Something of My Odyssey

As we make our way toward a precipice I'm hoping will afford a better view, here I'll relate some personal history about your guide. How I came to promoting a poetic approach toward human progress is a long story but a short introduction is in order at this point. I began my adult life as an agnostic exalting science and reason. After a stint in the Army and four years of college, my dreams began to overtake me, eventually eclipsing what had been a careful, practical approach into adulthood. Like any American, or human for that matter, I'd intended to secure a measure of wealth and status; but driven by irrational forces, reminiscent of some of the themes of Dostoyevsky, I simply failed to live up to my existentialist reason.

After a crisis point in my life, as my existentialist reason came to an all too literal dead end, I came to the poetry of Whitman and became fascinated by the American poet that exclaims Of physiology from top to toe I sing,/ Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the/ Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far

As I came to appreciate the soul, or primal soul, in time I would strive to create a progressive approach that taps into the totality of our human nature, beyond mere reason, and the Muse seems to have obliged. That's only part of a long odyssey evocative of Dante as well as Homer. And I might add that I, too, consider myself to be something of a poet:

I am the poet that rides the waves
cresting high
and crashing low.

A poet in the wake of your Walt Whitman,
a poet of the body,
a poet of the soul.

The pleasures of heaven ascend me
and the pains of hell descend me.

If you knew how much I missed the mark
of that ideal
you might shake your head and go.

But wait my countrymen and women
my weaknesses can be made perfect in you.