A poem written before its time
Everyone is writing about Hurricane Katrina. What makes poet Muriel Hoff's storm-writing different is that her poem, which seems to be about Katrina, was written in 1972. No natural disaster that year, she says, prompted her. As with many of her poems, something just moved her to start writing.
She says as she watched the news about Katrina, she remembered the poem of more than 30 years ago. She said to herself, "The poem has all the facets that I've been seeing on TV."
She found the poem and put a title on it, "Waiting for Help New Orleans Superdome."
Come let us count
the heavenly bodies.
The forlorn, forsaken,
neglected, detached.
Let us not forsake them.
They are not to be feared,
but rather uplifted,
brought higher. Hope
is for the downtrodden the elixir of life.
Let it not be said
that misery went unheeded.
Pick up the payments,
promulgate the wealth,
favor the fearless and
never forget to be forgiving.
Strive for the simple single endeavor.
Hoff, who lives in the Starmount neighborhood, has had 50 poems published in different literary journals and anthologies, and self-published a book of poems, "Messages Via Muriel."
She belongs to various literary clubs and is a former president of the old Greensboro Writers Club.
Now 82 and a self-educated writer, she says her muse works mysteriously. When she reads back a poem to herself, she finds in it words she has never used before and doesn't know their meaning.
"I have to go to the dictionary to look them up," she says.
When she does, she finds she has used the words correctly.