Retired English teacher publishes poetry

By:ERIKA AYN FINCH - For the North County Times | Thursday, August 14, 2003 6:53 AM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- After 23 years of teaching students how to write, Daniel Jupp knows a thing or two about the written word. Yet no one is more surprised than Jupp that, nearly 20 years after retirement, he has become a published poet.

Jupp's collection of poetry, titled "Sequence," was published in July by Trafford Publishing Co. in Canada. Jupp, 81, said he wrote poems all his life, often in between teaching English and journalism at Escondido High School.

He never expected to be published.

"I guess I am a spontaneous poet," said Jupp, an Escondido resident for more than 40 years. "I had no intention of publishing my poems, but now I am working on a second book."

"Sequence" contains 600 poems, each five to seven lines long. Jupp said the book has no theme and even the title does not refer to any particular poem.

"The title really has no meaning," Jupp said. "My wife typed the poems for me and she named them 'sequence one and two' as she saved them."

But Jupp's poems do have one thing in common, they come from his heart and experiences. "I wrote the poems as they came to mind or as they came from my emotions, I guess I should say."

Jupp's wife was not the only family member to lend a hand. Sophie Jupp Cosgrove, Jupp's daughter, designed the cover for "Sequence" and she has already created the cover for his second volume of poetry.

The cobalt blue book cover includes an abstract rendition of a white stream. Cosgrove, who grew up in Escondido and now lives in Oregon, said she paints for fun, incorporating her hobby into her work as an elementary-school teacher.

Cosgrove, one of Jupp's three children, said she didn't know about her father's poetic side until several years ago, when her parents presented Cosgrove and her siblings with comb-bound copies of her father's poems.

"This is really fun for us," Cosgrove said. "He's been doing this all his life and we never knew. I am amazed and his poetry is so wonderful. There is such a wide variety ---- some are serious and deep, while others are fun and rhyme."

Jupp ---- who lists Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare and Robinson Jeffers among his favorite poets ---- said family responsibilities and his career kept him from taking his writing too seriously.

"I never thought of publishing because I am just not geared that way," Jupp said. "I wrote for my own interest plus I was married with three children and that took a lot of energy."

Some of Jupp's students and teaching situations inspired his poems.

"While I was teaching it was very involved and emotional, so sometimes I would turn that into a poem," he said. "I realize that I have always had those kinds of feelings but I didn't know what to do with them. I should have written them all down."

Jupp, who was born in Ocean Beach, taught school in Arizona and South Carolina before returning to Southern California. He attended college at UC Berkeley and the University of North Carolina. Jupp began teaching at Escondido High School in 1962 and retired in 1985.

Jupp's second volume, currently untitled, should be published next year. For now, he plans to put his book on the bookshelf, "right next to Shakespeare."

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