Ray Bradbury Illustrative Man

[Frank E Gibbard]

A sum of his parts and his artistry

Was American writer Ray Bradbury;

Story telling his principal business

The readers lucky that he so chose

Life enhancement his way of living

Giving words, pure poetry in prose.

 

This young man grazing in library

Found Ray's fantasy, food for mind

Of a fantastic phantasmagoric kind

All printed, non-electronic, in books

That you could fondle, (not on kindle)

Bundled folios of paper tightly bound.

 

Bound to be a Bradbury fiction world

Of and off this planet among the stars

In crazy carnival or an imagined Mars.

Amazing short stories, tall and scary

Tales, bizarre and quirky, yet folksy

As Thanksgiving turkey on a US table.

 

Ray's totalitarian fable to understand I

Was once unable, but today I appreciate

The hate of free ideas in such a state.

Thanks to him readers remember how

Books got turned to embers, an awful

Author's nightmare - even worse than

Faded back numbers, or publications

Painfully remaindered; his novel firemen

Dismember literature at that combustive

Crucial temperature of Fahrenheit 451.

What writer will not recoil as Ray's "fireman"

Hoses books with blazing oil? Oh yes I'm one.

 

(the title was inspired by "The Illustrated Man" my favourite of his short story/collection)

[David W. Parsley]

Hi, Frank, I confess an enduring appreciation for the work of Bradbury. Few others approach his gift for a sense of mystery and strangeness, at the same time disturbing and satisfying. Many works take on the quality of parable. I am particularly moved by tales in The Martian Chronicles.

 

- Dave

[tonyv]

A well composed tribute, Frank. It serves as a reminder of how much enjoyment writers have given the world especially before printed, non-electronic books, not kindle.

 

Tony