Stephen Saul

Stephen Saul Poems

Stephen Saul Biography

The year after the fall of Saigon saw me enlisted in the United States Army. For three years I served with the field artillery in West Germany. Later, after too many years in a college classroom, I took work as a newspaper reporter and editor. Some articles from that period found homes on the AP and UPI wire services. While at the University of Kansas, I earned a BA in political science and minored in English and journalism. I had the pleasure, and good fortune, to study creative writing under the noted novelist, Carol Hebald. 'You do write well, ' she said. Those words continue to provide a wellspring of encouragement that has kept me writing poetry, short stories and now novels. Serious creative writing began, under a hissing steam pipe, in a basement apartment in Brooklyn, New York. While penning verse longhand, I studied poetry under the renowned poet, Hugh Seidman, at the New School University in Greenwich Village. Three volumes of poetry have been published under my name, and a volume of short stories. I am currently at work on the second novel in The Lou Palmer Crime Series, which is based in Washington, D.C. The stories feature a retired New York mobster, who owns the hottest nightclub in the District, and his gambler sidekick. I have playfully nicknamed the series: Casablanca with firepower. I promise outrageous conspiracies for the duo to unravel, fused with action, sex and intrigue. Since leaving New York City in the mid-90s, I've enjoyed living in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Virginia.)

The Best Poem Of Stephen Saul

Poet Of Working Women

i stood alone
at her grave
a simple flat marker
on a mound of earth
the few
who still
remembered her
slowly trickled away
she had lived to ninety
and nursed the wounded
of france
in two world wars
til she lost
her marbles
at bastogne
she told me once
that she had found
a few of them
but the rest
were better left missing
overlooking the
staten island ferry
she'd written
some six hundred poems
but only a dozen
had survived
mostly on the lips
of the seamstresses
and cleaning ladies
of the burroughs
she was always
proud of that
i recited one
while the shadow
of evening
moved slowly
across the simple
flat marker
that only bore
her name
i left
POET OF WORKING WOMEN
scribbled
in the soft
mound of earth

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