Howie Good: Introduction

I collect quotations. They’re useful in my line of work, which is college teaching. What lecture or classroom discussion couldn’t be improved by quoting Socrates’ advice to his own students (“The unexamined life is not worth living.”) or Sheriff John Slaughter to other lawmen (“Shoot first and yell ‘throw up your hands’ after.”)?

But I also collect quotes for more personal reasons. They can be good company on a dark and stormy night of the soul. And it turns out I‘m not peculiar in this regard – however peculiar I might be in others.

The poems that follow were all provoked by or are in some other way related to quotations. They were selected from a great many submissions. As the person who did the selection, I can tell you it was not an easy task. Or, to quote Bob Dylan, “Started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff.”

Howie Good

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