A story by the poet Ann Kestner I read this morning… I wanted very much to share it.
“My father worked with wood and metal and concrete. I work with ink and paper and metaphors.
It is not a far stretch between engineer and poet. We do the same work.
My father is almost 80. He worked 20 years for Otis Elevator before the layoff came and then he found employment here and there and then over there – for nearly 45 years he worked as a mechanical engineer. Nothing he designed carries his name. No one knows it was his mind, his imagination that engineered the freight elevator of the fallen Twin Towers and countless other things. His creations are all credited to the companies he worked for.
The pen in your hand, the hubcap on your car, your front door – Everyday we live our lives using things imagined by people whose names we will never know.
As poets, we may not be paid well or at all, but at least our creations carry our name.”
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum