Great Poetry

Here are the extraordinary writings of a generation who fought through a war of unprecedented destructive power, and who had to find new voices to express the horror of what they discovered. The great names - Owen, Sassoon - are fully represented, but there are also many poems by lesser-known or unexpected figures, ranging from serving soldiers like Isaac Rosenberg and Richard Aldington to women such as Edith Nesbit and Vera Brittain.

Over the years while writing, directing, and acting at radio theater workshops and in the Mark Time Radio Show performances at Minneapolis' CONvergence science fiction conventions, Brian Price and Jerry Stearns found that they shared a love for classic Beat poetry, Lord Buckley, and prose poems, so they started doing some of their own. This is a collection of their unique hybrid of humor, music, character, and performance.

Charlie Shoe finds tying his laces confusing. Whenever he tries, he gets in a muddle and often gives up. But without his shoelaces tied, Charlie trips and falls, and Sophie can’t bear to watch.

Acclaimed writer Henry Van Dyke presents a staller collection of poems that also served as hymns in churches in the early 1900s. One is still sung today. Encouragement found in each stanza.