<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">Got a marvelous book of poetry and poetics in the mail Friday -- _Unlocking the Poem_, by Ottone Riccio and Allen Beth Seigel. Riccio ("Ricky") led a poetry workshop in Boston for 40 years; I attended for about 25 years, during the fall semester when I was teaching at MIT. Part of Ricky's teaching method was to issue challenges, like</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">"It is a dark night, with no moon. You see a bright star in the southern sky. <br> It is blue -- the light is blue -- unmistakably blue, and it does not move. <br> Any form, sixteen to eighteen lines. For extra challenge, try incorporating a rhyme scheme of your own devising."</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">I wrote this in response --</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style"> The Star</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style"> (from and for Arthur C. Clarke)</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Bookman Old Style'; min-height: 19px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">That star flared up the week my mother died: Nova Scorpius, low in the southeast -- the brightest in nine hundred years, so bright you could see it with the sun up. "Star of Peace," they called it, the propagandists on both sides, because they signed their treaty then. At least neither one took credit for the light. That was God's doing . . . God the Beast of Sacrifice: seven planets spun around that star. Could any one of them have harbored life? The scientists say not. A hot blue star like that is just too young. There were no scientists at Bethlehem when in the east a star flared up so hot <br> and bright and blue and young. That week the Earth <br> was bathed in radiance. They say wise men came forth. <br> Did planets burn to cinders in the light? <br> And mothers die, to celebrate the birth?</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Bookman Old Style'; min-height: 19px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">(My little Xmas offering.) The book has 450 such assignments, in 337 pages, along with illustrative poems from Ricky's students. Nine by yours truly.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">I'm feeling better, after several days of reversal. Should hear from the doc today. Why do I always get sick on Friday?</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Bookman Old Style" size="5" style="font: 16.0px Bookman Old Style">Joe</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Bookman Old Style'" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">PS from Gay: He has an appointment Wednesday to get him into the surgical clinic. We've been walking around the block every day, so he's getting stronger.</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Bookman Old Style'" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Love, Gay</span></font></div>
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