Collected Poems and Limericks

Cutting across a great range of subjects, styles, and moods, Collected Poems and Limericks is a window into the mind of a poet whose works range from the philosophical and troubling to the irreverent and hilarious.

Many of Frank Feldman’s poems adhere to standard poetry meters, rhyming schemes, and forms, while others employ a far freer, more delirious, surreal, and extravagant use of language.

The material ranges from melancholy, existential mood pieces to poems that reflect on and respond to writers from Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin to Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, and Bob Dylan. Others take on the deepest issues of existence—life, death, sex, love, loss, rebirth, dreams, and the absurdity of the human condition.

Also included is a large selection of limericks and other, lighthearted poems, full of wry, cheeky, downright silly, and at times risqué humor.

From the enigmatic to the mundane, the sacred to the profane, and the cosmic to the inane, this substantial volume of poetry showcases a sharply intelligent writer with a superb flair for language and imagery, and a gift for engaging the reader with the sheer emotional, expressive power and range of his ideas.

Frank Feldman is a graduate of Brown University and the New England Conservatory of Music.

He has composed hundreds of works in a wide variety of genres, including songs, piano pieces, and works for chamber ensembles. His CD, Recuerdo, which contains his musical settings of poems by Edna Millay, Sara Teasdale, and W.B. Yeats, is available on Time Remembered Records, and his two jazz piano method books from Cherry Lane Music. He lives with his wife and daughter in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where he teaches classical, jazz, and popular piano, theory, composition, and improvisation.

Collected Poems and Limericks is Feldman's first book of poetry. Its tone and content range from the philosophical and unsettling to the irreverent and uproarious. Within its pages, the reader will find profound, cheeky, and often hilarious reflections on life, death, the afterlife, sex, love, loss, dreams, God, nature, music, meaning, absurdity-and dogs.