Poet Laureate 1: First Presbyterian Church, Cedar Rapids

It occurred to me today that I haven't been documenting here in the blog what I've been doing as Poet Laureate of Iowa. Here goes, going back to last year. The one Poet Laureate event I previously posted in the blog was when I was featured for a brief reading at the Poetry Palooza festival in Des Moines in April 2024. That was my first official action as Poet Laureate. On 7 July 2024, I had the pleasure to visit First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, where I met with a nice bunch of folks in their Insight Adult Education Class on that Sunday morning. I gave a presentation on "Poetry and Religion." I talked about an Emily Dickinson poem, "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church"; a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, "Pied Beauty" (one of my favorites of his curtal sonnets, my favorite poetic form, his invention); and Wilfred Owen's poem "Soldier's Dream." Then I presented some of my own poems: "King David on Bathsheba," "baptism," "Palm Sunday," and "A Child's Funeral at St. Agnes Church." The discussion with the good folks was lively and interesting. Unfortunately, I neglected to get some photos. I'm grateful to John Burdakin for organizing and hosting. Here's one of those poems of mine I read that day: A Child’s Funeral at St. Agnes Church It was in fifth grade, I think. A second grader at St. Agnes, a girl, had died. I don’t remember how or why. It hit all of us hard. The whole school, eight grades, went to her funeral one morning. “Abide with Me,” we sang. When the priest raised the host and the altar boy rang his bell, Byron whispered to me, Answer the phone! We died laughing, couldn’t stop giggling. Our classmates glared daggers. For weeks after that, Byron                                                   and I were outcasts! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Sanctuary of St. Agnes Church, San Francisco I'm posting this specific poem here today because above I mentioned Hopkins's curtal sonnet form as my go-to, and this poem happens to be one. The curtal sonnet is 3/4 of a regular sonnet, so if you do the math, you'll see why Hopkins set the length at 10 1/2 lines, rhymed abcabc dbcdc. I do decasyllabics when I write these — 10 syllables per line — and the ending line is 5 syllables, as a half line. The curtal sonnet is a tight space, and I enjoy getting a poem done within these requirements. I hope you enjoy this poem! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ