I believe that any successful poem lifts into flight upon wings of music and magic. A poem’s music sings from the poet’s skillful use of craft. A poem’s magic swirls from the poet’s skillful use of imagination.
So much twentieth century poetic experimentation drives Walt Whitman’s elegant beginnings into the dark, blind alleys of private, prosaic expression. Significant exceptions exist: most notably, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, and W. H. Auden, and we must remember that Emily Dickinson was essentially “discovered” during the twentieth century. However, most contemporary poetic attempts reach no general audience and leave the life of poetry hanging by a very thin thread indeed. Anyone who denies the declining number of poetry readers during the late twentieth century lives on some other planet.
Poetry should be shared with your friends and neighbors. Real poetry should at least attempt to communicate with ordinary human beings, those readers and listeners whom you might meet while shopping in your local supermarket, or while having coffee at your local cafe. These poems attempt to do just that: to communicate and to share experiences with people I know, and love, and respect, without condescension or apology.
Writing poetry is hard work, but the feeling of satisfaction following completion of a successful poem can also be a sublime delight. As your writer, I hope you find some of that same delight in my poems. And I hope that you, as my reader, exercise your supreme compliment: that you reread your favorites every now and then, perhaps even sharing them with someone else, and that you find some music and some magic in them.