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Buttonhook Press
2022 Pamphlet Series: Writer’s Portfolio
Poetry: All forms & styles
Kirby Olson
Poems for Families
Click on the title to explore or download the PDF version.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation registered in California.
OJAL Art Incorporated is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Copyright © 2022 by OAI/O:JA&L/BUTTONHOOK PRESS
All rights reserved on behalf of OJAL Art Incorporated, O:JA&L/BHP and Kirby Olson.
Set in Garamond and formatted in Create Space.
Made available online and/or printed in the USA as a novelty and commemorative document
celebrating the publication of Kirby Olson’s pamphlet Poems for Families.
About the writer:
When Kirby Olson studied with Allen Ginsberg in the 70s, he gave him this poem, as it was the only poem he’d written up to that point.
I have often met the beauty of the living
It was in the magenta sunset.
It was in the hummingbird.
It was a child reaching up to kiss his mother goodnight.
Ginsberg told him to write a big, dirty, sex poem instead. Olson thought Ginsberg was crazy, but it was funny. All of Olson’s poems in some ways are about family, but now are more about his own children rather than his parents. He still thinks that true beauty can only happen inside of families. Olson’s poems have been in Poetry East, Partisan Review, and a hundred others.
Image: A Farmer’s Kitchen by Ivan le Lorraine Albright (1897 – 1983). Oil on canvas. No size specified. 1934.Public domain via U.S. Department of Labor.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporationsupporting writers and artists worldwide.
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