A B O U T  A B O U T  A B O U T

I first was attracted to Rod McKuen's poetry in the 1970's when I was about 21. Just something about that idea of suffering for love's sake. I wrote a few poems, but as with many things done by young men, I did it to impress the ladies I admired, and didn't worry too much about the day I might wish I could read them to see what I was like back then.

The launch of my current effort at writing poetry was a switched-on event that occurred the evening of February 10th, 2005, when I heard Robert Pinsky give a reading at John Carroll University in Cleveland. As I walked to the car afterward, my brain was already spinning through what became "Evening with Pinsky" just a few days later. I wondered what had possessed me to stop writing those many years before.

Since then, I've had two poems -- Electric Guitar and Food Chain -- published in the 2005 and 2006 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Annuals. The poems Food Chain, Letter to Callaway, and On the Rapid to Cleveland, were selected to be read on Cleveland poet George Bilgere's Word Play radio program, which can be heard in northern Ohio on the John Carroll University station WJCU, FM88.7, Wednesdays at 12:30 PM.

I spend some time most days, walking through the Highland Park Cemetery in Beachwood, Ohio, or around a lake near home, where I can "flat line" a little and see where an empty head leads me. Most of the time, it is in the direction of looking for the simple things that make up the complex.

By the way, cemeteries are very alive places, just quiet.

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