CONFESSIONS of a CLOSET POET

Promoting My New Book of Poetry in a Very Different Way

Poets are a curious breed. Introspective, sensitive and deeply fascinated by the human condition, they don’t actually march to the beat of a different drummer. They dance, sprint and occasionally limp.

A jumble of contradictions, they do their best to look outside and inside with an equal dose of attention and sometimes “chagrin” — a mid 17th century French word that has something to do with melancholy and rough skin, though I have no clue how those two definitions have anything to do with each other.

“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” – Robert Graves

What I DO have a clue about is that I am relating to my fourth book of poetry very differently than the previous three.

Maybe it’s my advancing age… or my astrological configurations… or the 100th monkey inside me choosing champagne over bananas. Whatever it is, I am taking a much different approach to getting this book out there in the world.

The first three of my poetry books — “Beggar for Your Love”, “Thirst Quench Thirst” and “Full Moon at Sunrise” — I released into the world like some kind of helium balloon in a forest.

I was way too timid — a wallflower at my own party.

While all three of those books were lighter than air and had much to offer my fellow human beings, I was bound by old beliefs that it would be crass for a poet to make too much of a big deal about his poetry — and that if my books were REALLY good, the universe (or maybe the tooth fairy) would find a way to intercede and get the word out there on my behalf.

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” — T.S. Eliot

Nice concept, wrong lifetime.

Translation? My previous three books of poetry had a very limited audience.

Those days are over.

With my fourth book of poetry, “Unspoken Word: Love Longing & Letting Go”, I am proceeding very differently.

I’ve chosen, with great abandon, to no longer hide my light under a bushel. I…