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I believe it was my father who first started me on the road of poetry. He used to take me to the auto parts store when I was not in school and have me do odd jobs. One day he was teaching me how to sweep a floor and said, "Find a pattern and work it." He demonstrated how each stroke of the broom should slightly overlap and follow the contour of the stroke before. I was not sweeping open floors and sometimes there was only room for a single stroke between objects but I followed the contour of the objects.
This notion, I believe, came to influence my writing and is why my lines usually do not conform to convention. I do try to craft in patterns but sometimes it seems that I am the only one that can see those patterns. But I try to create effects rather than constructions so I have been somewhat satisfied with my work even when it was not successful.
My first real interest in poetry came in the 8th grade with the encouragement of my teacher, Mrs Rake. All of my teachers had exposed us to the classics by Tennyson, Poe, Homer, etc. But she introduced me to the romantics of whom Wordsworth became a lasting influence not just with his verse but his theories of poetry. I became aware of art, not just as form, but also as philosophy and ways of looking at the world.
In high school my friend, Frank Smart and I wrote short, Mad Magazine type ditties which we collected into a chapbook called The Memoirs of Ms H. D. Fungicide. But that was for entertainment. Not to discount it because later I would but together some little ditties in that same spirit, Things From The Tongue Of A Frog.
I was in the band and a couple times each year we would go to the University of Kentucky in Lexington for competitions. Between performances we could roam as we wished and my favorite places were the campus bookstores. There was poetry to be had that was never found in regular stores. I discovered poets like Dylan Thomas, Rilke and Rimbaud, William Carlos Williams and e. e. cummings. I also brought home an exciting book by Kenneth Patchen which seriously impacted my world. By my senior year I had subscriptions to several poetry magazines and newspapers like the Village Voice.
College was during the mid to late '60's with lots of social/political ranting going on. I had a few poems published in newspapers out in California, in Portland and Philadelphia. The "hippie" newspapers were everywhere, sometimes for just a few issues. About the only requirements were that your work needed to be extreme and ranting and inflammatory. Anything that would feed the fires of protest. My poems were not good and sometimes not really poems but they seemed to meet the criteria.
One of the first friends I made was Mike Richardson. He was also the first one I met that knew anything about the beats and understood what was going on with them. With me holding on to Patchen Mike took me into the works of Allen Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlengetti, and many others. I believe he was also the one that introduced me to Lorca which began a new exploration.
On the campus at Anderson a new poetry magazine was born and I was in the first issue. I developed a prideful arrogance in my new found status. The editors wanted one of my poems for the second issue but the one I submitted was too long for their format. They wanted me to edit out a couple stanzas or submit another, shorter poem. There were some arguments and loud shouting about compromising artistic principles and I was not included in that issue.
Later that year a film crew came to campus making a documentary about Indiana colleges. Our student center was decked out like a low-light coffee house and footage was to be shot of student performances of music and poetry along with art work hung around the walls. I was scheduled to go on in my "uniform" of Wellington boots, black, faded jeans, a lace front tuxedo shirt beneath a white dinner jacket and accented with bead necklaces and an ear ring. But before that could happen one of the directors came over and asked me if I would remove the poem's subtitle because they thought the word syphilis might be offensive to viewers. Now I was very deep into the free speech movement (Lenny Bruce and all that) not to mention Artistic integrity. After a brief, uncompromising argument I stomped out and walked around for about an hour in a very soaking rain that could not quench my anger.
From these two incidents I later came to believe that perhaps some compromise would have at least got my voice heard and if I really had something enlightening to say that would have been more valuable than just blind principle.
One of my most read (or heard) poems was a silly piece written as a high school assignment for Miss Florence Hall. Five years later I learned that she had been reading it as an example to every one of her classes all that time. I think it was probably because it was humorous to most of the kids, it was contemporary in a Mad Magazine sort of way, it used poetic devices like rhyme, rhythm and sprung rhythm and it was written by a student just like them.
My poetry began to be recognized nationally in 1984. Bruce Combs, the editor of Taurus, was a man with a mission. He was one of the few editors that often took the time to give poets feedback and advice rather than just rejection slips. In 1984 he selected Therapy to publish in his magazine.
Sandra Dutton, in the last issue of River City Review that she served as editor, published Ignition Points. Also in that issue was a poem by one of my future professors at Eastern Kentucky University, Dorothy Mosely Sutton. She and her husband were to give me tremendous support and advice in the future but I did not realize the coincidence until years after I had left college.
Another respected and beloved icon was Quentin R Howard who for years edited Wind Magazine as nationally recognized example of fine writings. He selected Barroom Stories for publishing.
Also that year Deliverance was published by Still Night Writings, Tandava selected Sapless Pine and The Art Herald chose Live Bait and A Progress.
In 1987 I self-published my first chapbook collection of poems so that I had a physical body of work which I could give to other people and poets as reference for conversations and discussions I had begun to have within the field.
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