Native Language

Native Language is a book of sonnets. The poems tend to settle into the mind easily, with some grace and usually some mystery. The topics are from life, of course - human life, its issues and puzzles. Most readers will find some or several poems that speak to them; we are so much alike, really. The natural world is the backdrop and always a powerful presence. Still, it is the human world we live in. The author was trained as a philosopher but became a CPA to earn a living and this odd combination perhaps offers a useful way to read the poems.

Michael Beebe earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy and then became a CPA to earn a living. He came to poetry later in life, when sometime in mid-life he found poetry was the only thing he could read, nothing else suitably serious, beautiful and truth-apt all together. Sometime then he began to try to write poetry of his own. He now lives with his wife in retirement in the Portland, Oregon area. He reads philosophy and poetry and works at his writing. This is his eightieth year; he is now reading the poet Stanley Moss to learn how to be very old.