scnool and colleges in the Washington Dr. Martin Galvin

scnool and colleges in the Washington Dr. Martin Galvin metropolitan area for 35 years. He has published several books of poetry: Wild Card, Washington Writers Publishing House, April 1989, and Making Beds, Sedwick House, Nov. 1989 (chap book). He has written articles such as “French Travlers in America .1788-92” in Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 1976, and his poems have been included in a number of anthologies such as Best American Poetry 1997, N.Y. 1998. In addition, Martin Galvin has received many professional honors and awards. Like other American poets, Galvin finds interest and inspiration in nature and its effects on and relations to people. A recollection of his youth, colloquially expressed, when he learned about making red madder dye, follows. Alizarin She used to dig out the roots of an herb that climbed walls we couldn’t, and sprouted yellow flowers girls loved for their own reasons. She’d bite off a tip like it was a stogie, chew it up and spit. If he liked the color, she’d have me pound the rest of the root to smithereens. She was his color maker, even then. She’d throw it in the stew she always had perking. Come out crimson it did, alizarin he used to make a world she liked from what we’ve got. Once for something I did, she even had him paint me an alizarin cow, hung it where I’d have to look. Made me like poetry, that cow, Made me hate milk. v Spring 1999 The art of poetry seems simple when one reads this poem. If you think you could turn an experience such as related here into a poem, try it and bring it with you to the Oct. 8 program. Otherwise, just come and enjoy hearing poetry and how it happens.