When it rains, it pours: Another poet in Utah dies

I just read on Jilly's page where Leslie Norris, 84, has died of a brain hemorrhage. The Salt Lake Trib story is here.

While he had spent the last 23 years at Brigham Young University, he was a world renowned poet. In fact, he was on the short-short list of poets being considered for Poet Laureate of England when Ted Hughes was chosen.

I met Leslie Norris through my friend and mentor, Dave Lee. Leslie was down at Southern Utah University, where he was reading his poetry. He also introduced a new children's story, Albert and the Angels. Everything was amazing. He was such a nice man. We spoke of my Welsh roots, and months later, when I asked for a pre-publication copy of the book so I could read it at a family Christmas party, he went so far as to ask his publisher, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux to send me a copy. They refused because there were problems with the illustrator. That, and they are FSG.

Here is a story which was published last year you might want to read to get a better glimpse into his life.

Dave Lee calls the following poem one of the greatest love poems written in the English language. I am not as well read as he, but I think it's pretty damned powerful. I will let you decide for yourself.


Hudson's Geese

Hudson tells us of them,
the two migrating geese,
she hurt in the wing
indomitably walking
the length of a continent,
and he wheeling above
calling his distress.
They could not have lived.
Already I see her wing
scraped past the bone
as she drags it through rubble.
A fox, maybe, took her
in his snap jaws. And what
would he do, the point
of his circling gone?
The wilderness of his cry
falling through an air
turned instantly to winter
would warn the guns of him.
If a fowler dropped him,
let it have been quick,
pellets hitting brain
and heart so his weight
came down senseless,
and nothing but his body
to enter the dog's mouth.

— Leslie Norris