Never Stop Asking for Poems - Selected Works

Sometime in 2007, at one of my readings, I mentioned that it has been forty years since writing my first poem. Dan Waber asked me if it was time to consider a “Selected Poems” book. I gave his question short shrift and didn't think much more about it.

Earlier this year, 2008, his question resurfaced in my mind. Maybe a case could be made for such a collection. A number of my chapbooks were out of print and some of the more popular poems I shared at my readings were never published in a book. Maybe those poems could form the core of a selected works collection, with a few others from throughout those decades added in to round it out a bit.

Thus, Never Stop Asking for Poems. The title is taken from a poem of mine that has never been published in a book but has been read often at readings throughout the country: “Liberty Street Poetry Reading, Bath, NY.” Chapbooks represented are the complete “Elegy for the Road, Kerouac's Ghost,” and selections from “Making Space for Others” and “Drinking Wine, Chanting Poems.” Also included is the first poem I read in public, in 1985 for the Bath Peace Group, “For the Natural Course of Events.” I've also selected a few poems from each decade that have never been seen in print form.

This book is only a small portion of the works I have written. It is a selected compilation. A collected works would be way beyond the possibilities of a book form. Included in Never Stop Asking for Poems are representative poems from throughout these many decades of writing.

I thank Mr. Kerr, my junior year high school English teacher, who was responsible for the first poem I ever wrote. I am, and will be, eternally grateful for the encouragement he gave me to continue writing poems. And I thank Dan Waber for first suggesting the idea of a selected works collection of my poetry. Dan, you were right, it's time.