"Drug smugglers often use juveniles to carry their shipments into the U.S. because they know the juveniles will not be prosecuted if caught." -- Timothy Murphy
Timothy Murphy (born 1951, Hibbing, Minnesota) is an American poet, farmer, and businessman. He has published two collections of poetry that have been widely reviewed. His work has been compared to that of Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and Richard Wilbur, and Wilbur himself has described Murphy as "a mature and greatly accomplished poet." Writing of Murphy's second collection, Very Far North, critic Stephen Burt notes, "When Murphy sounds bad, he sounds obviously bad, like bad late Frost...but his good poems are poems Frost, or Jonson, might have admired."
Murphy studied at Yale University under Robert Penn Warren, graduating (B.A.) as Scholar of the House in Poetry in 1972. However, Warren advised Murphy against an academic career, urging him instead to return to the "rich soil" of his rural roots. Murphy returned to Minnesota, and subsequently became involved in several farming and manufacturing enterprises in North Dakota, experiences which are reflected in his later writing.
Murphy published his first collection of poetry, The Deed Of Gift, in 1998; the collection represents all of Murphy's work as a poet through about 1996. In a contemporary review of the volume, Gerry Cambridge summarized Murphy's accomplishment: "There are outstanding poems here, including ‘Harvest of Sorrows’, ‘Sunset at the Getty’, and ‘The Quarrel’, as well as a great number of very likeable, individual, and tautly-made pieces. It would be hard to confuse Murphy with any other contemporary poet. No one else writing poetry in English sounds quite like him." As poet Dick Davis has noted, this distinctive style owes much to Murphy's use of traditional meter and rhyme, unusual among poets today: "His poems are wholly his own, and yet the voice in them lives in and through his mastery of traditional metre, which is so thorough as to seem indivisible from the poems’ sensibility and meaning." This focus on rhyme and meter is exemplified in the following excerpt from "Harvest of Sorrows":
When swift brown swallows
return to their burrows
and diamond willows
leaf in the hollows,
when barrows wallow
and brood sows farrow,
we sow the black furrows
behind our green harrows.
—excerpt from "Harvest of Sorrows"
Murphy's second collection, Very Far North, was published in 2002. Murphy has also published Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir (2000), and a translation of Beowulf (2004) with his partner Alan Sullivan.
"A system of cameras and censors are used along the border and interior to help detect the movement of illegal immigrants crossing through the dense brush.""Amnesty is not the answer as it will only encourage more illegal immigrants to enter.""As a person who has spent my career as a child psychologist and have dealt with many children who have struggled with many problems in families, I have seen families ripped apart by so many things that sometimes law has tried to deal with.""Each State has its own health insurance mandates, and some of them are good, but there are about 1,800 of them all across the Nation, including provisions for acupuncturists, massage therapists, and hair replacements.""Healthcare providers will compete to offer the best record of patient safety at the lowest prices. Hospitals and patients will benefit from having accurate information about areas of excellence and areas that must be improved.""I am pleased that the President has signed an Executive Order this week requiring federal agencies to disclose information about prices and quality of healthcare services.""If one of us, any of us, any American is traveling in a town somewhere in America and a medical crisis hits them, for someone who is diabetic or perhaps has heart disease or some other problems, where do we get the records to determine what to do?""Illegal immigration is crisis for our country. It is an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to enter our country. It is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems.""Instead, I think over the years we have cut the strength of marriage and relationships by the law and weakened the institution. We have tried to deal with relationships with no-fault divorce, with child custody, with so many other avenues; and it has not helped.""Our border patrol does a great job under these very dangerous conditions. They use very sophisticated equipment, including gamma rays, to detect drugs and illegal immigrants as they enter the U.S.""Our enemy is motivated by hatred and will not stop planning more plots against until they are ultimately defeated. Today was an important and necessary victory in the war, but there is a long road ahead. We must remain committed if we are to succeed and protect our liberty.""Providing patients and consumers with solid information on the cost and quality of their healthcare options can literally make the difference between life or death; and play a decisive role in whether a family or employer can afford healthcare.""Rather than improving the wealth of their own nation, the Mexican government encourages its poor to come to the U.S. and send money home.""Since September 11, the U.S. has significantly improved its security to prevent another attack.""The best doctors and the best hospitals in America, if they cannot get the patient information they need when they need it, it can lead to morbid consequences: Higher mortality.""The current medical records system is this: Room after room after room in a hospital filled with paper files.""The technology used to detect if vehicles are carrying radioactive material is so sensitive it can tell if a person recently received radiation as part of a medical procedure.""There needs to be more pressure on the Mexican government to stop the drugs and illegal immigrants on their side of the border instead of exporting them to the U.S.""We must continue to ensure law enforcement has the necessary tools to combat terrorism here at home. We must also work with our allies and provide our military with the weapons and protective gear they need to defeat terrorism abroad.""We must safely secure our border by investing in more law enforcement and technology, and receiving cooperation from the Mexican government.""What I do say is, yes, children may be resilient and they have been able to deal with all sorts of difficulties they have faced, but the bottom line is this: I believe very strongly children need a mother and a father in the home.""While the recent addition of the National Guard providing a support role manning computers and cameras has allowed more Border Patrol agents to work the field, more agents are still needed."