Peter Blewett
CONTACT:
Email: milwblewett@gmail.com
BIO:
A Milwaukee resident since 1981, Peter came to the city to pursue Mary Edge, his partner and spouse until she succumbed to Alzheimer’s Disease in 2017. He is happy that she was able to spend her last years at the home she loved in Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood. Peter received his Master of Arts in English from Marquette University and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, editing The Thracian Wonder under the direction of Robert K. Turner. Peter served on the Milwaukee School Board for twelve years, serving as President for three of those years. He retired from the Board to care for his wife.
Peter founded the writing program at Cardinal Stritch University before returning to UWM, where he taught courses in Shakespeare, Creative Writing, and Multicultural America. His poetry has appeared in the Seattle Review, West Branch, The Literary Review, Cream City Review and North Dakota Quarterly. Peter's poem, "The Butcher," was selected by Richard Jones for inclusion in The Bliss of Reading, an anthology of 99 poems selected from the first forty years of Poetry East.
PUBLICATIONS:
Umbrellas, chapbook (1990)
Eclogue: Poems of Patrick Moran and Peter Blewett, chapbook (1998)
Poetry
If I Time Things Right
I wake up humming a nocturne because
that always gets me going----takes me
through the shave and shower----but if I'm late
I start with the Water Musick which I'd
get to as I dress anyway and which takes me
through breakfast and out into the wind
and down to the corner where I can usually
catch the 22 Center Street. If I miss
the first bus, I'll make it all the way
through before the next bus comes, which I
don't like, because then I go to Bruchner early,
which throws me off all day and makes my students
martyrs. If I time things right, if I make
my points hit the first beat of each measure----
things work. Sometimes, when a car honks, I get
thrown off and can't find where I was. I look
at the tall green spiders and think, those must
be trees; I look at the grey river and say,
that's my street, my wife lives there----until
something, a voice I know, a smell I taste,
brings back the song just where I left it, and
I can go on again, wearing my tie, waiting
for my bus, fitting the pieces I can't see
into one long song, where I can slip through
my days, moving from measure to measure.
Originally published in Folio
Distance
Distance is precisely that which fools
the eye: nothing changes except that everything
becomes less immediate, and for that
we're grateful. Everything is actually
sadder for the distance between. Immediacy
is its own comfort; distance has none. See
how that memorial recites the name
of the boy soldier who died here
until we recall nothing of the farm
he came from, the family he left joyless
behind, to die for the faults of those
he'd never be able to meet except
by the remotest accident; how the family
struggled without him and waited daily
for the post and each returning train;
how the news finally came, and how little
they ever knew of any of the issues
which of course were buried in the distance.
Originally published in Seattle Review