Das Persische Papageienbuch (1922)

The spine of the collection is the section A Full Deck, which was inspired by writing a poem each week in my fifty-second year. The other sections, Jokers, Hungeras Bread, and Bear Songs, contain poems from earlier years and after the year 1993, although many were written during that year. Hungeras Bread and Bear Songs contain poems that do not belong to the card metaphor, yet begged to be included since they were not included in my first collection, East to the River, West to the Sea. The poems are derivative since T. S. Eliotas postulate that nothing is original but just seeded in different pots. I also resonate with Eliot in accepting that imagination is experience, so do not look to find facts of life in these lines, although one might discover something of life, even if it is experience bourne of imagination. Seek to find yourself in these poems. They are yours and of your own imagination once they have rattled in the can of your own mind. These vibrations, more noise than music, will teeter, rock, settle, and fall to be replaced as the stones balanced on Frostas aMending Wall.a