National Poetry Month - welcome poet Delores Goodrick Beggs

Delores Goodrick Beggs

STEPH:  How long have you been writing poetry?

DELORES:

I wrote my first poem, Tornadoes Over Kansas, as a teenager while attending a Kansas 4-H camp. I was sitting at the lunch table, looked up, and saw the tornado swirl to the ground in the distance through the line of lunchroom windows, and had a sudden urge to capture the feeling. Tornadoes starts:

            "First comes constant, keening wind,

            swirling faster without end;

            briskly banging at the walls

            dusty, swirly, filmy fog.

                       

                        Lightning flashes prong the sky,

                        Thunder crashes, tree limbs fly;

                        Funnels roar, dance near the ground,

                        Lift and soar, then turn around....."

STEPH:   Are there any distinct themes to your poetry?

DELORES: My poems have one thing in common, they capture scenes of my observations of real life.

STEPH:  What forms/types of poetry do you prefer to write? 

DELORES: In later years, as an adult, I studied poetry extensively and participated in several different poetry groups. In my studies I learned to write many different forms, and took advantage of my studies to use whichever form - or free form -  suited my fancy at any given time.

STEPH:   Who is your favorite poet?

DELORES: Robert Frost. I have a copy of the book of his complete poems, 1964. His work speaks to me on many levels.

STEPH: What is your favorite poem?

DELORES: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." It sticks with me because I, too, took different roads from the expected norm for women in my thirties, although I did so of life necessity, not by choice. I was a single, divorced mother with three young children, working a job usually reserved (in that time period) for men. My job made all the positive difference in my life, allowing me to support my children.

            "...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

            I took the one less traveled by

            And that has made all the difference."

             

STEPH:     Share one of your poems with us. 

DELORES: My mother was a special woman, and she was responsible for creating many opportunities in my life, which could have otherwise been rather bare due to my severe hearing loss from meningitis - I only have about one-fourth hearing in one ear, none in the other. My parents made the unusual choice for those days (I was only four) and elected to put me in public school kindergarten instead of a state one, state being the normal choice for children with such severe hearing losses in the days before special education. My mother got my public education started by going to school to pick me up on Fridays and speaking with my teacher about the week and the week to come; then we went home and she spent the weekend teaching me what the class would be learning the next week. By the time I was in first grade I had picked up enough coping skills on my own to handle public school by myself and later Denver University. My mother made it possible for me, a Kansan, to live life to the fullest, and in addition, chronicle the richness of my heritage.

            My mother had trained as a concert pianist in her youth, and while she taught me to play,             I never felt a personal calling to pursue piano beyond recreation. But...

MOTHER

By Delores Goodrick Beggs

I listen to your belled voice

peal infectious laughter.

Your fingers blur, held over

yellowed ivory keyboard

of the old three-pedaled upright

that never had a covered

middle C.

Next door, they had a baby grand,

polished, unapproachable.

I never heard it over the choruses

clustered about the upright

with you.

You used to take my hand in yours,

tell me we had the same long fingers,

"You could play..." your voice

wishful.

My songs were always scribed in

ink,

not brushed in ivory keystrokes.

But never fear. You did, after all,

place your wondrous gift

in the palms of my hands.

LINKS:

www.goodrickbeggs.wordpress.com
Breaking Point: Place in the Heart Book One, May 2012, http://goo.gl/Q7L56
Charming Champion, Aug. 1, 2012, http://goo.gl/ROMB5
Substitute Lover: Place in the Heart Book Two, Dec. 2012, http://googl/mzrof

Perfect Tenderfoot, Place in the Heart Book Three, coming June, 2013