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Alvin M. Laster - Poetry

WNPR Radio Where We Live, episode on poetry.

Audio interview broadcast on WNPR radio's Where We Live January 17, 2008.

Alvin M. Laster is a freelance writer and a published and anthologized poet. His poems have appeared in many literary journals. He has been honored for his poetry by Mattatuck College and received the Board of Trustees Merit Award from Naugatuck Valley Community-Technical College. He has lectured and given readings to literary groups in Connecticut, New York, and California. He is past-president of the Southbury Poetry Society and a member of the Academy of American Poets.

He is a recipient of the Joseph Brodine Memorial Award, given by the Connecticut Poetry Society, Award for Best Writing by the Connecticut Authors & Publishers, and the DeLong Quarterly Poetry Award. A collection of his poems, titled "ARABESQUES, TRUMPETS AND GRACE NOTES", was published in 1988 by Northwoods Press.

Contact Al Laster

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Featured Poetry

ACCEPTANCE

My friend, do not expect the world be true,
for Nature celebrates its imperfections...
the faulted leaf, the mottled feather,
some slightly altered symmetry.

See how blue October skies, without
a vagrant wisp or two of cloud, can be
as tedious as over-righteous men;
and how convening blackbirds choose
the crippled sycamore from which
to crow their brash disharmonies.

So I have pruned expectancy, and learned
to take things as they come: the silver
edged with tarnish, the greens a little wilted,
a circle out of true. And I will call you
honest, friend, unless the lies you tell to me
are different from the lies you tell yourself.

©Alvin M. Laster

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