“The blues”
Gerard Sarnat
Artist Statement: “Real” life suffuses my work. High-stress medical career, leisure around family in a forest, confronting climate change, humor and poetry interact with each other to keep this mid-septuagenarian feeling energetic, happy and useful. Brave poetry is important to me because such gyrations elevate life, both by reading others' work and creating my own which expresses my voice, makes me happy, perhaps keeps me young(er).
I'm Mr. Blue
When you say you're sorry (oh Mr. Blue)
Then turn around, heading for the lights of town
Hurtin' me through and through
Call me Mr. Blue
--Fleetwoods, 1959
Chemo clouds
aside…
packed & tidied
up sorta
still occasionally
now able
to turn on valve
listening
really listening
deep into
favorite music
--although
he cannot find
that muse
who somehow
offers path
for composing
more poetry
trying to express
considerate
smart or sensitive
regrets.
Gerard Sarnat has been nominated for the pending 2022 Science Fiction Poetry Association Dwarf Star Award, won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in 2022 Awakenings Review, 2022 Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County Celebration, 2022 Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology, Washington Square/NYU Review, The Deronda Review, Jewish Writing Project, Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine and University of Chicago presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King. Gerry is a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters.