Author Description

So, what brings on the Muse and inspires the creation of poetry? The short answer is that I don’t know. A sunset, a walk in the forest, the view from a mountaintop? Something you came across in a book, something you heard someone say, or some spur-of-the-moment thought? Perhaps the sound of rain on the roof, a glass of wine, and time spent with the one you love. All these and a thousand other things that come along when you least expect them; not something that happens on command, but rather when the time is right. The verses in this volume were conjured up and written as a result of these and other such things and cover a range of topics. The first essay discusses my philosophy about poetry, followed by an on-line discussion about one of my poems with another member of a now defunct poetry forum I once belonged to, and the next two are a discussion of the inspiration and evolution of two of my sonnets, one that came from multiple sources, and the other from essentially one source, the Shakespearean sonnets. A few of the other verses included here came either from an essay I wrote on some random subject or from a journal entry I rendered into verse. Converting prose into poetry is an interesting and rewarding exercise, which I much prefer to sweating blood over a blank page, though I have done that as well, accompanied by copious doses of run of the mill thin air. Gazing absentmindedly off into the ozone also occasionally works. The rest of the verses here are those that came about because the time was right, and one can never predict when that might happen. One of my poems was even inspired by watching a spider build a web on my front porch! Each poem is preceded either by a short piece about its origin, by the essay that inspired it, or by an excerpt from the journal entry from which it was taken. Much of the poetry can stand alone, but some of it makes more sense if you read the prose that precedes it, because it sets the stage and background for the