{"id":597,"date":"2019-07-15T19:15:04","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T19:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=597"},"modified":"2019-07-25T16:39:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T16:39:03","slug":"poem-of-the-month-recipe-for-perfect-solitude-by-ron-koertge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=597","title":{"rendered":"Poem of the Month: Recipe for Perfect Solitude by Ron Koertge"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

My parents insisted the barber come to dinner
\n<\/span>because he did not have a family.\u00a0 <\/span>Where I
\n<\/span>grew up, living alone was the worst thing
\n<\/span>in the world besides cancer.\u00a0 <\/span>That someone
\n<\/span>liked it or could be solitary by nature
\n<\/span>was as heretical as the idea that God had big
\n<\/span>feet and took baths.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today I have a pork chop marinating
\n<\/span>and a bottle of good wine.\u00a0 <\/span>I should eat
\n<\/span>on the patio.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s beautiful and so quiet
\n<\/span>it\u2019s almost like the world is waiting for God
\n<\/span>to finish bathing, to put on the secret music,
\n<\/span>and to finally dance with the enormous jury
\n<\/span>of His peers.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ron Koertge lives in South Pasadena, California, where he is the current poet laureate.\u00a0 He taught at the community college in Pasadena for 35 years and now teaches only at Hamline University in their low-residency program.\u00a0 His latest books of poems are\u00a0Yellow Moving Van\u00a0<\/em>(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) and
\nOlympusville\u00a0<\/em>(Red Hen Press, 2018).<\/p>\n

“Recipe for Perfect Solitude” was published as part of Terry
\nWolverton’s What’s Cookin’\u00a0<\/em>postcard project, Los Angeles, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  My parents insisted the barber come to dinner because he did not have a family.\u00a0 Where I grew up, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-noellesickelswp","post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-allposts","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}