In the last few days I have seen posts of people honoring Taylor Swifts 35th birthday (Happy Birthday, Taylor) and honoring the memories of people like Nikki Giovanni, the great black queer poet who just died. I also have a dear personal friend, a poet mentor, who has been in a few of my recent poems about ghosts. He is still alive, but is fighting complications from surgery.
It all made me think of the famous and not so famous people who have made a difference in my life. Many of whom either don’t know me, or over the years, we have lost connections.
So I am posting here, the dead and alive to say thank you for making my life better, and if you or I die before I get to tell you in person, here is the documentation of thank you. The list of the dead is, of course, very long and getting longer, so I will start with the living which seems to be getting shorter:
The friends and family who mean so much to me, includes all my children and grandchildren, my beloved Suzanne, my archangel brother, Shirley and Walter Everett, and an assortment of cousins, Ross, Vikki, Darryll, Clayton, James and Martha, Vikki, Phyliss, Emily, all my nieces and nephews, each one of you are in my heart and you have made your silly old uncle happy you are alive, “may you all live long and prosper”.
Childhood friends, include Ken O’Barr, Melanie Register Speed, Judy Fogle, Mike and Debbie, and on to more recent folks, who I owe a lot to: Al Filreis, U Penn KWH poetry professor, Sophia DuRose, Laynie Brown, Mary Carol, MC Chaffa, Davy Knittles, David Poplar, Rae Armantrout, Ron Silliman, and Prof. Herman Beavers. My old Night Herons including the aforementioned mention, Kevin McLaughlin, Julie Bertrand, Valerie Van Haltren, Gerry Warmuskerken, Tim Brown, Sheila Rimer, and dear friends from many years on FB, Mary Ellen Foley, Janice Demory, Tobi Alfier. And my partner in literary crime, Vera ignatowitsch, who has kept Better Than Starbucks alive and well long after I ran out of gas. In a list like this, I have surely forgotten someone or several someones, if I overlook you, it is a reflection of my bad memory ( ijust remembered two dear and good friends who have made a difference in my life, Sue Fisher and Bill Funk, I ask forgiveness, though I haven’t forgotten Rick Bragg, who still takes my call, god love him. Rick, I know you have health issues, but I hope you live long after you read my obit.
The other famous people who don’t know who I am, but have changed my life for the better: Bob Dylan, Barack Obama, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Cheryl Wheeler, Carol King, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Arlo Guthrie, Otis Taylor (who does know who I am, but only casually), and Hazel’s Kindergarten teacher, who managed to give her a Phd in life, Roseanne Paine, and Andy Matzkow who helped her become a talented musician.
Now for the dead ones, the ones I did not get to tell them “thank you” the list of dead pop stars is so long I will only highlight the brightest stars: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Eudora Welty, Graham Greene, Johnny Cash, Ronnie Van Zant, Jimmy Buffett, Tom Petty, and many others.
I did have a wonderful farewell to both of my parents, but still a shout out to Don and Georgia, my dad and mom. The others, the dead, my grandmothers, Aunt Polly, my poet mentors Dr James Lancaster, Brenda Black White, Art Noble, Doris Thurston, and Chuck Chase.
Thank you all for the wonderful gifts you have given me. I hope I have given you something in return, but either way, thanks for the love and kindness.