Preface: Loves of My Life
 Being
a lifelong poet, writer, editor, publisher and English professor,
it is not difficult for me to admit that my life's work has been
a work of love, the love of books. I love writing books, editing
books, publishing books, making books and sharing that love of
books with others including family, friends, other writers and
my students.
Now I have been accused of lacking discrimination in my love
of books, with too many laying around unread in piles and heaps
(all brought home with the best intentions but ultimately neglected
for a passing fancy or a more recent long-sought acquisition).
But if you look closely at my library, you will find that most
have well thumbed pages and broken spines despite their tender
handling.
So I say you can never have too many books (whether online
or on the printed page), and we should all continue to turn our
lives, our researches, our dreams into books as much as possible,
for in books we share the human heart, the human mind and the
human will (often revealed in such an ordered fashion which we
could never find in the chaos of life). It is in this spirit
of the love of books that I have created In
Her Blue Eyes: Jessica Poems.
Of course, taking priority over my love of books, is my wife,
Shirley, and family (Alan, Arik and Jessica) also loves of my
life. Shirley and I have kept parenting journals off and on for
most of our adult lives from 1975 until the present. My journal
takes the form of short poetry--tanka, haiku, senryu and meditational
verse. Shirley writes prose, poetry and folksong.
 With
each of our children, we have written and published a small chapbook
of poems. Our first born, Alan, was chronicled in The
Rosebud Bursts published in 1979, the year of his birth.
The second, Arik, was the focus of our collection called Me Too! which was published in 1985,
four years after he was born. Several years later, we were blessed
with our third child, our daughter, Jessica, born on September
24, 1994. Her book includes pregnancy through toddlehood.
This book of poems is the third in our parenting series, and
we are pleased to share this latest treasure in our family, In Her Blue Eyes: Jessica Poems, both
online and in print.
One morning Jessica and I were looking at family pictures
from the 1980s. She enjoyed seeing photographs of her brothers
when they were little. When she asked me where she was back then,
I told her she was just a wink in her mother's eyes. She bent
over a glossy photograph to get a better look and announced that
she could see herself there. I agreed.
baby on her back--
the spring sky
in her blue eyes
--Randy M. Brooks
May 18, 1998 |
