Welcome poet Lynette Endicott for National Poetry Month

STEPH: Lynette, thanks for joining us. Share for us what it's like to be a poet.

LYNETTE: I wrote my first poems for the Greenville Comet, my high school newspaper, about football. I write free-form almost always, and am not as skilled as I would like to be, but I think that the exercise of metaphors or other descriptive devices is good for the writer. 

While it was the third to be released, Return of Joy was the first book I wrote. Buy link: http://www.desertbreezepublishing.com/starting-over-book-two-the-return-of-joy-epub/  I took some of the poems about love and life that I had written in a spiral notebook years before, and reworked them a little so they lead some of the chapters in the book. Some people don't like that style -- but I figure when that is the case they can just ignore the poetry.

It is hard to name a favorite poet. Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Madeline L'Engle? I think Mary Oliver is my favorite modern poet. I subscribe to Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, and he delivers a poem, along with other writer news, to my email almost every day. You can subscribe to either the email or the podcast at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/  This is how I discovered some of the poets I enjoy the most. One of her poems is at least among my favorites, called In Blackwater Woods.

It is almost embarrassing, then, to add my little poems to the discussion after her spare, clear words ring with such beauty and sadness. But here you go -- a short one and a longer one. I haven't ever titled them. You pick:

Molten magic --

            the wine

            the depths of your eyes

            the heat

The fluid flow --

            of conversation

            of warmth and touch

            and every expression of love

Are potent magic indeed.

And another:

I love you because ...

... you are bread and wine to me. Day by day you are there to fill my need

and be filled by me.

...your soul speaks to mine, together or apart,

with words or in silence, in joy and peace and wonder, day after day after day.

... you are known to me.

Your voice, your face, your walk, your dreams, your pain, the feel and smell of you,

all of you.

... you make me whole. We fit together, you and I,

filling up all the  empty places in each other with warmth, excitement and love.

I love you because ...

... of the paradox.

Comfortable -- yet still exciting.

Needing no words -- yet never tiring of talking together.

Knowing one another completely -- yet daily discovering new things.

Thanks for giving the opportunity. Hope your readers will like my page at www.facebook.com/authorlynetteendicott or comment on my website this week for a chance at a free download of a current book to celebrate the one being released April 11.

STEPH: Thanks for joining us today, Lynette. It's been great having you and may you have a lot of success with your upcoming release!