the poetry of

MBP

The Children's Introductory Comments, by Janet, Don, Linda, and Marte

Don

(Don is an only child except for his three sisters.)

MBP, better known as Marlin Bonito Pike, previously better known as the father of me and my sisters (under the pseudonym "Melvin Rechtman), now better known as the writer of an amazing book of poetry, wrote a lot of, um, well, poems. He did other things too, such as at one time employing more than 600 people in sewing factories he owned and operated, creating from scratch and running a successful health food store into bankruptcy, and being employed by the Environmental Protection Agency for 14 years in a position that required a law degree, yet he had not even graduated high school! (They had to lay him off when he was 90, because they ran out of money for his department.)

He died in 2013 at age 91 from an acute case of job hunting.

The year before, WSB-TV in Atlanta and CNN did feature stories about him. A 1 1/2 minute CNN video portion may be seen here; the WSB-TV web article may be read here.

When he was 89 we had a conversation in which we were discussing his job preferences, and we were able to discover--actually, I discovered and he promptly confirmed it--that his life-long deep passion was to write and direct drama. But when in high school, an alternate reality kicked in and he dropped out to assist his injured father at the family hat and cap factory.

Meanwhile, he studied, read, and read, and read, and gleaned for himself a super-highway of expertise smitten with various-sized potholes of incomplete knowledge or sometimes outright ignorance that he intuitively filled more often than not with astounding accuracy.

And he wrote, and wrote, and wrote. With passions locked up in a cauldron of logic, one sometimes has to read quite deeply into his poetry to discover the passions, but they are there. Even his poem published in the prestigious journal Science is not without its passion. (You can read it here; scroll down and it is on the right side.)

He prehumously collected his lifetime of poetry into a book he titled

It is divided into five subsections with the following titles:

There is also a separate document providing

It is herein published posthumously.

You may read the book here; it is in PDF format. On the Table of Contents pages, select the poem name or page number to jump to the selected poem.

You may read the Annotations here; it includes dates poems were written and possibly little bits of additional information. (PDF)

Around 2020 Don had written a potential invite to send to publishers to get them interested in publishing Mel's poetry; it was never used, but may provide additional insight into Mel's background; you may read it here. (PDF)

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Last modified: 02/23/22