An honest and heartfelt meditation on the ordinary joys, challenges, and mysteries of life that may quietly illuminate your own.
You may purchase Raised In The Shadow here or at amazon.com.
"I do think they're very fresh, and they have a certain drive forward into truth..."
-Robert Bly, poet and best-selling author of Iron John.
From the preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition:
This collection was written as my farewell to a faithfully attempted songwriting career in Nashville, Tennessee. I was a single father, struggling financially, and unconvinced I had anything worth saying. I was approaching fifty.
I was introduced to several poets and a handful of poems that spoke so directly to my personal experience that it startled me: Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Ranier Maria Rilke, William Butler Yeats, Robert Francis. Here was a new language, one with a vocabulary that seemed capable of expressing what seemed like the otherwise inexplicable truth of my experience.
The first two printings of Raised In The Shadow sold out, but by then I was busy as a building contractor and a father. After a time, I forgot I ever published a book of poetry. Several years ago, I received a call from a woman who purchased a copy of this book in a used bookstore and wanted another. She tracked me down. No, I was sorry to report, I had no copies to sell. I did not even own a copy myself. Even today, as I tell you this, I am astonished at how completely I abandoned my creative life.
Thank you for joining me on the pages of this modest collection of poems and for your willingness to imagine something useful might be found here.
