Composure in Constraint

About the Book

My poems have helped me see things for years now. Looking back on my poems, written and now collected, I discover I see things anew, not only the remembered incidents (when that happens) but also the vision created in my mind by the poem itself. These poems, collected from parts of my life run past now, are glimpses that offer glimpses of what is seen and what that seeing seems to mean. I find the poems best serve me in becoming the creator of insights and perspective. The poems in this book have been giving that gift for me again.

About the Author

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in the hills of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. During the course of my ministry, noticing that some of my work came with a special sort of cadence, I began writing poetry on purpose; that was in the early 1980s. The process and product of writing poetry has been useful and satisfying to me. In April 2004, I began a few years of fruitful attendance on the online poetry workshop Desert Moon Review. I learned a great deal about poetry in that attendance - its reading as well as the writing. I frequently share poems with the particular "muses" who occasioned the poems; I had a recent comment that the poems so shared, when reread, brought comfort. I now live in retirement with my wife of forty nine years, two dogs and several cats.