Two Sheryl Smith Poems

Bix Beiderbecke, one of Smith's great interests

I began to write late in life when I realized suddenly one day that I was leaving nothing at all in the world. All old bachelors come to this feeling sooner or later. Don't let it ever happen to you . . . — Lafferty, letter to Sheryl Smith, October 1, 1971

This will be of interest to about three people.

Sheryl Smith, Lafferty’s first strong critic and his clever correspondent, ran a computer consulting business in the years before her death in 2006. Her website, now long gone, featured “Sheryl’s Writing After Hours,” where she posted her poetry, much of it formal, including one brilliant sestina, as well as essays. In the 1990s she was working on a major Lafferty essay that never appeared. It is impossible to prove, but I suspect the following poem to be about her old friend RAL.

The sestina: