Moving Through

I began to write poetry because my friend, Rick Davidson, was doing many poems and having the audacity to share them with almost every- body. We worked to- gether in architecture and during my limited spare time I thought, if he can do it, I can do it. I’d recently read the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot, so I wasn’t a complete novice. I began with

some terrible efforts late in 1966, wrote a few through 1967, then quit for 5-½ years. In 1973 I picked up the pen and wrote two exercise poems before quitting again for 2-½ years. Then, for some unconscious reason, I felt desperately compelled to express myself in whatever form, to someone, even if it was only me. It began with John Henry on page 64. This time I continued, almost regularly, for several years during the time our family was having its most severe problems. Eventually I found the reason for my desperate compulsion. I needed to know my contradictory roll in our troubled family. I began a program of formal personal therapy. The poems metamorphosed into a method of personal discovery. The attempts within show some of that transformation and are a portion of my own Moving Through. Like Rick, I’m having the audacity to share that metamorphosis with you. Doug