About the Author
Before poetry, Baldwin wrote, among other things, oral histories. It’s important to mention his two most successful efforts were Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden and Heaven Is A Beautiful Place. The heroines, gardener Emily Whaley and storyteller “Sister” Peterkin were just the age he is now. He learned from each. Most of all, he learned life is a struggle, but you leave the world a brighter place than you found it. Here are eighty poems in forty days plus a few more to sweeten the mix. As S.C. Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth wrote long years before: “heartfelt, salt-tinged, rooted in place, and full of the kind of wisdom we expect from a life well-lived. Each poem is a lyrical celebration of the ordinary […] a blessing that reminds us all that we have to be grateful for.” Still true today. Even more so?
