"Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Two stories out of one quote:
I remember one Christmas I visited my sister and her husband. He and I cut wood in the back yard for a while. When we came inside, from the cold, snowy yard, he gave me a beer. I was exhausted. The cold beer he handed me was a great pick-me-up.
Number two:
The quote is from Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who also wrote the "Father Brown" mysteries.
When I was in catholic grade school, in Warrington, Florida, in the 1950's, Father Cunningham, a "dear little Irish priest" was supposed to give us a religion class once a week. Instead, he entertained us with Irish folk tales and Father Brown mysteries, much to the chagrin of the nuns who had to watch this abuse.
Eventually, I came across a Father Brown mystery in a library, and started reading all of them...then all the mystery stories I could find, and science fiction, and westerns, and discovered that G. K. Chesterton also wrote essays. Essays led to other literature, and a small brown, leatherbound book of poems found in the garage of the home my parents bought in 1949, led to poetry.
I began writing serions, i.e. non-teenage angst, poetry on bar napkins in Germany. One night, in Europe, where poetry was more respected than in the U.S., a German woman, who spoke excellent English, saw me writing, and, glancing over my shoulder, said, "Ach! You're a poet!"
It was said with respect, and she picked up my poem, read it, nodded, and returned it, saying, "Very good!"
That was the first time I ever considered myself a poet. After that, from time to time in groups of German and Polixh people I spent time with, I was introduced with, "He's a poet...", and the poeple would smile and nod and occasionally ask what I had written or did I want to recite a poem. It was the first time I had been identified as ME, and individual person with a personal art.
It's partly because of beer, Father Cunningham, and Father Brown that I eventually read my way from one end of the Pensacola Public Library to the other, began writing poetry and never looked back.
Although I have had a few poems published in print media, it's because of the internet that I have been able to place so many poems before so many people.
Donovan Baldwin