Back in the 70s when I first began publishing poems, I subscribed to a “little magazine,” a poetry journal called The Lyric. I still do. This magazine, now approaching its 100th year in publication, calls itself “An Oasis in an Arid Age”–referring to the fact that it prints mainly traditional poetry, often written by people with other things to do in life, like working as accountants or engineers or medical technologists. No academic stuffiness here at all.

In the pages of The Lyric, I met a poet named Gail White. I wrote her a fan letter–still in the days of snail mail–and received an immediate reply. How many hundreds of letters have shuttled between Kansas City and Louisiana in the decades since then! In recent years, we’ve fallen back on the expediency of e-mail. Too bad, as capturing the “literary correspondence of two poets of the late 20th century” will be made that much more difficult for some future graduate student. Never mind. There’s plenty of material available. Gail and I clicked, as poets and as friends. By now we’ve met in person on a few occasions, and we’re still friends.

In her most recent book, Catechism, published by Kelsay Books/White Violet Press Buy Here , she includes a “joint effort”–a poem created when Gail invited me to add the second stanza to her first.

BROTHER DOG, SISTER CAT

 

Dog is dumber than a TV husband,
trusting as a cuckold in a Shakepeare play,
faithful as a nineteenth century butler,
sentimental as a drunk on New Year’s Day.

 

Cat is cagey as a fortune teller,
loopy as a starlet in a nineteen-thirties role,
sensuous as smoke around a stripper,
elusive as conviction in the soul.

 

Gail White and Barbara Loots

Reproduced by permission

 

You can’t cook up the magical properties of a friendship like this. It just happens. Gail and I have sometimes bemoaned the vagaries of fame (never mind fortune) in the literary community. But we’ve never failed to encourage, enlighten, and entertain each other as we pursued our poetry lives.

So…write a fan letter today. You never know.