Author Description

A representative 54 poems by people of various backgrounds; most are slice-of-life vignettes, a comment on relationships, contemplations, or about some vexing social issue. With poems by Vince Fitzgerald, Lynn Thomas, Barry Green, Ann Holznagel, Claire Carder, Stephen Collopy, Barbara Steffek-Schram, Ruth Ann Homan, Anna Kaiser, and Ava Collopy. THE BACK STORY: Unity is Now was a fun project to work on in many ways. I got my poetry group from church interested in having our own collection together and got a copy of it in our church's library and the Multnomah County Library System (in Portland, Oregon.) The participants were very excited. One of the poets, Vince Fitzgerald had Parkinson's Disease but still wrote poetry and shared his interesting experiences and opinions until his death. I was attending the group at the First Unitarian Church of Portland for over two years before I convinced my dad to come along (since I was concerned that most of his family and friends had died over the years and he wasn't getting out enough). He was very reluctant but later became possibly everyone's favorite group member. He was thrilled to have some of his work included in the book. (I included a few of mine which I later put in my poetry collection Disarm). He was also thrilled when I told him he no longer had to, as a man, wear a shirt and tie to look "dressy". Times had changed since the 1970's and now he could wear a V-neck sweater over a T-shirt and some nice slacks with matching leather shoes and belt. That was fine. He really hated wearing ties and used to have to for his old job. I particularly liked convincing one poet, Barbara Steffeck-Shram to let me publish her excellent poem "Rape Undressed", which women generally love and men generally don't get. She was very reluctant but I kept insisting that it was a really good poem and should be shared with the world. Claire Carder had an interesting experience where her car stopped working for a while so she had to start takin