Today’s Poets Newsletter Vol.1 12-2022

Welcome to Today’s Poets
Newsletter 
Vol. 1      November 2022

 

   Pull up a chair
and stay a while.

Hi…. I’m Barbara (Fischer) Binstock, Poetry Editor
& Publisher, and designer of all our great poetry
anthologies and poetry books for poets since 1963..

After 60 years in poetry, I have so much to tell you!                         

I’m so glad you stopped by. Pull up a comfortable
seat. Have some tea or coffee and sit back and
browse our poetry many wonderful pages.

I’ll be adding and changing poetry information every
month. Just click your Bookmarks tab now to easily
visit this J. Mark Press poetry website often.

This site has our poetry anthology contest guidelines
and lots of links to our other pages.

When I see that poets are sincere, I try to help them
to become their best.

When I encounter vain persons who’ve made no
attempt at learning to write something worthwhile,
but calling themselves ‘poets,’ for lack of anything
good to say about their accomplishments, I send them
a callous rejection.

Being a ‘Poet’ seems like an easy title to brag about.
But it makes people who hear that person say, “I really
don’t understand poetry.”
(Meaning they’re not interested) in something that should
be inherent in all people. Such people make a mockery
of true poetry.

Those half-baked poets cause readers to say they
don’t care for poetry or they don’t understand poetry.
People will not seek out more poetry to read after
reading enough half-baked poets.  It is sad that such
poets diminish the general interest in poetry, depriving
the world of a thriving community of patrons for poetry.

 

Why is it so difficult to become a published poet in
respected media? Many people with hammers aren’t
ready to be carpenters.
Many people who write poetry aren’t ready to be “published”
for the world to see.
But don’t be impatient. You can be mighty embarrassed
forever by publishing your immature poetry prematurely.
Once people read your name as the author of a
poem, it may stick with them, favorably or otherwise!

After 60 years of publishing poetry, I have a lot to say
to new poets. There was no internet when I began,
nowhere near as many books to help improve your
writing or achieve success with self-publishing.

 

The articles I’ve written and classes I’ve taught are
based on questions and mistakes I get from newcomers.
I hope you’ll find lots of help and inspiration on upcoming
pages of this web site. Click “favorites” up at top and add
this page so you can return effortlessly, to where poets
have fun with poetry every week.

 

I want to share something really inspiring with you. If not
for my website back in ’03 I never would have discovered
what became of this admired pen-friend.

Before it’s browning paper turned to dust…
I decided to show this poem by Emilie to the world.

 

About about 50 years ago, I took my 5-year-old son on
the Long Island Railroad to Central Park, New York City.

On the train seat, heading for home, I found a “Little” magazine,
(as the literary mags were called), “The Coffee House Review.”
In it was a poem that lived with me ever since.

I was publishing  poetry anthologies back then, and one of
our poets who really stood out was Emilie Glenn, (who read
her poetry in person in a neighborhood known as Washington
Square, Greenwich Village, NY). We had already published her
poems “The Redhead in Washington Square” and
“This China Hour.”

I was so thankful to have met Emilie a few months later at a
writer’s group in the Village in NYC. She said, “You’re Barbara?
You are so beautiful in person.”
At the same time I was saying “Emilie? I can’t believe how
beautiful you are in person.” And we had a good laugh about
how deceiving pictures can be without the soul connected.
No “FaceTime” back then. Pictures were usually black & white
due to high cost of color. 

Skimming through The Coffee House Review, I spotted a poem,
CLOCK OF THE ANIMALS by Emilie Glenn.

I had just taken my little one to see the magical “Clock Of The

Animals” at the Children’s Zoo in Central Park, (like my father
had once taken me to see).

Recently, due to the power of Google, a friend and publisher of
Emilie searching for more about her life found our website and
this poem that I was preserving here online for all time.

The woman informed me that Emilie left our world at the
age of 84, having left hundreds of poems behind that she
has compiled in a biographical manner. Please click here
to read,
   

CLOCK OF THE ANIMALS
by Emilie Glenn

Hurry Mother hurry,
The clock in the park
Is dancing the animals
To music box tunes
Better than the best cake
You ever baked,
Mother hurry,
Monkeys with mallets
Are striking the hour
On their big bell,
The bear and the hippo
Are dancing round and round,
Playing the tambourine and the horn.
The penguin and the goat and the elephant
with drum and pipes and squeeze-box,
Kangaroo with a baby in her pouch

Not so fast my darling
Never rush time away,
Turn each moment precious in your palm,
You will never be holding it again,
I remember the Town Clock
Of my Bavarian Village,
Painted people marched around it in double row,
And the bell was struck by an angel,
Or so it seemed to me.

Mama, waiting for the hour,
Looks up at my animal clock
As if it’s telling her something sad,
Will I be looking up at another clock
With my little one,
My face pulled down sad
My face pulled down sad
Remembering mine.