ON POETRY: Palm-of-the-Hand Essays - by Frederick Smock

Publication Date: July 15, 2017
Paperback, 46 pages
ISBN: 978-1-389890-63-5

“It has been my fortune, in this life, to live as a poet. To read poetry, to write it, to teach it. And to have found long minutes in which to sit in meditation with poetry. What does this mean?”

Frederick Smock answers his question in this little volume of appreciation for all that poetry brings to his life, in the process inviting his readers to share in his good fortune. Part “lit-crit chapbook” (the first of its kind?), part annotated commonplace book, the essays collected here touch often on the theme of “preparedness,” both in how a poet must be prepared in a variety of ways to respond and give form to the inspiration to create verse, and in the task of the reader to complete the poem by finding the individual meaning that the poem has for him or her. For all who love poetry, but especially for those who do not yet realize that they do, this is gift of joy.