LifeWords Recitation Showcase: Shirley Lipa Presents Cherished Book of Poems

Posted onAuthormail@owntheboards.org

Students of LifeWords Readings Circles recently took part in this semester’s Recitation Showcase, where they shared pieces of literature that are meaningful to them or that have impacted them somehow. LifeWords staff was on hand to record these performances, making them available for family and friends and saving them for posterity . Indeed, we think of these performances as a literary legacy, as memorializing a part of ourselves we don’t often share.

Congrats to this semester’s participants. We are so proud of all you’ve accomplished this semester!

Sherrill Hills resident Shirley Lipa  shared  Just Day By Day: Poems (1936), a book of poems written by C. H. Blanchard.

C.H. Blanchard's book of poems Just Day By Day (1936)

C.H. Blanchard’s book of poems Just Day By Day (1936)

As Shirley explains, Blanchard was her late husband’s guidance counsellor and role model.  A 1936 article in the Detroit Free Press has this to say about Blanchard and his work:

JUST DAY BY DAY, a book of inspirational verses by C.H. Blanchard, a boys’ study hall counselor at Cooley High School, will be published in May. Blanchard is a former all-around athlete, a composer, sportsman and a Sunday school teacher and preacher. The poems included in the book are the best that he has written over a period of 20 years.¹

Shirley specifically shared the poem “Thanksgiving” from this collection and allowed Dr. Laura Keigan – LifeWords Program Director and Instructor – to read it for her.

Watch the performance here:

¹ Link to newspaper article: http://freep.newspapers.com/newspage/97530787/

See other performances:

Jan Smalley Connects the Syrian Refugee Crisis With Markham’s “The Man With the Hoe” 

Ruby Liles Explores “the Importance of Being Ugly” With Hearst’s “The Blobfish: A Short Poem”