| Christopher T. George is co-editor of Loch Raven Review. George was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University, with his wife Donna and two cats. Chris works full-time as a medical editor in Washington, DC. He has been writing and publishing poetry since he attended Loyola College, Baltimore, and studied with Sister Maura Eichner at the College of Notre Dame, as well as with poets Elliot Coleman and Marion Buchman. His poems have appeared in numerous publications in the United States and Great Britain. He is also a published historian and a lyricist for a new musical, Jack-The Musical, about Jack the Ripper. George also is the Editor of Desert Moon Review and an editor at Writer’s Block Poetry Workshop. |
Fall 2006 Table of Contents - Vol. II, No. 2 |
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Christopher T. George
Poems of Place: Harford County, Maryland, Edited by Carol Bindel, Susan Lesser, Betsy Wollaston, Abecedarian Books, Inc., 2006, 56 pp., ISBN 0-9763106-6-6-X, $14.99.
This book, which is a product of the Harford County Poetry and Literary Society, in their Manorborn series (Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2006) is an outpouring of poetry characterizing this northern Maryland county, which has a storied history going back to colonial times and beyond. Pride of place in the issue is given to a section of poems of the late Tom Chambers, a stalwart of the Harford group and of poetry in Maryland in general. Thus, it is nice to see the deceptively simple and unadorned verses of Mr. Chambers, a member of both the local poetry and historical societies, placed in the spotlight—and historical memory does inform his poems, an asset to this collection. Typical of Mr. Chambers' poems included in the book is the following lyric about a school that once served the community but which has now been swept away: School Doors Forever Shut Bessie Amos, Lewis Archer, Harry Baldwin, Mary Emma Beardly, Elva Benson, Thomas Bradley. . . The names appear on the register in alphabetical order—from an archival file— girls and boys who attended a school that once stood—but no more only a vacant lot grown wild with brush and dense with woods. An old oak stands by the road no doubt in place where the children played and ran and skipped about the schoolyard. From the file—a picture of the school— vines climbing its walls— the school razed 30 years ago after decades of growing dilapidation and disrepair. The names on a list—children who studied algebra—botany—and astronomy graduated and gone to live out their lives. Names on a list—children who went to a school forever gone—only their names are left. . . . Bennett Reckord, William Rigdon, Emily Robinson, Leonard Scarborough, Dora Walton, Alice Watson. Having known Mr. Chambers both in poetry circles as well as through the Harford historical society—in fact, he helped get me the “gig” of writing an issue of their historical bulletin on “Harford County in the War of 1812” I can well imagine Tom poring over the file of records of that long-ago school and seeing the poetic potential in that collection of memorabilia. Poems of Place is nicely rounded out with poems by 27 other poets including such distinctive voices as veteran poets Vonnie Crist, Betty Grabarek, Jean E. Keenan, Alan C. Reese, and the late Bert Ransom, who each give their impressions of their favorite county. A recommended taste of Maryland rendered in well-wrought poetry.
© Christopher T. George |
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