Werner was so kind as to direct me to this section of the group, so I'm going to continue my campaign to get some minimal recognition for my father's poetical works.
The first of these was, "How I Got to Be So Grand" and was a book of light verse. It was published by a friend of his who may have gotten his publisher's imprint and everything solely for the purpose of getting the book published. The blurb reads:
By turns charming, witty, silly, and whimsical, this is an unusual, smart book of light verse from a wonderful and peculiarly able poet. Shapiro writes the kind of clever nonsense poems that have found their inspiration in his "Glavins Pub"
The second was entitled "Lament", and is, if I recall correctly, a single lengthy and quite serious work of poetry. That blurb states:
" Timor mortis conturbat me" an age-old lament. But do we fear death itself? Or is it rather the fear of death that we find so disturbing? A striking and mature work of art - entertaining, allusive and profound - from a writer whose poetry Northrop Frye called "lively, witty, sharply pointed." Yes, when he was taking classes at the University of Toronto from Frye he did get that comment.
Both of these are for sale on a website specialising in books in Latvian. For the record, therefore, if you're looking for books in Latvian, Trimdadimd Books is a source for such things. However, you can see that it's fairly unlikely someone looking for Latvian books will ever choose to purchase a copy, and it's fairly unlikely english-speakers interested in poetry would stumble upon it either.
Now, I know it's entirely unfair to ask that people purchase a book of poetry without ever knowing the skills, tendencies or other characteristics of a poet.
To this end, I'm putting a link in at the bottom of this post to my father's blog of sonnets, which he has been adding to since 2005. http://sonnetpage.blogspot.ca/
I hope that someone will be interested and take a look at his work, at the least. It's been an ambition of his, for his whole life, to be a poet, so I'd like to see if I can help make something of that happen.
The first of these was, "How I Got to Be So Grand" and was a book of light verse. It was published by a friend of his who may have gotten his publisher's imprint and everything solely for the purpose of getting the book published. The blurb reads:
By turns charming, witty, silly, and whimsical, this is an unusual, smart book of light verse from a wonderful and peculiarly able poet. Shapiro writes the kind of clever nonsense poems that have found their inspiration in his "Glavins Pub"
The second was entitled "Lament", and is, if I recall correctly, a single lengthy and quite serious work of poetry. That blurb states:
" Timor mortis conturbat me" an age-old lament. But do we fear death itself? Or is it rather the fear of death that we find so disturbing? A striking and mature work of art - entertaining, allusive and profound - from a writer whose poetry Northrop Frye called "lively, witty, sharply pointed." Yes, when he was taking classes at the University of Toronto from Frye he did get that comment.
Both of these are for sale on a website specialising in books in Latvian. For the record, therefore, if you're looking for books in Latvian, Trimdadimd Books is a source for such things. However, you can see that it's fairly unlikely someone looking for Latvian books will ever choose to purchase a copy, and it's fairly unlikely english-speakers interested in poetry would stumble upon it either.
Now, I know it's entirely unfair to ask that people purchase a book of poetry without ever knowing the skills, tendencies or other characteristics of a poet.
To this end, I'm putting a link in at the bottom of this post to my father's blog of sonnets, which he has been adding to since 2005. http://sonnetpage.blogspot.ca/
I hope that someone will be interested and take a look at his work, at the least. It's been an ambition of his, for his whole life, to be a poet, so I'd like to see if I can help make something of that happen.