Parent/Child, Teacher/Student, Doctor/Patient: New and Selected Poems

By Robert H. Deluty

I will miss his teachers’ disciplinary notes,
So artfully phrased and painstakingly inoffensive

Robert H. Deluty again masterfully weaves together the inside and outside of family matters and other relationships essential to our lives and upbringing – in this case, personal and public aspects of being a parent, teacher, doctor or a child, student, patient. Senryus separate and link Deluty’s meditations on how and to what extent educating can be healing for the individual soul and for generations to come.

"Michael Dylan Welch once quipped that, 'if haiku is a finger pointing at the moon, senryu is a finger poking you—or someone else—in the ribs.' In his wonderful new collection of senryu and longer poems, Robert Deluty manages to capture both the humor and pathos of these always fraught relationships—parent/child, teacher/student, doctor/patient—as in this senryu: Rose Cohen asking/ her forty-year-old gay son/ if it's a phase. In each of his poems, Deluty delivers what R. H. Blyth called, 'moments of vision into, not the nature of things, but the nature of man...as in a flash of lightning.'"

—Ronald W. Pies, M.D., author of The Unmoved Mover and The Levtov Trilogy.

"Robert Deluty's poetry shows why parents, teachers, and doctors need to be careful, observant, and vigilant about how they process the world. For they give and receive in ways that should help children, students, and patients to grow - to make their lives better for themselves and for us all. With poignancy, humor, and wisdom, Deluty draws out our innermost feelings and thoughts so that we may become truer to ourselves and others."

—Joseph L. DeVitis, Ph.D., editor of The Future of American Higher Education: How Today's Public Intellectuals Frame the Debate

"Robert Deluty's new book serves up in abundance the keenly observant humor we have come to expect, springing from the inherent comedy of the human condition and viewed invariably through the lens of his tender compassion. Likewise, he empathizes with the vulnerability and grief we encounter in others and ourselves. We are fully human, after all, only in our mixed-up connections with each other. Like the six-year-old in one of Deluty's senryu, who fills in the boxes of a crossword puzzle with tiny hearts, this book inserts love at every opportunity."

—George H. Northrup, Ph.D., author of Wave into Wave, Light into Light: Poems and Places

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Yehuda Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781963475128

Book preview

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Parent/Child, Teacher/Student, Doctor/Patient

New and Selected Poems

Robert H. Deluty

BenYehuda Press

Teaneck, New Jersey

To

David,

Laura and Justin,

Ava, Claire, and Diana

Contents

Euphemisms

Live (Long) and Learn

Alone

Senryu

Saturdays

Senryu

Better than Prozac

Special Delivery from Korea

In the Community of Scholars

Survivor

Encores

With her Therapist

Senryu

Alternate Conclusions

Birth Father, Birth Mother

Laura, at 6

At the Market

Age/Gender/Temperament

Best Defense

Halloween at Children’s Hospital

Jobs

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

One Morning in Academia

Senryu

Senryu

Post-Colloquium

Phallic Stage Follies

Senryu

Retro

Senryu

Music/Geometry Class

Senryu

A Minor Shift

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

The Good Fortune of Others

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

Three-Year-Old

Freshman

The New Member

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

Senryu

First Halloween

Senryu

For the Record

Rest Stop

Ivy League

Lionhearted

Senryu

Senryu

Thinking Ahead

Senryu

Any Given Day

Senryu

Senryu

Family Update

Breaking the News

Brothers

About the author

copyright information

1Euphemisms

More than the late morning school bus send-offs,

And the parent-friendly homework assignments,

And even the wonderfully awful band recitals,

I