Synopsis
Poetry is a craft as well as an art. It’s a resource for surviving, as well as an ornament for the good life. I’ve carried poetry along with me since I was 16 years old and now I’m 66. It’s served me well. Anyone selling a product, ought to provide samples. Here are some from this book: The Three-Legged Race: Marriage is a shared dream/ a blank canvas of the will, wherein,/ two painters make one painting/ if they can. Louisiana Ballad: Louisiana trees are kindly and brave/ Straining toward heaven from roots in the grave/ Shading their neighbors with the leaves they make. Ballroom Dancing: Dance is the body borne by love/ to pivot on invisible wings/ & draw in space & color a/ beguiling image on god’s face. The Talking Cure: Bashfulness is to pillow talk/ what lace and crystal tableware is to food/ a nuisance to the bawdy appetite. Affirming Life in Central Park: Today, I learned again/ that life’s the hammock where I sway and rest/ and I’m life’s infinitely favorite part/ the cradle where the world-baby/ gets to appraise itself. Hippy Elegy: Beautiful losers, delicate souls/ harmless young freaks with solo guitars/ strange modern ancient troubadours. I’ve never had a poem published before, but I have been an English teacher and a newspaper reporter. There’s 18,000 words in this book, divided into 47 poems. It is indeed, my life’s work. My poems try to use every emotion available to make the point that we should go on, that we can go one, and even, that it’s fun to go on. I guess whimsy and irony occur as frequently as anything else in my work. When I was a kid the word “tragi-comic” was a popular word in the Arts. I still like that word. There’s absolute rhyme schemes in some of my poetry, and absolutely free verse in others. I have one poem that’s full of righteous indignation over social inequities, and another one that worships ‘blesséd’ air-conditioning. Of course there’s too many love poems, but after all, what are poets for? I’ve arranged the poems by subject: marriage, family, science, loneliness, politics, etc., 15 subjects in all. I did that so browsing readers, with too many things on their minds, have the best chance of finding poems that suit their immediate feelings. I believe that good poetry should, usually, be easy to understand. I like to think that poetry is the “Queen of the Sciences” – more successful than other disciplines in helping humanity chase the tail of its own (mis)understandings.
About the Author
I call myself Tom-Toby because I've kept switching between the two names, throughout my life. I want both my Tom and my Toby friends to recognize me. I was raised in suburban New Jersey, spent my 20's knocking about small cities in New England, and my middle-ages in the big city (New York). I am now growing old (66) in the bible belt (Baton Rouge). I attended Wesleyan University and graduated from Montclair College with a B. A. in English. I've done every sort of job, from programming for the New York Stock Exchange, to cleaning toilets and shoveling dirt. For a while, I was proud to call myself a high-school English teacher, but I never found the knack for classroom discipline. "If you can, teach." For the most part I've taken any kind of job that has come along. Pay the rent! There are 3 women (Diane, Carol, Vicki) that have been very important in my life. I did the marriage ceremony with the last one, Vicki, and we've been together 15 years. I have no children. Aside from two short stories in a small, short-lived magazine; this is the first time my creative work has been published. Still, there is nothing I take more seriously than writing. I even presume to have an aesthetic: "I think that poetry should be: as engaging as a comic monologue, as sweet sounding as music, as instructive as an essay, as comprehensible as a cooking recipe, and original." Put more simply, poetry should be enjoyable.
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