Ray Greenblatt is an editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal and teaches a “Joy of Poetry” course at Temple University-OLLI. His latest book of poetry is From an Old Hotel on the Irish Coast (Parnilis Media, 2023).
You can read Sunday Snow in the January 2025 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem?
My wife and I were walking for the Sunday newspaper as we usually do in our little town. It had snowed and was one of those gentle snows—almost mystical. Footprints told us a story of where people had been and were going.
Is there a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone for you?
I have always been most affected by Robert Frost’s blank verse poems—Death of the Hired Man, The Witch of Coos, Out Out!—in which he is not restricted by rhyme and seems to speak to us directly in beautiful rhythms.
If you didn’t write poetry…
I began writing stories in prose, all the way back to fourth grade when I won the class’s story-writing contest. After college, I began to take a short story workshop with a well-known author. She would say on the first reading how wonderfully descriptive my story was. On the second reading she suddenly demanded all sorts of technicalities, like how the character got from here to there. I found them irrelevant. I wanted to cut to the chase and lyric poetry allowed me to do that.
What are you working on now?
I’m preparing an MS entitled Time Found in which are included recent poems along with flash fiction that I’ve been newly developing.
How do you make space for poetry in your routine?
Now that I’m retired, it’s much easier to listen to the Muse’s call and respond immediately, instead of having to wait until work is over and often losing the spark. I find that when my wife and I travel, an unusual environment usually churns my poetic juices. I come home with a poem sequence that attempts to depict that foreign place from a traveler’s point of view.
Do you belong to a writers’ group?
I can proudly say that forty years ago this year (it’s hard to believe) three other poets and I began a monthly poetry critique group. Over the years we’ve gained and lost poets from varied backgrounds: Haitian, Russian, Polish, Greek, Persian, etc. We share a meal before we critique. We number around twelve, feel like family, and are still going strong although the joints creak!
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