NEDERLAND -- Burt Rashbaum has been writing since he was around 10 years old, first writing short stories in fourth grade. He cites his middle school English teacher, who exposed him to E.E. Cummings, as the person who first sparked his interest in poetry.

He moved to Boulder in 1976, subscribing to a writer’s magazine to learn tips and publishing his first poem in the yearly catalog from the Free School. He feels he’s gotten better at the game of submissions over the last few years, and since 2020, he’s published dozens of poems online and in print.

He has always appreciated that poetry doesn’t necessarily need a narrative arc, and that the freedom of the art form allows the writer to express emotions and experiences that are hard to express in any other medium, including prose.

He has found inspiration from Alan Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, Gary Snyder, Robert Hass, and Robert Creeley in his use of rhythm and emotionality. He’s also found inspiration in songwriters like Bob Dylan, who write songs where music and lyrics intertwine and the structure is not necessarily set in stone.

He feels that the emotionality of poetry has allowed him to communicate feelings that he usually would not share with others, even his closest friends and family. His poetry primarily comes from letting his emotions and words flow on the page instead of setting a particular topic and structure beforehand.

He’s written many poems inspired by his settling in Nederland, focusing on the nature he observes on his walks. Working as an operator at the Carousel of Happiness, he also found inspiration from the carousel’s creator, Scott Harrison, and his book Haiku Poetry, focusing on the animals he carved for the carousel.

Rashbaum decided to write his own long-form poem about his experience at the carousel. After working on verses for months, he shared them with local poets at Blue Owl Book and received no response. For him, that confirmed the long-form poem wouldn’t work.

However, the host of the reading, Aspen Everett, encouraged Rashbaum that he had something, and he later realized that the ten verses he had been working on could be their own poems. From these verses, his book Of the Carousel was born.

He has always written poetry as a way to let his emotions and experiences out on paper and share them. While he hopes that readers can resonate with his poetic expressions, for him, that feedback is the result of his writing. The reason he keeps writing is because, as he puts it, poetry serves as his source of survival.

You can purchase Burt Rashbaum’s Of the Carousel (as well as Scott Harrison’s Haiku Poetry) online at carouselofhappiness.org.