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Walking Through Life
Poetry by Merle P. Martin
Excerpts
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Bio
Merle P. Martin is the author of several books and a Professor Emeritus at Sacramento State University. He also has taught in Thailand and the Russian Far East. He holds degrees from Texas A&M, Stanford, and the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and Air National Guard. His work has appeared in Poetry Now, Boston Literary Magazine, Muse-lings, Nomads' Choir, SpokeWrite, and Beyond Horizons, An Anthology of Alaskan Poets. He spent fifteen years in Alaska, but now resides in Spokane Valley, Washington. Please visit Merle at www.merlepmartin.com.
Reviews
These poems read like the diary of a life fully lived, in verse. The poet’s diction is direct and accessible, complementing the candor and emotional honesty of his wide-reaching reflections. The subjects of his poems run the gamut of pivotal life experience, of love, doubt, poignant remembrance, the complexity of family relationships, and the deaths of two spouses. Martin is a wise poet who knows not only what questions to ask but also the pitfalls of a careless, simplistic answer. He writes provocatively of the “Heaven and hell lived within me,” and in the rest of us as well.
Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate
In Walking Through Life, Merle P. Martin has a way of being emotional without the least bit of gush, and he's honest to the core. Quick observations such as "Church to us was a Scrabble word" paint a picture in a few strokes of the poet's pen. The title poem in Walking Through Life begins with "There's a crack in the sidewalk" and ends thirty-one lines later with "There's a crack in my glasses. / Something always needs repair." From the near-gallows humor of "Pain-Shot Thursdays" to the stark, unvarnished emotion of "Day After," Martin covers the gamut of human experiences—simply and sincerely.
Harry Calhoun, Retreating Aggressively into the Dark
From his California boyhood in a Catholic neighborhood whose family knew church as a scrabble word to today when he rides a bus for the handicapped, Mel Martin is our guide through the joys and sorrows of an examined life. He writes, "I have lived and I still live." The reader can only nod in recognition and admiration.
Tom Sexton, 1995-2000 Poet Laureate of Alaska
Purchase Walking Through Life here.
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