Poems and Notes

Poems and Notes is a short volume composed over many years charting the emotional and intellectual evolution of the author through the most significant events of his life. His preface is a biography in brief and introduces the poetry of his maturity. There follows what remains of his apprentice work to demonstrate the origins of his passions and preoccupations. The Notes conclude the volume providing a background and commentary to his life at the end of which the author finds a conclusion both to the work and to his own writing.Poems and Notes is concerned above all with understanding and making sense of the author's experience of reconciling circumstance and creating if possible something memorable and beautiful from even his most difficult times.Cover: Detail from After the Storm c.1700 Willem van de Velde the Younger and Studio. Courtesy National Gallery of Art Washington.