The occasional poet

Perfection escapes

the occasional poet

wandering her thoughts.

My son, the serious poet, is everything you’d expect in a professor right down to the twill pants and sweater vests.  

I, on the other hand, wear an aquarium hat and live in a dog house.

He has had poems published in magazines and journals.  

I have a blog.

These are just the Books / Chapbooks of Poetry of Robert Simon, PhD that I copied/pasted from his Curriculum Vitae.  (I added the numbers so I could read it easier):

1. The Musician. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2017. Print.
2. Poems of a Turning Professor: A Collection in Two Epochs and Five Parts. Allahabad, India: Cyberwit, 2015. Print.
3. Os Sophíadas II. Lisbon, Portugal: Apenas Livros, 2011. Print.
4. Summer Poems of You and Me. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2011. Print.
5. The Traveler / el viajero / o Viajante. Allahabad, India: Cyberwit, 2010. Print.
6. Os Sophíadas. Lisbon, Portugal: Apenas Livros, 2009. Print.
7. Não Tirei Fotos. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2009. Print.
8. New Poems from the Airplane and Graveyard. Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press, 2007.

For more information about him, here’s the link: http://foreignlanguages.hss.kennesaw.edu/faculty-staff/robert-simon/

I can’t read 2/3 of his poetry; it’s written in English, Spanish and Portuguese.  He’s fluent in all 3 languages to the point where a native speaker of Spanish once told me,  “He knows more words in my own language than I do.”   She also thought he was from Spain.

Last night I asked him to look through 240 poems in my haiku/tanka collection.  As he did so, he offered advice that most people would pay a fortune to know.

Have you ever had one of those epiphanies where you look at your grown child and finally see the man inside him?  I’m not talking about the way that years affect the body, or the affects a sensitive soul develops as a defense against an insensitive world, but that moment an occasional poet knows she’s glimpsed into the heart of a real one.

If you’ve had one of those epiphanies …welcome to my world.

I ask for writing advice from my son, but when I need wisdom about the everyday problems of life, I ask my daughter.

I’ll continue to wonder how the genes of a brilliant chemical engineer and a deeply flawed writer could, together, create two children whose lives have so greatly surpassed their own.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s every parent’s dream.