Forward 2003

I have posted these poems for the principal benefit of one reader: myself. It's just pleasant to gloat over them in the colorful, dignified form allowed by html and the web. Of course, that doesn't make them any better as poems. Other readers may sigh over the vanity of human wishes. But these at least are a sampling of the best I can do. Good poems (by my own standards) unsuitable to have been written by a stolid professor of astronomy have been excluded.

John Jeffery is the same as David J. Jeffery. If it seems affected to edit my name in this way, just remember it helps for a writer to have a memorable name. Portpentagram Publishing is my own creation. Port for my hometown; pentagram for euphony, ambivalence---it's also the Sir Gawain's mark in ``Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''--- which is where I stole it from.

Why poetry? Love of words, wordplay, the resonance of wordspell. And it's a creative energy for someone with little talent and less energy for the techniques of other arts: music, painting, flower arranging, quilting. All poetry takes are my usual tools: keyboard and monitor. I very have very seldom composed on paper or just in my head. It does take time---boring, closeted time.

But on the other hand, one can't write about boring things. Everyone expects poets to whine, but at least it should be with panache. So I've carefully tried to save up my moments of inspiration and hope that the magic happens with order and re-order and word and reword. Sometimes it seems to work. Being a "stolid professor of astronomy," I rely on imaginative experience primarily you may be sure.

I've been writing poems fairly steadily since 1987: there were a few stabs before that of which only A Physics Poem survives and certainly the non-survivors deserve their fate. Along the way I've gotten better I think. Away with the whiny, the self-consciously socially worthy, and the poetrification of astronomy and physics. Two simple rules of the game have helped. From Auden: don't try to make every bit mean something: that just leads to boredom. From Erica Jong: what's expected of an author is authority.

Technically I'm not much. I like rhyme and meter, but havn't much patience with learning regular forms. I scan lines very uncertainly. This is not to despise forms: the suspense between form and the unique impulse is the source of poetry. I just hope that I get that suspense by iterative reworking sans plan.

Besides creation, my poems are a sort of record of my life. A sharing with friends and family. Obviously, not an exhaustive life story or an account of what takes up most of my time. Just making a few seconds immortal.