Meet Archie J. Hoagland aka Sartor A Virtual Meetup At Spalshhall Poetry Forums

Greetings, to all who read these lines. Where to begin? I was born in 1932, in the second story of a rooming house in Nebraska City, Nebraska, because that is where the mid-wife lived. The great depression was in full swing with soup lines, bank closures and a time when young men would soon be carted off to the CCC camps across America. Both my parents were simple, uneducated farm people. We moved from farm to farm, sharecropping our way from Nebraska to Oklahoma to Colorado, to Utah and ended up in Oregon. Never having attended any school more then one year at a time, sometimes two in a year (and they were mostly one room country schools) I was always the new kid with holes in both shoes and patches on my clothes, so I never made any lasting friendships and also did not receive a decent education. I hated school and ended up in High School in Hillsboro, Oregon where I dropped out as soon as I was old enough to join the U.S. Navy.

OK…the foregoing was just to let you know where I came from. Self educated for the most part, I have been writing poetry for about as long as I can remember. It was surely an escape mechanism into a land of Faeries and knights and princes and kings. For many years I would write poems and then throw them away, because in my circles it was not a manly thing to do. Not until sometime in the 90s did I began to save some of them. I always write in rhyme. I love the lilting lines that are welded together with words that rhyme within the rhythm and the “song” of the poem. I like to write in the strict confines of the chosen number of feet per line. I do so enjoy reading Kipling, Bronte, Byron and Rossetti, which are a few of my favorites. I now boast a fairly large library of poetry, many volumes of which I have picked up in used book stores as well as new editions.

I find that being involved in SplashHall Poetry Forums keeps me somewhat in touch with the world of poets and I can enjoy all the wonderful poetry that is written here. This site is such a blessing to would-be poets such as I. Something I do when reading,, and I do quite a bit of reading, much of it is historical in nature, as I come across a certain line that has an emotional impact on me, I will jot it down and later enter it into a folder named ‘IDEA LINES’. It is just a place that I can look at for a touch of inspiration and sort of prod my Muses a bit. My favorite pastimes are poetry, reading, sculpting, dancing and pro-football.

Come meet Sartor at the Spalshhall Poetry Forums and say hi. You can also his recent realsed book "Poetry Of Sartor", written on hard book cover in primarily Victorian verse by contacting Sartor by email Hoagland13@cox.net