as we dare to be bad," or maybe it was poet Benjamin Saltman who said that.
i'm coming to Phil Levine later in my life. The guy may have been a celebrated poet, but geez- what an absolute mentsh. Wish I had known him. RIP.
A Fresno, California poet. Yea, mentsh, if you mean a person of honor.
Thank you!. 👏👏🥰
Delightful gentleman, great fun and I learned so much as well as I wept and laughed
Thanks for uploading!
"I told my father I wanted to be a poet and he said, 'For that you went to college?' which is something like my half-brother, older than me by years, once said to me, "Poetry...what good is it? Does it put food in your mother?" When I received $50 for a poem I went to a restaurant and had a hamburger and paused before I took the first bite and said to my brother, who wasn't there but in mind, "Jack, sometimes it puts food in your mouth." But that is not why we do it. It's an absurd thought. I older half-brother also claimed that evening at the supper table near Seattle, he was Senior Vice-President of Weyerhaeuser, that Pablo Picasso couldn't paint. His wife drank a liter of white wine almost every night before going to bed; I understood why. Jack was a recovered alcoholic. I understood that too. That said, he had cases of Pepsi-Cola in the garage. I left Washington, having had my fill of him. I liked his wife. She defended my mother who was visiting them once when Jack scolded her for using his bathroom. We don't all think about money. Poet Bert Meyers was once a gilder and housepainter before he began teaching poetry at Claremont Graduate School where he befriended Benjamin Saltman who went on to become a great poet. Ben once paid my tuition when I didn't have the money. I ended up starting a small press and published Benjamin Saltman's "The Book of Moss," a fine collection of poems, and later, 21 years after he died, his book, "A Termite Memoir," in 2018. I haven't made much money during my life and I don't give a damn. Nicholas Campbell
Aww, poetry-----But--"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree"