Preface
Though I wrote hundreds of songs as a young man, no reader would have found much poetry in my lyrics. They were predictable, derivative, evasive. My move to Fargo put an end to dreams of making a career as a singer-songwriter. I reverted to prose in the Eighties. I was drawn back to verse by my poetical partner, Timothy Murphy.
After twenty years of preparation, Tim wanted to compile a book of poems. I participated as editor and occasionally as co-author. I also started writing metrical verse for the first time. By the end of the Nineties, I had a book-length manuscript of my own, and many publication credits from periodicals. That manuscript, slimmed to Man Overboard, forms the first part of this on-line collection. It is organized thematically, under subheadings.
The second part is a series of excerpts from a verse translation of Beowulf. They appear on-line by permission of Longman Press, which has included the full-length version in several anthologies, as well as a free-standing scholarly edition. Two essays accompany the excerpts. The Foreword discusses the history of the epic poem and its cultural context. The Afterword concerns the translation itself, and explains how the verse form was achieved.
In 2000 I took a break from verse to write a first draft of my sailing memoir. The following year I turned to adaptation of the frontier novel, Giants in the Earth, by Minnesota Norseman, O. E. Rolvaag. I envisaged it as a libretto for an imagined opera. When no composer materialized, I learned web design so I could self-publish the memoir, the libretto, and other works. In 2006 I shrank Giants into a straight drama without the stand-apart arias.
Premonition comprises poetry written after 2000. Stopped for other projects, my poetry production line only worked sporadically. The verses appear in chronologic rather than thematic sequence. I hope to add a few more after the collection goes on-line. From 1997-2001 I also wrote several literary essays. These are listed below, with links to the relevant pages. They do not appear on the sidebar.
Introduction: Poets and Poetry
A. D. Hope: Poet of the Antipodes
Timothy Murphy: A Fine Line
Robert Francis: Choices and Compulsions
Richard Wilbur: Islands of Order
Richard Wilbur: Obscurely Called
Greg Williamson: Pulling Out All the Stops
Dana Gioia: The Devil’s Party