Ask the Mad Poet

Ask the Mad Poet: Observations from My Homeland in a Time of Convoluted Realities begins with the title poem, an invitation to “Ask the Mad Poet” (what better commentator on a mad world?), and ends with “I Ask a Few Questions,” a long, surreal overview of the poet’s generation based on a dream. In between, the fifty-four other poems, written from 2007 through 2014, include history, social commentary, celebrations, and, in “Mater Dei, Mater Gaia,” advocacy for Mother Earth. These are the poems of an aging man, lived beyond his three score ten, much of it working with the dispossessed, who feels a call to witness truth to power on behalf of the earth, the least among us, and the way things really are: a cry for balance in a world where the kings are in the counting house, the peasants fight for crumbs, and Mother Gaia burns.