Poems from Mockingbird Hill

About the Book

This book is about all of us in our daily "real" lives; life as we know it poetically expressed. Perhaps the best description of the poems I've written would apply from a well known quote""Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

In the poem "I'll Pack My Suitcase In An Hour", a young woman is disallutioned by the break-up of her marriage:"I'll walk with my head up proudly down the cemented walk. Let me look back in a blinded moment at the coloring book door". And in the poem "Eight And Half" a little girl wonders why she was put in a detention center:"I went home. Never said, spoke of. Didn't think anyone would understand, listen or hear; why would they for I didn't at all."

Most of the poems come from real events that I personally have heard about, people sprinkled here and there through the years of my life. such as the old lady who only asks for so much in life and no more. In "My Middle Name Is Perserverance" the old lady respectfully says, "I'll push aside a dish of pity if put before me, this hankerchief of sorrow will stay dry, I'll not wear shoes of sympathy".

The one poem that I've written that shows the dark side of my writing is "A Falling Into An Eye".......It encompasses every womans fear of the other woman in her husband's life, and as well as the emotional fears of the woman herself involved: I'll be about the country, be about a wire. But your status requires not a privilege to know, much less to understand; you are a mere woman; I'm the eye."

These poems are spread out over a life times of emotional ups and downs.....there are even some moments of shear laughter in many such as in "Bonne Bouche'"......(french for tidbits);" Not many put a truth to her gibberish charm. Back alley jacks dubbed her Bonne Bouche'; she would drop a bit here and there; the tattle of her antics.....raising an eyebrow and slip to tease, and play.....

About the Author

I was born in Utah during war years., and I'm the oldest of eleven children. My childhood years were spent in Huntigdon, W.VA then I moved to Pittsburgh in 1953.I majored in psychology at Allegheny Community College, which provided me a unique ability to adapt a poetic outlook of life for the people "we" all come to know.

One of the biggest factors to influence my writing was the man I would later come to know as Ravens. Because of his very character and interest in Edgar Allen Poe, I too began to see that I had the ability to write in that dark, secretive way. I really had found my writing niche so to speak.

It is these situations that I weave into my poems to give the reader a poetic outlook into these "real life" situations anyone one of us may experience. And now want to share with the reader. My poems are written in a story like fashion. Although, subtly hidden in many cases, enabling readers to relate their thoughts and feelings to the poem they are reading as if they were the author. But, there are just as many that are funny, enjoyable to read as well.

I have two wonderful children. Robin and Danny, who are both at home and old enough now, which allows  me to spend much time perfecting my Poe like writing skills. A time to pursue this love of words, love of expressing life poetically.