Poems of Purpose

About the Book

Poems of Purpose is a collection of poems dedicated to the author´s belief that metaphor is at the root of all creation—be it physical or non-physical—and that poetry is one of the highest expressions of that impulse to survival. Poems of Purpose is divided into two sections, the fi rst section being dedicated exclusively to documenting the method of metaphor. The last entry in this section—a pastiche of poetry and prose— seeks to explicate and demonstrate the role of metaphor in human life. The second section, entitled “Leafs and Leavings,” is a collection of poems—some recent, and some quite ancient (“In Retrospect,” being an improved version of a poem written in the ninth grade)—but all of them illustrate the work of metaphor in the realm of powerful emotions. Without exception, all of the poems represented in this volume are designed to engage the reader in a depthful involvement in the richness that is the human experience. “Open your heart to feeling and your mind to understanding.”

About the Author

Eston E. Roberts was born on the twelfth of April, nineteen hundred and thirty-two, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the fi rst born child of Arthurlene Sutton Roberts and Carl Daniel Roberts. At the age of four, he and his two-year-old sister moved with their mother to reside with a great uncle in Damascus, Georgia. Carl Daniel Roberts was supposed to follow, but he never did. His parents divorced and his mother re-married—to James Charlie West ( J.C), a farmer and master of all trades. Eston (called Bobby, in honor of his father) was expected by his ninth year to drive a mule, to break new ground, to lay out and plant rows of peanuts, corn, and cotton— tasks that to the great disapproval of his step-father he was unable to perform adequately. One of his earliest memories is of the day he was taken to the fi elds to plow his fi rst row. His step-father, who had dropped out in elementary school to help his father on the farm and had long since forgotten his own learning curve in the fi eld of agriculture, pointed to a tree down at the end of the fi eld and said, “aim the mule toward that tree, and when you get to the end of the row it will be as straight as an arrow.” Knowing that this assignment was a test of his coming of age, Eston concentrated on that tree with all the intensity he could summon. When they reached the end of the row, both of them looked back down the row to see it wavering and wandering like the track of a snake. “Go on back to the house,” his step-father said, “I’d rather do it myself !” That lonely trek back to the house was the longest of his life. From that time on, when he was unable to live up to the stern standards set by his step-father, his mantra had become, “I don’t care; I’m not going to be a farmer anyway!” Small wonder he ended up as a teacher of English, a novelist, and a writer of poetry–a maker and interpreter of metaphor!