HARDWICK − A new set of poems is posted along the Green Trail including those of Victor Densmore of Hardwick. He has written two of them and wrote the first poem about the Trails for their dedication 22 years ago.
Densmore is a lifelong Vermonter, coming to a small Hardwick farm with his family at age 6. He is still here in his ninth decade. A child-writer of nature stories, “How the Skunk Got Its Stripes,” for one, he did not get interested in poetry until his wife, Cheryl, was writing haiku in a college class. And he has not stopped since.
Densmore said, “Prose writers are more concerned with being clear, informing, somewhat factual. Poets want the reader to see something familiar but think about it differently.” Finding “a novel way to describe a thing by comparing it to something not totally related” is a challenge he enjoys. He characterizes his work as having “shadows or echoes” of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. “I’m not a ‘beat’ poet,” he says.
Densmore has published two collections of poetry, “Dust of the Road” and “Out of the Hermit’s Meadow and Wood,” and has a third in progress to be titled “East of Sundown.” His books are available locally at the Galaxy Bookshop.
In addition to Densmore’s poems, the Hardwick Trails features poetry from Hazen Union students and other published and unpublished area poets. A poetry map is available at the Hardwick Trails kiosk behind the Hazen Union parking lot.
Norma Wiesen
Norma Wiesen is a Hardwick Trails Committee member.
