Beginning with traditional forms and progressing to sparkling levels of experimentaton, these amazing poetical gems cover a broad area of subject and style, and present multiple meanings for personal interpretation. If read as if aloud, their imagery is almost musical, redolent of singing. Hence the title.

Environmental concern is woven throughout, as well as gentle satirizing of the popular culture. Their power and richness often reach incandescence, and the poet has clearly followed the dictum of Archibald MacLeash, that "A poem should not mean, but be." You can see, feel, hear and live within, a piece, and often correlate it with a similar emotional or esthetic event of your own. This tangible sort of empathy can lead to, or entail, therapy in all sorts of situations, depending on need, although no such benefit is directly claimed or aimed for, but would be a sort of serendipity.

The poems' varying levels of accessibility make them adaptable to all ages of reader enjoyment, from teenagers up. Their breadth of subject matter is formidable. Choosing at random, one could mention Love (physical and spiritual, requited and unrequited), Nature (birds, animals, woods, solitude, etc.), technology (pro and con),

Psychology, Philosophy, Music, Mysticism, Astronomy (Especially the individual's personal enjoyment thereof). and on the darker side, Grief (from loss of loved icons on the national scene to personal loss). Poetic technique is in evidence (including complex rhyme schemes, traditional and experimental, rhythm, assonance, dissonance, internal rhyme, free verse within form, and more, but never obvious or trumpeted, just an interweaving to increase effectiveness. Meaning, or being, is paramount. In brief, this is a quintessential collection, not to put on the coffee table, but to be well-thumbed and worn, the poems being read as enrichment of daily life.

View some excerpts from the book One Thousand Songs of Earth >