April 1, 2015

Happy National Poetry Month. Yes April 1, is the start of this year's invitation to celebrate poetry. For us here at the Cat Lovers Almanac, we will use the opportunity to stress a class of poets almost universally forgotten. I refer to those whose verse about cats. is published in relatively obscure  magazines. People like the following:

Philip Dacey, described as a poet and a professor,(see below)  had verse about cats published in Seems magazine,(in 1989) and the better known, Cat Fancy in 1971.In 1972. he published, in the same venue, "Villanelle for the Cat:."

Daisy Steiber Squadra published poetry in Cat Fancy magazine also.

Ulrich Troubetzkoy had verse about felines published in  United Church Herald, (1970.)

Framces Colvin had her cat verses published in  Yankee Magazine in 1965, and Eric Barker similarly in that publication.

Anne Young, similarly, appeared in print in the  Saturday Review (1951)
and Bianca Bradbury likewise, in Yankee Magazine.

Ruth Munch was published in Cat Fancy sometime before 1990.
As was Francis Maguire, George Barr,and Ann Stanford.

Dorothy Harriman, had her poetry about cats published in the Christian Science Monitor in 1952.
Hortense Roberta Roberts was published in Kaleidograph Magazine in 1951.
Pauline M. Leet, recalled her cats in print in Harper's Magazine (1957).

All these people loved cats, and not only wrote about them, but got their poems published. Recalling them, as meager as my details are, is a tribute and has a certain poetry just in the listing.  I owe all these citations to an anthology titled, The Enchanted Cat (1990.) The editor John Richard Stephens has accidentally put together an anthology with many poems not available elsewhere. Notice the pub date: 1990. Soon people will have totally forgotten how to do basic research and writing, for they will have never torn out a page, turned down a corner, penciled in the margin, or kept cards with notes on them. Mr. Stephens did though, and compiled it in a glossy volume, before the age of internet search. His sources indicate that if we can work faster nowadays, the available pool is still different than it would be if everything was online.

Betty Lowry was published in Yankee Magazine and I pulled at random some lines she wrote, to end our post:

Connecticut cats have seen springs come
And go. Window seats endure.