Always Our Sprawling World

Poets have always written about the world, in all its various guises. This includes the Natural and human worlds, with its and our many positive and negative qualities. With sufficient inspiration, poets would never run out of ideas for new work, because there is so much to write about. I have been fortunate enough to keep such inspiration for over forty years, some of which is shown at length in this book.

All Our Sprawling World collects many of my longer poems over more recent years (2006-19), placing them in chronological order to represent how they have come to me: as is. They cover a variety of subjects, including: my turning 50 years old, American history, prejudice, child abuse and political torture as well as more free-form poems, concluding with religious and moral questions.

My poems are generally longer than many other poets, so these long poems are natural for me. I hope their length does not tax the reader more than necessary, but, having read other poets' long poems, I trust readers will be patient. It is a joy to stretch myself in this manner, and hope others will be rewarded.