Foreword: Here is the introduction to my latest book, a book of poems I titled “character.” The book features 26 poems, presented in alphabetical order as a tribute to the word “character.” I’ve been putting this book together for the better part of four years, so releasing it has been exciting. If you like poetry and if the introduction grabs your attention, get your copy of “character” HERE!
An Introduction…
While most books are pretty well conceived from the beginning, before the author begins writing, I went into this book completely blind. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to write a poetry book with the poem’s titles presented in alphabetical order. I wanted to simply pay homage to the alphabet, the magnificent building block of communication—of language—of literature. Honestly, like many ideas, I thought this idea would wither away and be replaced with another. But here we are.
I became obsessed with this idea, as it was always there, lingering, prying for attention in the back of my mind. I started the project by gathering up all my existing unpublished poetry.
Some of the poems were orphans from courses I took in college. Others were born on disconsolate days where I used poetry to find a smile—to simply cheer myself up. Sometimes, I wrote poems in desperation, hoping that they would lead me back to myself when the idea of “self” had completely eluded me.
A few of these poems were about people who left a mark on me, while some helped me cope with friends who had left us much too early. My most personal thoughts, experiences, and beliefs dictated some poems, while a simple breeze or the dusk’s light coming through a bathroom window birthed other ones. I found a few poems that sat lonely and forgotten, stranded and stagnant, the brittle leftovers of other projects that got dumped in the trash pile. Remarkably, as I started putting these poems into a folder, they followed my alphabetical-order idea. Unfortunately, “alphabetical order” is not a title.
I toiled over the title of this book. Initially, I wanted to call the book “A-Z Poetry.” I clung onto this title for years. But eventually, I had to face the truth that for so long I had ignored. The title sounded like a children’s book. With a little research, I found that the title is that of a children’s book. In fact, many children’s books go by that title. I almost ditched the project right then and there, but I could not quite let go. If only I could find a theme that united a tribute to the alphabet and the seemingly randomness of all these works. And then I caught a break, and like most breakthroughs, it had been staring me in the face the entire time.
One thread held all these poems together—a single word. I had been writing about the human experience and many components that make up that experience. The entire time, I had been writing about characters, eccentric people that I had met. I had been writing about experiences—both good and bad—that built my own character. Characters are letters, which make up words, and characters are numbers that dictate rhyme and rhythm—stanzas and syllables. Writing and printing are character, and the style that governs both former and latter is also described as “character.” As I found myself knee-deep in a Merriam-Webster dictionary, drowning in 24 different definitions of the word “character,” the missing link, a single-word definition that united everything, appeared like the sunshine after an especially bad storm. From all the different definitions of character involved in the human experience to the one idea that started this whole mess, there it was. Character means “alphabet.”