Poems for Ordinary People - guest blog

I love the book Poems for Ordinary People by Carol Allis. So does my sister, Monette Johnson, who turned me on to Carol's poetry a year ago, at least, when Carol's book was published. She offered then to write a guest blog, but I said, oh no, I love Carol's  poetry, and poetry in general, and I will do it. Well. I didn't. My feelings about poetry are complicated. I have a long history with it. I love it. I hate it. I want it. Anyway. Here's a lovely piece written by my dear sister. I hope you enjoy, and that you consider installing Carol Allis' book in your library. Mary K. 

By Monette Johnson

If you're like me and mostly avoid poetry because you find much of it esoteric, pretentious, bewildering and just plain don't get it, meet Carol Allis. 

Carol writes "Poems for Ordinary People" as her first book title announces, and there's not an esoteric, pretentious or bewildering line to be found. Her poems speak to ordinary folks like most of us --

ordinary poets

Is there poetry for ordinary people
You know
Waitresses and nurses
People who clean floors and fix roads
And string cable and make sandwiches
And sing good-night songs
And go off to work every day
To pay for groceries and bicycles
Just ordinary people
Who hear the rhythm and music
Of ordinary life every day
Who don't have time
To ponder navels
Dissect complex phrases
Or analyze a line to death
People who think in poetry every day
But don’t have time to write it down
And not much time to read
Catching lines on the fly
That kind of poetry

Carol Allis

Carol grew up in a household where poems were read regularly at her grandmother's dinner table. She started writing them herself after her father gave her a manual typewriter when she was seven, teaching herself to type using both index fingers (a method that serves her well to this day).

I've known Carol since the 1980s when I hired her to work as a writer in the hospital Public Relations Department I headed. She was a late applicant because of a bureaucratic screw-up by the County Personnel (before we all became human resources) Department which had informed her she failed the writing test.

Testament to her persistence, she challenged their results ("I've never failed a test in my life.") and sure enough, they'd made a mistake. I knew within two minutes of starting her interview that she was the right person for the job. What I didn't know until reading her inscription in my copy of her book ("Thank you for mentoring me in my first writing job; you helped me believe in myself.") is that, well, it was her first writing job.

Didn't matter a bit.  Not only was she the best writer I ever hired, she was the fastest and most productive. I believe she invented multi-tasking before it became a catchword.

Even though we worked together for five years, I didn't know she wrote poetry until a year or so before her book was published when I read some of her poems online. My first thought was damn, these are good, hope she finds a publisher.

Fortunately the North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., St. Cloud, Minnesota, came through and published the book late last year. Readings at area bookstores and book clubs ensued with the books selling out at each location. (She began taking more copies to each reading.)

Her book is divided into topics: Ordinary Poets, Outrage, Love, Family, Thinking too Much, Hurting, Hooked, Loss, Respite, Reflections, and The Light Side. When I started writing this, I paged through and re-read a number of poems at random. Despite having read them before, I found myself choking up over several, smiling at more.  Here's one of the smilers:

body parts

Write a poem

About a body part

(the assignent was)

I thought and thought

Which part?

Which one is my favorite?

Some of mine

Haven't been used lately . . .

Tennis muscles

Racquetball ligaments

Torn hamstrings

Hairline-fractured ankles

And . . . other parts . . .

Parts that go unused

When love is on the skids . . . 

Well, one thing's functioning

The heart beats on

Despite the varied struggles

Of injured, aching, waning

Body parts

And the brain, of course

But here are all these other body parts

Waiting for jump starts

Carol retired a couple of months ago from her job as a public information officer "translating governmentalize into words ordinary people can understand."  Now she can spend more time translating life experience into the kind of poetry ordinary people can understand.

For more poems:  PoemsforOrdinaryPeople.com
The book is available at Amazon.com.

Read one of my favorites from Carol's book. MK