Poet in our Midst - Tapa blanda

Raymond George Hartmann (aka - 'Ramon the Poet') lived his young life in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. He is the middle son of three boys brought up in a typical Germanic family tradition by his parents George and Esther. Raymond worked at the family grocery as a youth stocking shelves and cleaning. At the age of 12 he entered a national Lipton Soup jingle contest winning a Magic Chef stove. While serving in the military during the Korean War era, he continued to write in a humorous poetic fashion in his letters home. In 1965 he wrote his seminal poem about the infamous Cassius Clay v. Sonny Liston fight in Maine when Clay became the youngest heavyweight champion with the alleged 'Phantom Punch'. He continued in the vein by writing an ode to his former boxing coach, George Glover (trainer of such notables such as Scott LeDoux), upon his mentors' retirement; sadly, both of these are missing. After a lull of four decades, when Raymond sustained a brain injury in an accident in 2003, Raymond's love of rhyme suddenly resurfaced and he began working prolifically on verse. Since then he has become an active Minnesota poet with several awards in regional creative writing contests from the Veterans Administration and, in addition, has a page on the Minnesota Artists website containing several of his works.