From Denville, with heart

Poet finds publisher for works described as

'beautiful, poignant, wistful and often sad'

The Star-Ledger Archive COPYRIGHT © The Star-Ledger 2004 Date: 2004/11/04 Thursday Page: 002 Section: IN THE TOWNS Edition: UNION Size: 685 words

By PATRICIA C. TURNER
STAR-LEDGER STAFF 

Although he grew up in Jersey City and graduated from the Peddie School in Hightstown, George Petty considers Denville his home.

Poems he wrote over a number of years, many describing his relationship with an old friend, Alex Cook, and Cook's home on Bald Hill in the Morris County community, have appeared recently in "Boulder Field," a small paperback book published by Finishing Line Press in Georgetown, Ky.

Petty's words have already made a good impression on readers.

On Amazon.com, one reader described the book as "a collection of beautiful, poignant, wistful and often sad recollections from the path of one life." Another reader said Petty's sensitive poems "allow us to share his perceptions of his parents, friends, children and the natural world in which he revels. This is a book that I will return to often."

Another reader posted this review: "The poetry of George Petty is beautiful. The language sings. The images grip. The juxtaposition of words opens up experiences you know you have had, but have forgotten. And in addition to being beautiful, his work is heartfelt. You come away knowing the characters, like Alex, from the inside out."

Petty describes Finishing Line Press as one of a few dozen small publishing companies that provide an opportunity for unpublished poets to break into print.

"I submitted my manuscript to their annual chapbook competition and was one of four poets selected for publication out of 200 submissions," Petty said. "A chapbook is a small collection, about half the size of a hard- cover book of poems. It's a first step up after publishing in small literary magazines."

Petty has a mixed professional background. After graduating from Princeton University, where he was the Class of 1949 poet, he started as an insurance underwriter in Newark.

Unhappy being cooped up in an office, he learned to be an airline mechanic at Teterboro, worked on airplane engines in Wood-Ridge, became a flight engineer for Pan Am and served as president of the flight engineers union for eight years. In 1963, Petty went back to graduate school and earned a doctorate in medieval English, which he taught at the institution now known as Montclair State University.

Along the way, Petty coached tennis at Montclair State and raced sailboats on Long Island Sound and elsewhere.

During sabbaticals, he worked as a newspaper reporter. He's still a stringer for the Denville weekly.

"This is my home, Denville," he said. "My grandparents had one of the first houses on Rock Ridge Lake in Denville. When I started my own place, I found a place here."

At loose ends in 1988, Petty moved in with Alex Cook, an old friend of his mother. "It was a time when I was reacquainting myself with nature. Alex's was the last house on the road, and I was able to go outside and hike."

Whatever pleasure nature provided, Petty was also aware of Cook's depression and increasing frailty. This produced what the poet called "the juxtaposition, the joy of living there even as death was approaching Alex as it would me."

He handled that tension with the poems collected in "Boulder Field," some about the wonders of nature, some about aging.

Asked what poetry means to him, Petty, who turns 76 this month, said, "It's the only framework I know where you can see both the beauty and the darkness at one time."

Although he is busy as the publications chairman for the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (he's written a book on hiking the Jersey Highlands, edited two other hiking books and maintains two hiking trails), Petty continues to work on his poetry.

"You can't stop writing poetry - at least I can't," he said. "I write all the time. A poem grows, even over a period of three or four years, even longer."

Aging is definitely a theme in Petty's work. "It's hard to get used to. It's not something you can discuss with your neighbors.

"I like to tell stories in my poems," he added. "They're narrative poems."

PHOTO CAPTION: 1. Denville poet George Petty walks a trail that he maintains in Farny State Park in Rockaway Township. The former Montclair State professor, whose poems were recently published in a collection titled "Boulder Field," is also the publications chairman for the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference and has written a book on hiking the Jersey Highlands. CREDIT: 1. JERRY McCREA/THE STAR-LEDGER