Welcome to A Poet’s Potpourri,
a monthly newsletter designed for your pleasure.
My intention is to share—

I took the summer off to finish my 3^rd draft of Finding Home and travel to Kaua’i with two of my granddaughters and their parents. I hope you had a good summer and can take a moment to digest my news.

Enjoy: My poem, Kauai’s Underwater Universe​
​Look: Kauai, Hawaii’s Garden Island
​Meet: Sebastião Salgado
​Learn: Why Research?
​Read: The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

ENJOY: Kauai’s Underwater Universe

I had forgotten the silence of the underwater world. Once I tighten my mask, the salty water no longer burns my eyes. At first the coral appears empty. Where have the fish gone? Has the warming ocean made them extinct? When I am still, they come out of their watery caves. The white snout of the long nose butterfly fish leads. The black striped Moorish idol fish and the goat fish with two long spears dangling down from its mouth follow. They pay no attention to me as long as I hang still above them. A blue striped snapper five times larger than the other fish, swims by, his colors muted like the sarong I tie dyed the day before. A pennant fish waves a long white fin. A much larger fish creeping along the ocean’s floor catches my attention.

Stealthy scorpion fish
camouflaged by rocks and sand.
Watch closely. Don’t touch!

LOOK: Kaua’i is known as the ‘Garden Island’. Besides beautiful beaches, it has the Waimea Canyon, Hawaii’s Grand Canyon, and the isolated Nāpali Coast. The photo is my son’s as I did not venture on the catamaran to motor past it. The first photo is Waimea Canyon.

MEET: Sebastião Salgado is known for his documentary and humanistic photography. In Paris we viewed his life’s work in a retrospective exhibition organized by his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, of over 60 years. The 454 works exhibited represent his series beginning with the wars of decolonization in Africa and the famine in Sahel. He then went on to travel to 26 countries over 6 years to do a ‘visual archeology’ of the industrial era where work by hand predominated. Picture mining for gold by hand. In 1995 He began a project known as Exodus, focusing on the great migrations in the world. This was followed by Genesis, research into places untouched by modern life. Amazonia focused on documenting Indigenous communities and the forests they inhabit. His final project was requested by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo in 2024. She wanted a photo for her official Christmas card. Sebastião agreed with one condition: if he was not satisfied with the results, he did not have to share his images. After several weeks he presented his images, and the Mayor chose one. Below are samples of his work that stood out to me.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m happy to announce that the anthology, A State of Healing, a Wisconsin Anthology of Resilience, Reflection, and Hope was launched on 8/29. Through poetry, essay, memoir, stories, photography, and visual art, 57 contributors explore healing in its many forms—from grief, illness, community, and fracture to clarity, repair, connection, and integration. I am honored to contribute my poem, ‘Ode for Henry’. Henry Brecher was the Holocaust survivor who inspired my current work in progress, a historical fiction novel in verse, Finding Home. I am grateful that Henry trusted me to share the story of his escape as a child from Yugoslavia during World War II. I have copies of this anthology for sale for $8.00 plus shipping. Let me know if you would like one. There is a great variety of poetry, prose and illustrations within. I’m enjoying reading it each night before I go to sleep.

LEARN: Research is an important part of any historical fiction written for children or adults. In my work I’ve used both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are accounts written by someone who observed or participated in the event itself. An example is the book, Destroyer Captain by Roger Hill, Captain of a British destroyer that arrived in Bari, Italy soon after the port was bombed on 12/02/1943.

Secondary sources are articles or books based on primary or other secondary sources. That could be an academic paper that summarizes what has been written about a subject, for example the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia during World War II. I recently received a copy of papers stored in a box from the National Archives in Washington D.C. It was exciting to see photos of Henry and his foster family shortly after they arrived in the United States in 1944. I’ll include those in my next newsletter.

READ: I’d like to recommend a historical fiction novel by Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women. It follows the life story of two girls growing up on the Korea island of Jeju. The social structure of the island is unique because the women are divers, haenyeo, who support their families with bounty from the sea. Beginning in the 1930’s we follow these two friends through Japanese colonization before and during WWII, the American occupation following the war, and the brutal Korean uprising in the decades that follow. See creates a gripping story threading intimate characters with well researched world events. Jennifer Lim narrates the audio version.