Poems

Sometimes they were scrawled on loose-leaf notebook paper. Others were written on the back of police watch sheets or on Baltimore police stationery. But the poems Lawerence E. Mize Sr. brought home show what he was contemplating during long midnight patrol shifts in West Baltimore: how much he loved his wife, Sandy. Now Mize has published these poems and others in a slim volume titled "Thoughts of You: Poems on Life, Love, and Family. " In the introduction to his book, the Southwest Baltimore native describes the first time he ever saw Sandy, who lived across the street, while she was playing badminton with her sister.

Marie Rose Cornely, a homemaker who enjoyed writing poetry, died Sunday of heart disease at Stella Maris Hospice. She was 87. Marie Rose McKenna was born and raised in Philadelphia. She was a 1943 graduate of the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur in Villanova, Pa. She was an office worker before her 1947 marriage to Dr. Donald A. Cornely Sr.. The couple lived in Philadelphia when Dr. Cornely taught at the University of Pennsylvania and later at the University of Pittsburgh.

A 41-year-old Ellicott City woman, whose violent slaying prompted a national search for her estranged husband, was an introverted poet who dedicated her life to her children and expected a bright new year without her spouse, friends said.Shirley Scott Harney's fractured and bullet-ridden body was found by police outside her home in the 5000 block of Brampton Parkway Dec. 26.Her husband was in custody last night in Charlotte, N.C. His sons were found unharmed.Neighbors said they knew little about Mrs. Harney.

A handwritten draft of one of Edgar Allan Poe's earliest poems and a letter to author Washington Irving are among a handful of items that will be part of an exhibit opening April 26 at a Richmond, Va., museum devoted to the writer. "This is the kind of exhibit that comes around only once in a generation," Chris Semtner, curator of Richmond's Edgar Allan Poe Museum, said of "From Poe's Quill: The Letters and Manuscripts of Edgar Allan Poe," which will run through July 11. "Because Poe's manuscripts were not highly valued during his brief life, many have been lost or dispersed over time, making them very rare today.

Keisha Miles' poem "No One Seems to Hear Me" has a long way to go -- at least 4 million miles.Keisha, a seventh-grader at Roland Park Middle School, is one of four young poets whose work has been selected for display inside the Mass Transit Administration's fleet of 850 buses.Through the Poetry Express program, supported by a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, Keisha can share some of her most private thoughts. "I'm glad people can [see] my poetry and understand the way I think, because I'm really shy and nervous," she says.

Many students read and write poetry in high school, but Pikesville poet Kendra Kopelke wants young people to listen to poetry, as well. "Poems are kind of an odd encounter with words," she said. "To hear them out loud is really different." As the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society's poet-in- residence, Kopelke will read and discuss her poetry in every Howard County High school between October and April. One of her messages is that hearing a poet read his or her work is as valuable as talking about themes, meters and line breaks.

Twelve students from Friendship Valley Elementary School squelched their enthusiasm about graduating from the fifth grade long enough to share their poetry in front of a full house at the Carroll County Arts Council Gallery last night.The pupils opened up "First Thursday," an evening of poetry, music and art sponsored each month at the gallery in Westminster by One Tree Productions and Common Ground on the Hill.Joining the youngsters were Sykesville poet Kathleen Adcock, musician Amy Ferebee and her partner, Steve Snyder.

The daughter of a Native American father and a mother both Native American and white, poet Joy Harjo knew early the pain caused by prejudice."I started writing to save my life," she says.It was a pain she long bore silently, partly because of shyness and partly because, as a Native American, she was trained to a quiet stoicism. She first expressed herself primarily not through poetry, but through painting.Her artistic ability was recognized while she was still in elementary school, and she went on to major in art in college.

Donald Richardson is a man of many roles.Not only is he an English professor at Anne Arundel Community College and a faculty adviser for the college newspaper, he is also a poet in residence for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at St. Jane Frances School in Riviera Beach.For the past week, Mr. Richardson, 50, has taught the youngsters different forms and components of poetry -- that it is more than rhyme schemes and haiku. Today, the students will honor the Pasadena resident with a reading of their works.

A pizza is a pizza and nothing more, unless one considers it a metaphor. Then, who knows? In the hands of a poet, a pizza -- boxed and resting on the bed of a Motel 6, let's say -- marks a vacant place in the heart. As Baltimore poet Matt Hohner put it:I climb into bed. A warm spotwas left behind by the pizza box where you are not.Hohner was on the road in Oregon that spring of 1995, thinking of his girlfriend. She was back home in Baltimore. Hohner was heading to graduate school at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Baltimore-born poet Adrienne Rich , whose poetry and essays were the foundations of modern feminism, has died at age 82. Here are some tidbits from her life here, as reflected in stories from The Sun: Rich's father, a physician and professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital, used to give her poems to copy, and she was exposed to many of the great poets early in life. She was a member of the Roland Park Country School Class of 1947. In the essay "Taking Women Students Seriously," published in her book" On Lies, Secrets and Silence," she wrote of the school: "We were taken to libraries, art museums, lectures ... given extra French or Latin reading.

Adrienne Rich, one of the country's most honored and influential poets, whose finely tuned verse explored her identity as a feminist, a lesbian and an agent for political change, died Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 82. She died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, said her son, Pablo Conrad. In more than 60 years as a published poet, Ms. Rich examined the evolving lives of women in modern society and embodied many of those changes herself. She was a precocious child of a privileged Baltimore family, then a young wife and mother, and later dedicated herself to the ideals of feminism.

Children's author Elissa Brent Weissman is kicking off a new set of classes for the Baltimore Young Writers' Group, for kids 8 to 13. Students meet twice a month, Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., to learn about writing stories and poems. The schedule is January 21, 28; February 11, 25; March 10, 24 at School 33 Art Center , 1427 Light St. in Baltimore. For more information or to register, visit www.ebweissman.com/classes Meanwhile, the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks is soliciting entries for the Senior Citizens Poetry Contest 2012.

Sometimes they were scrawled on loose-leaf notebook paper. Others were written on the back of police watch sheets or on Baltimore police stationery. But the poems Lawerence E. Mize Sr. brought home show what he was contemplating during long midnight patrol shifts in West Baltimore: how much he loved his wife, Sandy. Now Mize has published these poems and others in a slim volume titled "Thoughts of You: Poems on Life, Love, and Family. " In the introduction to his book, the Southwest Baltimore native describes the first time he ever saw Sandy, who lived across the street, while she was playing badminton with her sister.

(The following is inspired by "Birches," with apologies to Robert Frost.) When I see teenagers to the left and right In the woods by the river off Pulaski Highway, I like to think they're about to embrace the spring. Spring brings them out of school, out of their clothes And into the woods by the river. I saw them, boys in shorts, girls in bikinis, Easter Monday, After a rain, in the sun, heading for the river. Soon the sun's warmth made them shed their shirts And into the Gunpowder they went, beneath a bridge.

After nearly 200 years, Francis Scott Key has come back to Fort McHenry. A life-sized bronze statue of the Maryland lawyer who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" stands in the $15 million Visitor and Education Center that opens Thursday. Other elements include a film told from Key's perspective and touch-screen panels providing details about his life and views. It's a fitting tribute to man whose words help draw about 650,000 visitors a year to the site of the 1814 Battle of Baltimore at the tip of Locust Point, said Vincent Vaise, chief of interpretation for Fort McHenry.

The sun descends behind the mountains. ... The moon floats like a silver boat through the blue lake of heaven. ... My heart is still and awaits its hour. ... " Such imagery of leave-taking, drawn from ancient Chinese poetry, inspired one of the greatest works of Western music, Gustav Mahler's The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), for vocal soloists and orchestra. Those particular lines are from The Farewell (Der Abschied), the final movement, which, at more than 30 minutes, takes up half of this piece from 1909.

Last year, doctors gave Georgia Beyard three days to live. She gathered friends and family; she said tearful goodbyes; she got ready to go. Then she got better. "I felt like a complete fraud, a charlatan," she says. Beyard, now 76, recounts with characteristic wit and humor how she cheated death and this year published a book - 71 poems collected into Latter Day Parables and Other Revelations - which went on sale recently at the Book Rack in Timonium. "It was sheer idiocy" to publish a book, she says, laughing.

After Francis Scott Key scrawled down the four verses of "The Star-Spangled Banner," he left four fold marks from putting it in his breast pocket. Nearly 200 years later, the historic document is handled with far more reverence and care. It's kept in an argon-filled case for preservation, and on Tuesday, when caretakers moved it from Baltimore to Annapolis — its first known trip out of the city — they put it in an armored truck followed by two state police cars and a half-dozen city police on motorcycles.

The universe — the one surrounding Max Ehrmann's poem "Desiderata" — is now unfolding as it should. With Thursday afternoon's dedication of the statue and plaza honoring the late poet, the center of the "Desiderata" universe shifted from Baltimore to the corner of Seventh and Wabash in Ehrmann's hometown. And folks in both cities couldn't be happier. With Ehrmann's descendants, guests and an estimated 600 other Terre Hauteans watching, sculptor Bill Wolfe and arts advocate Mary Kramer unveiled the lifesize, bronze likeness of the man who wrote one of the world's best-known poems.