What Matters First: And Other Selected Poems

What Matters Most is a collection of poetry that celebrates every aspect of life-love and loss, good and evil, the beauty of nature-as well as the possibility of what remains yet unknown.

Divided into four sections-"Meditations," "All Lives Matter," Different Kinds of Love," and "Farewells Matter"-and arranged in specific order, the poems vary from brief to narrative. In vivid, descriptive language, they capture and convey what matters first and foremost, as the present moment is transitory and mysterious, as is life itself.

Readers of all ages will resonate with and be moved by these heartfelt, thought-provoking sentiments immortalized through author Lloyd Kropp's narrative and descriptive skills as a novelist along with his talent for simplicity and the metaphorical.

Lloyd Kropp was a member of the faculty at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville from 1975 to 1992, where he taught poetry and fiction writing, English literature, and an original class in Egyptian language and culture. After retiring as professor emeritus, Kropp continued to write and to travel and give lectures on a variety of interests. He is the author of four widely published novels: The Drift, Who is Mary Stark?, One Hundred Times to China, and Greencastle.