Mark DeCarteret, the newly appointed Portsmouth Poet Laureate, has challenged area poets to try Alphabet poems. The poems use single words or phrases beginning with the appropriate letters. Poet ed pacht delighted the audience at the June 3 Hoot with a double reverse alphabet poem. (ed prefers his name without capital letters. He says, "What is said is the substance, far more than who said it.")

 

 

ABC ... CBA, for Spring

A blissfully calm day,

early flowers gaily holding

in jeweled kaleidoscopic light —

multitudes now open, petals quaffing rays,

singing tunes under verdant woods,

xanthic, yellow, zesty, zany,

yielding xerographic wildly variegated

uncoordinated tints so riotously, quietly, 

placed, omitting nothing,

manifesting livery kinglike,

jeweled In heavenly garb

frolicking, ever dancing, carousing,

benefiting all.

                        ed pacht

 

ed pacht is a familiar face and voice at poetry readings all over the seacoast area. Born in Boston, he lived briefly, he says, among Beatniks in New York and San Francisco. Now making his home in a converted old mill in Rochester, N. H., ed sees good things happening with poetry in Rochester, citing the current art/poetry shoe project and Pat O'Brien's monthly poetry readings at Mel Flanagan's. Of his approach to life, he says, "I tend to think that every aspect of living is oxymoronic, and that what is perceived to be entirely logical is probably misperceived  and misunderstood.  Poetry is a far more accurate and satisfying way of describing reality than is philosophy."

                        Pat Parnell, Stratham