Poems from a Pinata Heart

Piñatas take a beating...it's their purpose.


Piñatas are a symbol of celebration...universally.


     The more they get roughed up the better your chances that they will deliver a shower of good things. I liken this to the Human Heart and the Human Condition. Every hard knock that Life deals us strengthens our characters and, through consideration and personal evolution, transforms our hearts into a source of goodness and hope...a guiding light, however dimmed, even in our darkest hours. 

     This, my first volume of poetry, is arranged in such a way as to allow each poem to stand alone with its own story and it's own emotional expression while simultaneously allowing you, the reader, to pan out and see that the arrangement as a whole tells a linear under current narrative of the arc of a life. It's a life with hard blows and heady highs while always moving onward and upward with a laugh or few along the way. 

     From an aesthetic viewpoint...the wordplay was a priority of style; given my oeuvre.  The words take on challenges of multiple meaning, philosophy, satire, love, heartbreak and humor. There are even poems that took on the challenge of the shape of words alone. Even without reading, you can see some poems were written with the intent to paint a shape upon the page with words while still delivering on the message encapsulated within that shape. 

     Aside from all these qualities and expressionistic intentions...the content is decidedly eclectic. This volume contains just about everything from and in-between lyrical and classically styled stanzas to completely free-form and flow of consciousness poetic expression.

I'm proud of this collection of pieces and I'm humbled that my work has an opportunity to speak to those that would choose to listen.


-L.B. Stowe

"Levi”