When choosing whose picture to publish of all the many made-up people that live in my head and my fiction, I often wonder, do I have an accurate sense of who is important and who is merely minor? I offer now some characters I don’t feel comfortable leaving out.
Mazie Haire
One of the Haire Sisters, rumored to be a witch, and proud to prove it to you, Mazie is a severe and highly focused individual with a knack for seeing and convincing you of the truth. So, maybe she really is a witch.
She appears in;
Snow Babies
When the Captain Came Calling
Milton John Morgan (Milt)
I can’t tell you about the witch without mentioning the wizard. Milt Morgan is the Merlin of the Norwall Pirates (an adventuring gang and 4-H softball team).
He is one of the founders of the gang and the one who got them into the most trouble in the 1970’s.
He appears in;
Superchicken
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever!
The Wizard in his Keep
Torrie Brownfield
Torrie is the hair-everywhere boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair disease. He was genetically doomed to life looking like a werewolf. He was discovered living in hiding in Norwall by the Pirates’ gang who decided they simply had to make him a member.
He is, of course, the main character of;
The Baby Werewolf
And also appears in;
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
Harker Dawes
Harker is a clown-character based on a real person living in the real town of Norwall. He buys the local hardware store and runs the business into bankruptcy. He is not only a ne’er-do-well, but he also is a truly loveable fool.
He plays a key role in;
Snow Babies
He is also in the upcoming novel;
Fools and Their Toys
Dilsey Murphy
Dilsey is Mike’s slightly older sister who seems to be in a lot of my stories. She is a tomboy and a Daddy’s girl. She is also beloved by her irascible Grampy, Cudgel Murphy. Mike Murphy both hates her and loves her, but mostly just depends on her.
She is in;
Magical Miss Morgan
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
and a large number of upcoming stories
Sean “Cudgel” Murphy
Grampy of the Murphy Clan, Cudgel is the meanest old man you’d ever want to meet. He is excellently suited to the job of teaching kids to swear. And he only drives his Austin Hereford, “The finest car made anywhere in the whole goddam world in 1954!”
He appears in;
Snow Babies
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Francois Martin
Francois, the French orphan, is the main character in my novel,
Sing Sad Songs.
He paints his face in clown paint and sings beautifully enough to save his Uncle’s business. I am halfway finished with this new novel.
So, now I feel like I have exhausted myself in character introductions and will probably eschew a “Part 4”. But with Mickey, there are no guarantees.
Catch a Falling Star 
Get Up and Do!
It is daunting when bad fortune comes in waves, drowning us in debt, suffering, disabling illness, financial reversals, and so many more things I have been through this last year personally, so that we want to lie down and never get up.
But, I am not dead yet… and there is poetry to be lived.
I say that as one of the world’s fifty worst poets who ever lived. (In my defense, I am a humorist, and I write bad poetry on purpose.) My inspiration for the living of poetry comes from reading and living good poetry. I live because there is poetry by Walt Whitman. Of course, also Shakespeare… whoever he really was. And I understand that much of what I have learned in my brief and stupidly-lived 61 years comes from the poetry of the visionary poet I pictured above. Do you know him? If you have never read his poetry, you haven’t truly lived the poetry you need to live.
This poet taught me that “Being, not doing, is my first love.” Of course, if I am satisfied with just sitting on my bed and “being” through most of my day, I will starve to death and not “be” anymore. But he has taught me that what is essential is already within me. There is wisdom and power in Uncle Ted’s poetry. (Yes, I know I am not really related to him, but that’s only physical and overlooks the spiritual.) I must partake of it to live.
If you are bored by poetry about plants in a greenhouse under bright lights, or you can never understand what the poet means when he says, “My father was a fish”, then you need to practice reading poetry more. You don’t truly understand what poetry is, and what it is for… yet.
And I am sure you have probably concluded from all of this that I am a fool and a bad poet and I have no right to try to tell you who and what a truly great poet is. But, fool that I am, I know it when I see it. It is there in the verse, the hideous and horrible… the beautiful and the true. And if I know anything at all worth telling about the subject, it is this; Ted Roethke is a great American poet. And he writes poetry that you need to read… and not only read but live.
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Filed under artists I admire, commentary, insight, inspiration, poetry, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as living poetry, poetry, Theodore Roethke