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.
