Millis
He was once an ordinary pet rabbit, transformed through an accident involving a time-traveler’s alien-created mechanical carrot.
He is a character in;
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates (his girlfriend) (She forced me to write that last thing, Mike.)
Mike is a member of the Murphy clan who resides in Murphy Mansion with many other Murphys. Blueberry is the girl who chased him until she caught him and turned him into her boyfriend.
Seen in the novels;
The Bicycle Wheel Genius
Magical Miss Morgan
Catch a Falling Star (only Mike is in that one) (He forced me to write that, Blue)
The Necromancer’s Apprentice (Mainly Blueberry in this one. Mike is only comic relief.)
Valerie Clarke
Valerie is a young Iowan farmgirl who lost her father far too soon. She loves skateboards, 80’s music, and boys, especially boys who can sing.
She is a main character in;
Snow Babies
Sing Sad Songs
She is also an important character in;
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Sherry Cobble
Sherry and her twin sister, Shelly, look almost exactly alike. They are, with both of their parents, practicing nudists. They love being nude at home on the farm, at the Sunshine Club in Clear Lake, and at school when they can get away with it (which is mostly a matter of girls’ locker rooms.)
Sherry and her twin are important characters in;
Superchicken
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever
A Field Guide for Fauns
Orben Wallace, bicycle engineer
Orben came to Norwall after a tragic fire in his home and laboratory killed his family. He switched from physics to bicycle engineering and opened a new lab where it is rumored that he also created sentient robots, time travel machines, supercomputers, and had relationships with aliens and time travelers. Of course the only physical proof of anything are the bicycles he made.
He is a main character in; The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
He is also an important character in; Catch a Falling Star
Anneliese Stein
Anneliese is a gingerbread cookie brought back to life through the magical baking skills of her human mother, Grandma Gretel Stein. She was also a human girl in the 1930s and early 1940s who also had, unfortunately, a Jewish father. Okay, I know… I will explain better later.
She is an important character in;
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Necromancer’s Apprentice
This will have to be finished another day. I have too many more characters to show you, and my Internet is giving out.
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.
Leave a comment
Filed under artists I admire, commentary, insight, inspiration, poetry, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as living poetry, poetry, Theodore Roethke