Bullets for Boomers
Bank of China rated number 1 against 4,000 competitors in the
Writer’s Digest Non-Rhyming Poetry Writing Competition in 2002
Reviewed by Robert Pinsky (U.S. Poet Laureate) as...
…vigorous, vivid and gritty…
Many years ago, poetry was a language of the common man. People prided themselves on their ability to recite poems. Poems told stories that were easily understood and repeated. Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were simple expressions that were easily understood and appreciated by ordinary people.
I have wanted to publish a book like this ever since I won the Writers Digest nationwide Non-Rhyming Poetry writing competition in 2002 but I couldn’t overcome my insecurity that my poems were not esoteric enough… that “those in the know” would laugh at their simplicity... that, somehow, I just didn’t get it and everyone else knew something about poetry that I didn’t.
A word about structure. There are literally hundreds of books on how to structure a poem. The reason ‘free verse’ is more popular than rhyming verse is because the “experts” over time have made the rules for rhyming poetry so difficult that it is much easier to express oneself freely than to struggle with the rules. Indeed, there are times when the required structure dulls the meaning. Where possible, I try to follow the rules for rhyming poems but when the meaning or rhythm of the line or stanza is negatively affected by the rules, I say ‘codswallop’ and do what sounds best. So please, no comments or lectures that line 17 has too many syllables, etc… I know… I get it… I simply choose to ignore it.
Dreams
Sleep, and in the veil of night
Dream of valor in the light.
When comes the awakening dawn
It is your dreams you act upon.
“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular” — Aristotle