Steve Berman Poetry

In the 1960s I was fortunate to study Chinese language and poetry at Harvard and UC Berkeley. During a tumultuous year in Kyoto (1969) I realized that the academic life was not my calling, and changed course for a career in music. Over the years I’ve played and taught classical guitar, performed renaissance and baroque music on lute and gamba, and sung folksongs from South America and Eastern Europe. With the Covid outbreak in 2020 I turned to poetry as a creative outlet. My poems include a number of translations from Chinese, but are otherwise reflections of my daily life here in Oregon. They are inspired by my love of the natural world, my involvement with family and friends , my admiration of other poets, and by the simple wonder of being alive. If any of these poems bring a smile to a reader’s lips, they will have fulfilled their purpose. – Steve Berman