I grew up in a different time and place, when J. Edgar Hoover cavorted in drag, McCarthy and Roy Cohn, bathed in self-hatred, played the “Red scare” card, and Scarsdale, New York was populated by “the breakfast eating, Brooks Brothers type”. There were no African-Americans who were not household “help”, and no Hispanics at all. We visually skipped Harlem as we rode the train into Manhattan to end up on Fifth Avenue. That was over 70 short years ago.
Between then and now, I have acquired a B.A., M.A., made two “stabs” at Ph.D.s, dropped out of law school, taught English and American Literature and creative writing at three different universities, run a sales organization, and been a successful realtor in Greenwich, Ct. During all of these various spaces of my life, I have continued to write poetry. At first, a spirit of disenfranchisement drove me, then a sensitivity to things seen and perceived, and finally to the sadness of rolling losses as friends and parents melted into the sands of infinity.
Although several of the poems in this volume have been published in small magazines, I have always wanted a book. My thesis advisor at Hebrew Union College assured me that “everyone has at least one book in them”. So, at last, my chance to have a book and rest assured that when I am no longer here, the poems, typed on individual sheets of paper and floating aimlessly about, will not be tossed in the garbage by someone sifting through my things. A book is harder to throw away, I hope! Today, I might have met and even married, perhaps adopted a child. Instead, however, there is this book, a child of many thoughts that may endure a bit longer than I as a kind of legacy.
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