Latest Book Launch Announcement

I’ve finally published my latest book, more than thirty-eight years in the making, my most ambitious and risky project to date.

“A Narrow Painted Road Seems So…” is now available worldwide in its Kindle edition. For your copy, or to “Look Inside,” just click here. I also offer you a sneak preview below.

I call this collection of poetry and accompanying essays a provocative and colorful social art form. You will be surprised. You’ll love some and you’ll hate some. That’s why it is provocative and adventurous, both for you as a reader and me as a poet. Are you up to it?

Wait. You don’t like poetry? That’s like saying, “I don’t like books.” If true, I wonder why you want to read this or any book, however tragic that would be. 

No Kindle device? No problem. Read anywhere with Amazon’s free app! It is very good.

Don’t forget to download your free and robust Kindle reader app so you can read Kindle editions like this one on ANY smart device. See the Amazon screen grabs below…

Even if you’re not a fan of poetry, my most ambitious literary effort to date is sure to intrigue you once you start reading this book. Each of the poems in the collection is its own journey, including:

• Title (the set-up),

• Author’s Advice (how to squeeze the most from the poem),

• Image (one of my original complimentary images by way of introducton),

• Poem (the good stuff),

• Essay entitled, “Poet’s Notes” (a peek behind each poem’s purple curtain).

Explore just eighteen chapters that group the seventy-one poems and essays into evocative topics. Or you can treat each poem as its own bite-size destination.

The new book’s premise: 

This book is a collection of my more provocative—even daring—poems. Some are simple or playful verses fun to read to yourself or aloud.

Some, however, treat seriously what I consider important social issues. All are meant to provoke you, to elicit a thoughtful reaction. A response. Maybe even to anger you or to evoke empathy. You will remember some of these poems.

You may agree or disagree with their messages, but I promise you will be thinking. For that, I commend you on the adventurous journey you are about to begin.  

But that’s only the beginning. 

Excerpt from the introductory chapter entitled, “Why This Book?”…

I don’t enjoy watching basketball, perhaps because I don’t understand the game. The same can be true for many readers of poetry. Maybe a lack of understanding the basics even has you fearing some of the greatest literary works in history or of today because you don’t understand how to absorb them.

So while I think my poems are good, I can help you enjoy them and all poetry more by exposing their more shapely curves to your naked eye. 

If you’re an aspiring poet or neophyte reader of poetry, you will most certainly find this chapter and the next insightful and educational. I’ve condensed key learning points from more than a dozen texts on the topic of reading or writing fine poetry with an informed eye.

If you’re already an analytical reader of fine poetry who hungers for more insight, you too should find these short twin chapters a concise and useful review. You’ll know when I break the rules later in this book. And you’ll learn soon enough I am an irreverent rule breaker. Then decide for yourself when that works, and when it doesn’t.

If you are an accomplished poet, you might find some new ideas you can press into your own service.

Excerpt follows from, “A Narrow Painted Road Seems So…”

from the chapter entitled, “Of the Road”:

Commuter Morality

Author’s advice: 

Have you ever seen the movie, “Strangers on a Train?” That film untangles a tale of deceit and murder. A conspiracy is born contrived by two complete strangers thrown together by circumstance. 

This poem is not about murder or conspiracy, but imagine how the environment described below could become fertile ground for planting the seeds for such a tale. 

I wrote this poem thirty-eight years ago when my vocabulary impressed me more than it did anyone else. See if you can get past the fancy words and phrases. The essay that follows tries to make sense of the obscure madness that engulfed me back in the throes of my immaturity. I include this poem along with a few more recent observations in this collection for your amusement.  

Perhaps this eighteen-line verse is more relevant than ever almost four decades downrange of its inception. Does it represent more than weary folks riding a train?

Commuter Morality

Loneliness was always the most intense

amidst a crowd so indelibly cold.

Distant at arm’s length, they took offense.

So often, it seemed my soul had sold

for a measure of cheap jealousy, condensed.

No matter how I felt, I was ever seen as too bold.

Or perhaps I just thought I would certainly fail

when others threatened me with what they were told

of my shallow indifference to their echoed inadequacy,

or their perception of my periphery so tightly rolled

into an understated, cancerous, and trite indelicacy,

to pillage and burn my fragile affectations. So droll.

Is it fitting and appropriate, their ineffectual apoplexy,

in the midst of indefinitely infecting my shallow soul,

are pretenders of honor, of innocence as their prophecy,

yet armored with their careless anonymity as a whole,

for the last time, every time, mildly careless mendacity

at my onerous expense? A sentence without parole?

– by GK Jurrens

Poet’s Notes: Commuter Morality

First, let’s analyze the simple mechanics of this verse. Poetic terms reviewed in Chapter Two are italicized and quotes from the verse are bold and italicized. Line breaks are represented by a slash (/).

I had a simplistic view of composing poetry in 1980 as a naïve and cynical thirty-one-year-old. As I analyze this poem now at age sixty-nine, I include it in this collection because of the transparent reflection of my younger less-complicated self. Other than my annoying use of flowery language, I still managed a simple and loose rhyme pattern (~ababab) reminiscent of a train rattling the rails. 

Likewise, the imagery seems adequate, focusing on people instead of the setting or a narrative. I somehow avoided clichés, and included adequate alliteration, consonance, and assonance. My diction wasn’t that great, but this poem has stayed with me through more than half my life. Curious. 

There is enough variation in this anapestic (forward pulling) tetrameter (four feet or “beats” per line) to make for a consistent rhythm. I enjoyed the sound of this combination of words. 

Its form seems consistent with the content of this short triple sestet (three six-line stanzas). I must admit this happened by accident. It did not spring from my personal fountain of young adult knowledge.

As for the image that introduces this poem, I captured a busy urban street in Athens, Greece several years ago while waiting to board our chartered sailboat. The blur caused by using my camera’s slow shutter speed conveys a sense of perpetual motion appropriate for this verse. Daily commutes can seem perpetual.

Contrary to what I’d wish to see, commuting in any of the world’s major urban areas has become a hostile battleground driven by creeping financial and emotional distress. That declaration makes no sense to you? Allow me to explain a rather cynical but all too frequent scenario. 

While exceptions exist, living expenses in large urban areas have grown too costly for all but the wealthiest. For example, as I found in greater New York, more folks have found it necessary to travel farther away from their jobs and the city to seek affordable housing. That means driving or riding longer to and from work. Mass transit, as an affordable and sound mode of commuting, has become more popular and more accessible than ever in these areas. 

There are countless advantages to mass transit and myriad disadvantages. For example, commuting from Grand Central in Manhattan to the bedroom village of Brewster, New York is an hour North by train punctuated by several tedious stops. Brewster’s park-and-ride is only a few miles from the more affordable city of Danbury, Connecticut. Much can happen in an hour on a train, and often does, if tensions ride high. This is frequently the case after a ten- or twelve-hour stress-filled workday in the city. 

I had imagined isolation on long and crowded commutes. “Loneliness was always the most intense / amidst a crowd so indelibly cold.” Everyone needs space. Sometimes companionship and solitude are both unaffordable and inaccessible, even unacceptable. “Distant at arm’s length, they took offense.”

Many commuters padded their emotional armor by scoring fistfuls of martinis in to-go cups on the platform at Grand Central in anticipation of the long ride home. Such high-octane flammables often fueled animosity. “So often, it seemed my soul had sold / for a measure of cheap jealousy, condensed.”

The closer we’d get to Brewster, the vaporous atmosphere would threaten spontaneous combustion. “No matter how I felt, I was ever seen as too bold.” All who shared this crowded venue understood the slightest misunderstandings often mushroomed from innocent conversation to something more combative. “Or perhaps I just thought I would certainly fail / when others threatened me with what they were told.”

When retaliation was called for, I was ambivalent but still demonstrative in a quiet way. “Of my shallow indifference to their echoed inadequacy.”

Despite my best intentions, I’d sometimes react with what some might call an inflammatory response. “Or their perception of my periphery caught tightly rolled / into an understated, cancerous, and trite indelicacy.” 

But in general, I avoided confrontation. That was my superpower. This sometimes elicited an indulgent smirk instead of a blow to the head. “To pillage and burn my fragile affectations. So droll.” Ain’t diplomacy grand?

In response to this quasi-normal daily commute ritual, I grew numb to the hum. “Is it fitting and appropriate that their ineffectual apoplexy, / Who, in the midst of indefinitely infecting my shallow soul…?”

Those who professed to be the most self-righteous were those who would show their muddy stripes the soonest. Sometimes, those stripes ran in weird and not-so-pleasing directions, not always consistent with their cooler heads. “Are pretenders of honor, of innocence as their prophecy.”

They would be the ones apathetic to anyone’s desires other than their own. “Yet armored with their careless anonymity as a whole, / For the last time, every time, a mildly careless mendacity.” Too often I observed anonymity obscuring or even erasing personal accountability. 

Such is the plight of some commuters subjected to the vagaries of their own volatility when facing a tunnel that ends only in a distant darkness. “At my onerous expense? A sentence without parole?”

That was then. So I eventually moved to Southwest Florida. When necessary, I found commuting by air more civilized though no less onerous and no less happily remembered.

Now I am retired and look back at these time-displaced impressions with amusement. 

Those were the days…

So I invite you to journey with me. Hear me roar… Thanks for giving this book a serious look.

Read an expanded free preview of “A Narrow Painted Road Seems So…” on Amazon (“Look Inside”).

GK

For access to previews of all my books, or to subscribe to my blog, wander on over to GKJurrens.com with my gratitude.