By Lee Gurga
Stephen Glosecki, an associate professor of English at the University of Alabama
in Birmingham, will present “Over the Hills and Home”–a program of writings
about Springfield and family–at 3 p.m. on Friday, July 18, at the Vachel Lindsay
Home, 603 S. Fifth in Springfield. An award-winning poet, Glosecki, will read
selections from Vachel Lindsay and Dylan Thomas as well as his own writings.
He is the son of Edith Glosecki ,who once taught at Springfield High School.
Here is a poem Glosecki wrote after a pilgrimage to his great-grandparents house
in the Ukraine:
Sudden our summer slips down day
bright ripe raspberries tossed away
wind sink bramble old mill run
and nut drops oaken autumn sun
umber ochre sienna burned
one red leaf fall September turned
over the mushroom membered moss
greenswath belong down hazelside
wildflower footpath floor and wade
and all along the long untended apples
through garden gate to clover mound
where loud bees bumble blue church bells
and the throng red roses run away
round walls of rain under roof of sky
one gray tree, November nigh
Local poets were writing about contemporary events in the Sangamo
Journal as early as the 1830s. People’s Poetry wants you to share your thoughts
on what’s happening in Springfield today–in poetic form. Poems on any subject
will be considered, but ones that deal with issues of local interest are encouraged.
Send yours to poetry editor Lee Gurga, P.O. Box 662, Lincoln, IL 62656, or to
gurga@ccaonline.com with “Bards of
the Sangamo” in the subject line. (Please limit your submissions to poems of
14 lines or less.)
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2003.
