Though born (March 3rd, 1958) in St. Petersburg, Florida, most of my four decades have been
spent among the fickle mists of the Pacific Northwest. I
didn't develop a yen for writing until the late seventies,
dived head first into rhyming verse, and produced a ream or so
of tripe I'm embarrassed to lay my eyes on today.
Around this time, I chanced upon a thick tome of e. e.
cummings work, and finally realized just what kind of task I
was up against with this poetry business.
After a lot of false starts, I produced several pieces that
bore a semblance to readability, and early last year
discovered AAPC (alt.arts.poetry.comments) amongst the jungles of usenet. Honest
criticism being a foreign concept to me at the time, the first
few comments drew blood, but also brought about a noticeable
increase the quality of my revisions. At some future date,
assuming I ever get enough pieces together that I'm satisfied
with, I would like to produce a chapbook or two locally.
Nowadays, most of my waking hours are spent repairing medical
equipment, keyboarding, flailing about the Olympic Mountains
with my bride-to-be Tammi (who puts up so patiently with my
compulsive pencil buying) and relaxing in front of a vintage
"B" horror video with two daughters. Throughout all this,
scraps of paper and writing instruments are seldom far away.
In addition to cummings, I've been impressed and inspired by
the likes of Alan Dugan, James Dicky, and Lucille Clifton. And
of course the jewels to be found in the archives of AAPC
provide fine examples of how to (and sometimes how not to)
write durable poetry.