When I Was a King

<p><em>When I Was a King</em> is dedicated to the author's wife who died in the late summer of 2019 of an undiagnosed cancer. Many of the poems deal with her unexpected death and its aftermath during a period in American life when dishonesty and brutality seemed to prevail thus threatening such values as compassion and love of beauty that make poetry possible</p><p>While loss is the primary tone throughout this book-the loss of his beloved as well as the loss of the industrial Midwest which the author grew up in and now no longer exists-this is also a book about hope. The poems take readers through the worst darkness that life can give a person finding a bright light shining on the other side.</p>