Best American Poetry 1992

I have a copy of The Best American Poetry 1992. I bought it for $.50 outside a library in Rancho Cucomonga.

It is not that 1992 was an especially auspicious year for American poets, it is just that this book was published in 1992 as a compendium of notable poems that year. I know this, I do, but still I can not help but favor the idea of a vintage for poetry. It is as though the weather that year was unusually favorable for writing poetry. Maybe there were more cloudy days than sunny ones or there was a great deal more rain than normal. There would definitely need to be a surplus of foggy days. Whatever it was people would look back on the poetry of that year and smile.

I like to think this way because that way, when I sit down with the Best American Poetry of 1992, I can imagine tasting the spirit of those times and relish in the products of a good year.

John Adams Carstensen I

My grandfather passed away this week. He was 84 years old and died from a heart attack. He had been in great health and no one was expecting his time to come so soon. We are thankful that the passing was quick and that he was well prepared. Nonetheless, it will be hard not to miss him now that he is gone.

The biggest worry we all have is for my grandmother, Jean. She has dementia and needs to be constantly reminded that her husband is in heaven now. So if you can, pray for her and her four children on whom this task, along with great loss, has befallen.

I don't really know if this is an appropriate forum for such a topic. On one hand his death seems like a very private or personal matter. How does one respect the sanctity of such life? Yesterday his obituary was published in the Stockton paper and the front page was a story about a Stockton girl traveling to the pacific garbage patch. This paper, for me, is all about mourning but there is this girl with the brightest smile aboard a sailing ship. She is reclining with her bare feet propped against a weathered wooden crate.

On the other hand I want to celebrate an inspiring man and take solace in the fact that he will always live in on in us and our memories. I think,

that I can do both.

I don't know.

Grief, it turns out, is a strange process.