Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Poems....by RHE

http://rhepoems.blogspot.com/

I don't like much that I read by live contemporary poets. That's sad, I'm sure, and I've equally sure that it's my fault and my fault alone. It's just that nothing seems to say much and it doesn't even say nothing in an interesting way. I like the "old" stuff. I like the archaic and the twisted and the heavily rhymed and metered. There's not much of that being written nowadays. And so, I keep looking for another "Tyger Tyger" or another "Had we but world enough, and time," and of course, I never find it. I find a poem here or a poem there by various authors and I fall in love, but it doesn't last. It ends up being one poem or maybe two poems and then they fall out of favor for one reason or another.
I did find Richard Epstein, though, and to my amazement I find that I'm pretty consistently smitten.

I'd first met Richard years ago, on a now defunct poetry board. He was cantankerous and opinionated at the time and he scared me to death. That much doesn't seem to have changed with time. I don't even know if his poetry has changed all that much. I didn't read it too carefully years ago. For one thing, I didn't know squat about reading poetry - and for another, I was too busy trying not to attract his attention with my own poor first attempts at writing it. Luckily for me, I rediscovered him a few weeks ago on his very own blog.

Either he's gotten way better at writing it or I've gotten way better at reading it, but regardless, his poetry rocks.

Go read it for yourself. Don't tell him I sent you, though, tell him Iris did it.

1 comment:

Richard Epstein said...

Too late. Someone told me. Thanks for the kind words, though, and the shameless plug. I am expecting an enormous influx of visitors now, curiosity seekers prompted by your (unpaid) endorsement.