Why Poetry?

By Judy Bentley (Photo by UR One Card office)

In the early 70s while teaching poetry to gifted high school students, I began to write poetry myself. I felt a great sense of freedom in expressing thoughts and feelings through poems when I could not seem to express them in any other way.

It was during those years that I met a professor who encouraged me to apply as a contributor in poetry to the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded by Robert Frost, that Conference was considered the premier writer’s conference in the United States though I did not know it at that time. It was the poet Robert Frost who wrote, “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?” I submitted a poem and, to my amazement, I was accepted. The Conference was a life changing experience. For the first time in my life, I was identified as a budding poet with some ability.

The next year after I had graduated from Georgia State University with a Master’s Degree in English and Speech, my father pulled from his filing cabinet a worn piece of paper yellowed with age. On it were these words: “Dear Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be like you and be a great writer.” At the bottom of the page written in cursive was the signature: “Judy Bentley, Age 6.” I had no memory whatsoever of writing that letter so long ago, but there it was. I filed it away as my father had before me.

For the next 10 years, I continued teaching English in public schools in Georgia and Virginia, and for one year I taught as an adjunct English instructor at a local community college in Richmond. By 1989, I had left the teaching profession for a career in law. During the following 21 years, I worked in various capacities in the legal field. I volunteered at the Bon Air Learning Center for incarcerated youth, served as a lay leader in my church, and was editor of the newsletter for the Richmond Chapter of the Learning Disabilities Association of Virginia.

At age 67, I am in transition from the world of work to retirement. As part of that transition, this past summer I joined Osher through the University of Richmond’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies and have already enjoyed some of its programs. I have time now to look back on my life’s experiences with a detachment hardly possible in my youth and adult years of work. I hope to return to writing poetry, and I look forward to making new friends and continuing to learn through the Osher program. I am thinking I might even teach a poetry class for Osher in the near future. I think that would be fun!

The Room

© 2012 Judith J. Bentley

For my sister Kate

What holds us upright
After we have swept the ashes
From last night’s fire
And faced immeasurable darkness?

We take our time to rise again
And shed our past like the snake its skin
And leave behind the dance
And dreams that are no more

Our feet move softly now
In the sunlight of new mornings
And in the night, it is enough
To be here with the fireflies in the moonlight