Keith Hale

Keith Hale wrote poetry from the age of fourteen until the age of twenty-four. Many poems were destroyed over the years by fire, typhoon (Paka), tornado, or landfill. The following is a selection of his surviving poems. Most are poems he sent to his brother, Steve, when Keith was twenty and Steve was eighteen and serving in the U. S. Army in Germany. Steve kept his copies; thus, they were spared the destruction visited on the poems Keith possessed himself.
In his only public poetry reading, Keith read "Beth Mahler vs. The God of the Universe" at a club on the Drag in Austin circa 1982, raising his left arm to signify the italicized parts.