First Kingdoms

About the Book

Like William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, these poems evoke childhood moments— from the dream-like states of infancy to the early exhilarations of nature, animals, games, school, sex, and the earliest discoveries of love. Such elusive memories are screened through the double lens of the boy’s innocence and the grown man’s more complex awareness. In exploring the world of the poet’s personal history, First Kingdoms also records and celebrates a type of childhood less and less known to today’s digitally-obsessed generations.

About the Author

Ken Lauter studied with Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate 2006-07) at the University of Michigan, and his work has been compared to Robert Lowell’s. Distinguished poet William Meredith has said that Ken’s poetry displays “a splendid and various gift.” His previous books are: The Other Side, Before the Light (both from BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City), The Ghosts – Notes from a Field Study, Songs from Walnut Canyon, Grand Canyon Days, Searching for Mr. Stevens, The Structure of the Body, and First Kingdoms – Poems from a Vanishing Landscape (all from Xlibris). He has also written several plays, including The Dancing Apsárás, or Captain Willard’s Blues, a prequel/sequel to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He has received a Hopwood Award for poetry, an American Academy of Poets Prize, and a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship. He has taught literature and creative writing at four universities and also worked as a mayor’s aide, a university administrator, and a grass-roots environmental activist. Ken is married to poet and neuroscientist Dr. Judy Lauter, author of How Is Your Brain Like a Zebra? — A New Human Neurotypology and A Year of Haiku (both from Xlibris). They currently live in Nacogdoches, Texas.