Arc of the Poet, Part 2: Tour de Force

Between 1978 and 1989, I went from 12 to 23 … from wondering about being a man to being one.

I have a short stack of decent poetic writings from those days, and as you’d expect, they are about things like love, friends, and life’s big events, positive and otherwise. I moved each year of high school … from Greenville my freshman year (Scott’s sensational senior one) to Chattanooga, Tennessee, then Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. When her second marriage ended, Mom and I moved to Orlando for what was to be my senior year, and her career phase next.

With so much moving, a lot of my writing was about what I believe T.S. Eliot called “melancholy.” As my studies continued, I gained some new influences. A. E. Housman is still a favorite, discovered during the Advanced Placement English class I lucked into that year, where I learned so much about things I care about, courtesy of Mrs. Alice Wright and great writers like Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Hardy, and so many others.

I moved out right after I turned 18, and began making my own way in Orlando. I joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve and was in boot camp in San Antonio for my 19th birthday on May 5, 1985. That summer, I returned to Orlando and started college, and by the time I graduated in December, 1990, my six-year Air Force enlistment was done.

My experiences in the military were important in my writing, and another recurring subject over time has been my bro. As we grew up, we came to appreciate each other even more, while also regularly butting heads. I think we both had some rough edges when it came to interpersonal relationships, so it’s good we’ve had each other for study material.
Here’s a poem I wrote for Scott back in 1989.

I also wanted to share one other piece of my creative writing here, written in close proximity to that one. Along with many other writings I’m very proud of, the poem above ultimately wound up in a collection I pulled together in 1990 entitled “Just.” The poem below is the second-to-last in that manuscript. Also written in 1989, six years later it provided my greatest opportunity to-date in the literary world, and my biggest challenge. At one time I had much higher hopes for this, but anyway, here is its unceremonious world premiere. I hope you enjoy it.