This reporter knows the poet. In our younger days we kept up with each other's writing practices along with our egotistical ponderings over the great art of writing. Robert Stewart, whom I still call Bob while everyone since me calls him Rob, which is another writer's topic altogether, would tell me in those younger days how he disciplined himself for writing by jogging a few miles each day. I didn't quite buy his theory of how that discipline would strengthen his writing discipline, but now that I'm quite overwieght and he's still trim and wakes five thirty each morning to write for thirty minutes, maybe there's something to it afterall...

A quick bio of Stewart would talk about his competitive athletic years. He could have been a contenda'...he left the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system at age nineteen to chase verse and his future wife. After graduating from the University of Vermont he moved west and knocked about as a carpenter; his valiant try to avoid the corporate life of mainstream America. But he buckled, became "respectable" in the eyes of "respectable" people, and dived into a nine to five job being an "estimator" for a building contractor. He is a senior manager in that field today for a leading firm in San Francisco, CA. He's been married to his wife, Laura, since college, and they have a son coming into his teen years, Jaeger.

Stewart's poetic style is unassuming and sheds the man's personality. His focal points are simple images of immediate surroundings. To the impatient reader his train of thought may often seem to be focused on a casual subject, and any sense of build-up often leads to an ending of a light touch. But you'll have the mysterious sensation that inspired the writing, and you'll go back over the words.

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I am surrounded by
women I love
sitting on rocks
in the water,
children I love
at play upstream
in a river I don't know.
I am watching,
just watching,
downstream,
light on the rapids, the river
flowing away.
The trees shade each other,
lean out over trout shallows
as the sun melts
fresh water on
the hairs of my arm.
They say junkies
who use too long can never
find the sunset in the middle,
when they come down.
They slide past and never
see beauty ever again.
I don't recognize the feel
of my own skin.
I've never been under this sky.
Why has this scene
chosen me? Leave me alone.
I have absolutely nothing
now but what I cannot say.

Poet: Robert Blazer Stewart

First Minister Rhodri Morgan tied into Wales's most famous poet. Dylan Thomas, during a tour of New York.
The first minister flew to the US from Wales on Friday for a three-day visit to promote Welsh tourism and business.

Mr Morgan recited some of Thomas's best-known works, assisted by a cast of Welsh performers led by soprano Shan Cothi.

Usually I cringe when I hear a politician quoting verse. When it happens, you have to wonder if that huckster has the sensibilities to appreciate the poem he's quoting from. In most cases of course, he doesn't, but the speechwriter has done a good job and quenched a little bit of his or her own poetic thirsts. Morgan aside, the more poetic a politician gets the more suspicious I get. Afterall, our greatest advertising copywriters are frustrated poets. And no politician can rise to the heights of superlativity like a poet can. I am duped more effectively when a politician quotes the common man using simple terms with folksy read-between- the-lines undercurrents I am comfortable to provide as the listener. So I guess I trust the common man more than I do the poet or politician.

Does any poet question the trickiness of the poetic process? Are we not all Nixons steeped into the act of sincerity? Does it take sincerity to stumble upon truth?

For the current U.S. president, the use of poetry doesn't have to be as good as finding the right quote for the right rhetorical text. "Let's Roll" is more like a poem's title. The listener must supply the verse and the meaning. Based on the context of the usual Bush speech, the meaning is meant to be as deep as a rock song.

Poet:
Robert Blazer Stewart