An Introduction to the Poems Appearing in this Collection...

You’ll need to read the introduction to the poem "To Red, Night Butterfly" to find out the story behind the publication of Look! This is a compilation of some of the poems and songs I have written over the past thirty years. The section Songs includes words I have put to music and can sing aloud, while the section Psalms includes various little poems that are not written to specific people. The poems in the section Others were all written to specific people.

The compositional history for many of these poems and songs is similar. I get an urge or a burden to write something about a person or idea. There seems no good time to do it. So I just decide to stop what I am doing, the things I think I have to do, and start writing. It never seems an easy thing to do. My mind tells me I can’t afford the time. There is a motoring voice telling me that I should stop and get back to duty. I have to fight hard to convince myself that this poem is my duty. And so I begin the creative process of crafting the poem.

I always tell my students that writing is hard work. Just as a brick wall goes up one brick at a time, eventually producing a strong wall where before there was nothing, so a poem comes together one word, one rhyme, one line at a time. Masonry and poetry writing, while they are indeed hard work, have the benefit of producing something tangible.

When I stop to write a poem I always hope for a five-minute miracle, a poem that just flows, a poem that writes itself. But once started the challenge of truly finishing the poem often takes hours or even days.

I am not sure what it is but there is something in me that is always requiring rhyme. Free verse just seems too easy, too unstructured. It doesn’t seem right or fair. It doesn’t work for me. Only a few of the poems here are not bound to a structure of rhyme or other ordering device. It’s like, I guess, I am sort of saying, “If you are not bound by an iam or a rhyme, or a scheme, a pentameter, a haiku, a couplet, then…what are you bound by?”

This limitation I labor under, it seems to me, is akin to my belief that this world is governed by a higher power. It has become obvious to me that there is a God, and a very good God at that. My slavery to meter and rhyme thus reflects my sense that my life and talents are gifts for which there is some accountability. Thus my difficulty in attempting free verse. I somehow instinctively recoil at the idea that someone could write with no governing structure, rhyme or pattern. I want to make clear that I do not think this restriction I work under is prescriptive, that everyone must labor under its burden. While for me it seems like a “requirement”, assigned to me from above, I will allow that it is self-imposed. Feel free to follow your own creative sense!

I apologize ahead of time to those for whom my moral metaphysics may be an offense, and simply ask that you at least read the introduction to the first poem before you dismiss this little work. In the last paragraph I encouraged in you the freedom to be yourself, so I hope you will grant the same to me.

So, please, have a look at Look! Since the circulation of these poems will certainly be limited, it could likely be that one of these poems was written for you! If not, feel free to feedback to me about anything here and perhaps we can begin a conversation. We text, we talk, we react, we share and the resulting script is the real poetry of life. Larry