Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer. He is best known for such works as Treasure Island, A Children’s Garden of Verses, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A main theme running through his writing is the “impossibility of identifying and separating good and evil.” I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows…

Howard Nemerov served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. He also won the National Book Award for Poetry, The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize. Joyce Carol Oates said of him, “Romantic, realist, comedian, satirist, relentless and indefatigable brooder upon the most ancient mysteries—Nemerov is not to be classified.” Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn The language of the trees. That's done indoors, Out of a book, which now you think of it Is one of the transformations of a tree. The words themselves are a delight to…

Roger Mitchell has written eleven books of poetry and won many awards. For a number of years, he was the director of the creative writing program at Indiana University. Mitchell’s poetry is described as written: “in the conversational English of today, quiet poems that create a world on a page and pack a punch in the larger world of our common experience.” Before we can properly excuse ourselves, I am sitting in the shade under the oak tree talking about farming with the old man, and my wife is out among the flowers with his wife. I know nothing about farming, but the words fall effortlessly from my mouth. My…