Dr. Jane Beal is a poet and the creator of The Poetry Place. She has created many poetry collections, including Sanctuary (Finishing Line Press, 2008), Rising: Poems for America (Wipf and Stock, 2015), and Song of the Selkie (Aubade Publishing, 2020), as well as three recording projects combining music and poetry: “Songs from the Secret Life,” “Love-Song,” and with her brother, saxophonist and composer Andrew Beal, “The Jazz Bird,” which she co-created as a vocalist, flutist, and percussionist. She is contributing poet and editor of Hail, Radiant Star! Seven Medievalist Poets (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and editor and translator of Pearl: A Middle English Edition and Modern English Translation (Broadview, 2020). She currently teaches at the University of La Verne in southern California. To learn more about Jane, visit her homepage janebeal.wordpress.com or her other blog birdwatchersdiary.wordpress.com.
“I must have poetry in my life!”
~Gwenyth Paltrow playing in “Shakespeare in Love”
This page has the following sub pages.
THE POETRY PLACE 
I love Jane! Hi Jane, I just wanted to let you know that I visited your site and miss you! You are so insprirational! I will comment more later but just wanted to let you know… Miss you much, Vivian
Hello Jane…Your blog pages are so beautiful and full of emotion.
I wanted you to know that you are among the top blogs i read.
You can try reading my selection of poetry too,in :
http://www.panosx.blogspot.com.
Gree-ce-tings…
Like your PAD Caliope. Very much.
Thanks so much, BriarCat! I appreciate that. For readers of thepoetryplace, here it is:
CALLIOPE GETS PISSED
All I want is inspiration!
Orpheus was my son, and Dante was my servant,
but poets just don’t listen to me anymore.
My mother Memory is always chiding me
as if I don’t do my job – as if I should just work harder!
Meanwhile my sisters all sit around on their laurels,
primping and preening like Aphrodite’s peacocks.
If ambrosia, that most holy nectar of the gods, did
not drip from my fingers, where would we all be?
But everyone wants to taste me, everyone wants
Immortality! No one realizes what it costs to live forever.
How many times have I told the story of Tithonus
chirping as Dawn leaves him, shriveled and ancient, alone in her bed?
Or the sufferings of Hercules? Do his twelve mighty labors
really mean nothing in this day and age? He wrestled with death!
Alcestis, Aeneas, even my own dear Orpheus!
I’ve heard a thousand prayers uttered with tears at my altar,
yet how few have been willing to play the harp in Hades.
Come, let us go down, and I will show you the lost souls
sighing on the banks of the Acheron, endlessly waiting.
Behold the black river! Behold the half-light in the dark!
Behold the souls of the dead whose bodies are not properly buried.
You could sing them back to life, you could put flesh on their bones,
if only you would come down and witness them in their misery.
I am not the goddess whose chariot is drawn by wingèd doves!
I am not here to bring stone statues to bed like Galatea!
Your grapes made of wax and your desperation could be
beautiful to me if you would open the ear of your soul to truth.
Do you not hear how I love you? In my hands, I hold your gift,
like the ram of Colchis, golden with promise, shining with hope.
And it is I who have slain the Hydra!
Jane Beal
sanctuarypoet.net
Hi Jane!
I like your poetry very much and your web page looks cool!
Hi, Tel referred me to your blog, and I found it to be very nice. My oldest daughter is eight and she reads young adult fantasy stories. I hope she never loses that aspect of her personality as I find it refreshing.
I’m happy I found your blog. I will add you to my blogroll.
Look forward to reading more!
Hello Jane .
Hi, Eirini! Wishing you joy … 🙂
Jane,
I just opened your Poetry Place website (for the first time in a year) and thought, “How beautiful.”
And, then, I saw your name; and thought “Of course”–how could I forget you created this lovely spot…
…With so many lovely poems.
Thanks.
Linda Roberts-Baca
Thank you, dear Linda! ❤
Hi Jane.
I stumbled on your site after searching for a Frost poem. read your bio and some great poems and will be back. I also am an SSU grad…1976 and sometime poet.
Charles
Good to meet you. I write poetry at mine so feel free to visit. 🙂