From The Sock Drawer: Poems From 1970 And Beyond

This volume offers snapshots of a young man at 21, and of the older, perhaps wiser, man he became. The first contains poems I wrote to help me survive as a very young adult at the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 1971. These verses were written between 1969 and my graduation. The turmoil and anguish surrounding the Viet Nam war was at its zenith. Fancying my self a dark, brooding, revolutionary figure, I was defined by a profound sense of loneliness-a feeling that no matter our best intentions and hardest effort, that we each remained unknown and unknowable by any other person. I put those poems in the bottom of my sock drawer where they remained unread until the year 2000. Tempered by three decades of joy, sorrow, and discovery I was no longer a young man when the Muse returned, and new poems appeared. Life had taught me that what I had seen as loneliness provided fertile soil where the beginnings of wisdom took root. My restlessness turned into quiet satisfaction with having endured and even enjoyed life's journey.