These I Would Keep

This little volume, collected and edited by beloved author Helen Blackshear, features the work of nine writers who have served as poet laureates of the state, including that of Blackshear herself and of acclaimed writer and present poet laureate Helen Norris. This collection also preserves in one place the poems of the rest of the laureates, some of our state’s finest and dearest poets: Dr. Samuel Minturn Peck, Bert Henderson, Mary B. Ward, Carl P. Morton, Ralph Hammond, Morton D. Prouty Jr., and William Young Elliott. “Poetry speaks in many tongues,” writes Carl Morton in one poem included in this volume. These I Would Keep generously captures them all.