March 31, 2018: Looking to the Poetic

     One of the things I wanted to do when I started writing seriously was republish a small book of poetry that I assembled when I still lived in Houston. I had been writing poetry for the pleasure of my friends and family since the early seventies, and back in the late nineties, I put them together and printed them at the print shop I managed. The cover had been simple, and the book was not very large, but it felt good back then to have them all assembled into one book that I could offer my friends. I only printed about thirty copies, and they went pretty fast, so there was a second printing of another twenty.

     Since I had published three short stories when I retired, and I had garnered a small following, I decided to do a reprint with a new cover, and a new poem to go with it. This would be my first attempt at a paperback, and I hoped that it would do well. It did not. Most of the people who followed my poetry years earlier weren't interested in buying the new version and those who did not know me showed no interest at all. It's still out there, for anyone looking for my earlier work, but so far there have been few takers.

     It is a compilation of my best poetry written between 1970 and 1997 with one new piece that I wrote about my mother, who passed away when I was 25. I originally planned to publish three poetry books, and this was the first one. I selected my most encouraging poems for this volume, but the idea of the other two volumes was eventually dropped for other projects.

     The cover shown above was the mock-up for the new printing.