We Thought at Least the Roof Would Fall

Editor of the Lyric, the oldest magazine in North America devoted to traditional poetry, Leslie Mellichamp is the author of scores of poems, essays, and short stories that appeared in the 1950s and '60s in such places as Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the Saturday Review, the Ladies' Home Journal, and the Georgia Review. Believing with the gifted contributors who have kept the Lyric alive since 1921 that the roots of a living poetry lie in music and the common life rather than the fragmented bizarre, that rhyme, structure, and lucidity are timeless attributes of enduring poetry, the author offers these lyrics as tributes to life's ancient ironies, the earth's patient resilience, the impudence of lovers, the wondrous eyes of children, and the cunning of that soft-shoed thief, Time.