4—The Diploemat

March 2013

Missouri Poet Roberta Page Dies on New Year’s Day

Poet Roberta A. Page, Past President of the Lebanon Poetry Society, died in her hometown of Lebanon, Mo. on Jan. 1, 2013 at age 89. Although she never won the SPL award, Roberta was a longtime supporter of the Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for American poets age 50 and older. Despite serious health issues she was never without her good-natured poetic sense of humor. We reprint her poem that ran in March 2009 in The Diploemat as testimony that poetry should be fun. Roberta, a cancer survivor, was a longtime columnist for the Lebanon Daily Record.

News & Notes . . .

SHEILA B. ROARK of Euless, Texas won the 2013 Lone Stars Magazine song lyrics contest with her lyric poem “The Weather Doesn’t Matter.” She e-mailed to say: ". . . Now I would love a musician to set it to music. Do you know anyone who would be interested in doing this? If so, let me know?” If you are the person Sheila is seeking, e-mail her c/o us amykitchenerfdn@hotmail.com and we’ll forward it to her. For info about Lone Stars Magazine and its contests, contact MILO ROSEBUD, Editor and Publisher, at lonestarsmagazine@yahoo.com .

JOHN W. CRAWFORD, 2012 National Senior Poet Laureate, is appealing his recent conviction in Arkadelphia, Ark. on four charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors. He thanks those who sent letters of support to the editor of his hometown newspaper, the Siftings Herald, but requests no more be sent at this time. Twenty-nine of the original 33 charges filed against him were dropped in December. Details of this case against the 76-year old former university professor were published as a Special December Edition of The Diploemat at amykitchenerfdn.org/december_spc/dec-spl.htm.

VINCENT J. TOMEO, 2012 New York Senior Poet Laureate, reports progress is slow in his case involving theft of identity from our website and fraudulent postings of raunchy poetry in his name and image, but some success has occurred in removal of the offensive works from numerous websites. The combined cost to Vincent, a retired high school history teacher, and to SPL John W. Crawford, a retired university professor, is rapidly approaching $20,000. It is a high price for two innocent men to pay for poetic justice.

JOE PSARTO, 2012 Ohio Senior Poet Laureate, and member of the 2013 Panel of Judges, responded to the December edition of The Diploemat with these comments about universal meaning of a poem:

“The biggest problem that every poet faces is that of universality. He writes his poetry in the particular, and it could not be done otherwise, but a good poem must somehow, even magically, also be universal.