THE LEGEND OF THE FETAL POLTERGEIST

 

About the book:

A coming of age tale told through 6 books of poetry that centers around a regretted abortion. The book has gone through various revisions and titles.  The first poem was written in 1992.  The original title of the collection was A View Through Three Trees.  I named it this because I had written most of the original poems at the age of 19 on the roof top of my house in Manteno, IL.  When I looked up from the page and faced east I was looking at the night sky through three trees across from route 50. 

At one point I added an introduction page to the collection that simply began the book with the line "The Fatal Poltergeist explains...".  The idea of this statement grew on me so much that I changed the title to The Fatal Poltergeist Explains.  As the abortion and life/ death themes started showing up more and more in my poetry, I changed the title to The Fetal Poltergeist. 

I stopped writing poetry around the year 2000.  This wasn't really a decision for me, I just simply no longer had the urge or ability to continue writing in that genre.  Since then I've held the belief that poetry was for the young and angry or the old and wise.  At this moment in time I'm in between those stages but can't wait to pick it up again when I hopefully am allowed to become old and wise.

In 2006, I decided to transcribe all my poems into an electronic format on my computer to create an alphabetical archive of my poetry.  I tore notebook upon notebook apart and spread them out across the floor of my basement and arranged them by title before typing them into my PC.  After doing this I printed them all out and went back to the basement.  This time I spread the papers out and arranged the hundreds of poems by subject matter and began to see the threads of a story forming.  Of course when I originally wrote all these poems I was struggling with the transition to early adulthood.  The idea that part of growth is thinking you know everything when you don't really know anything (a poltergeist who is fetal) resonated with me.  I decided to divide the poems into six books and piece together my perception of the story of mortal and poetical evolution.  I re-titled it The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist and slightly altered the poems to fit the new idea.  I believe that the story of the journey to multiple maturities is found within this work.

I've always been a big fan of the concept album.  The idea that an overall story could be told through the arrangement, communication and relationships of individual songs is wonderful on many fronts.  The artist and audience can both have their cake and eat it too.  The artists that have mastered the concept album were able to feed a musical and narrative urge through two mediums and create one major work pieced together by individual creations. WONDERFUL!  At some point in my mind I wanted to experience this same artistic satisfaction by creating a "concept book of poetry" that addressed specific thoughts while each piece was collaborating to form an overall story. 

Metaphors from one poem to another reference each other in places.  I believe the poems stand on their own but also reference each other and add to the overall theme enough so that they form one story.  My intent here was to create a poetry book in the same manner with which an individual poem is created.  Letters join to form words.  Words join to form lines.  Lines join to form stanzas.  Stanzas join to form poems.  Poems join to form themes.  Themes join to form books.  Books join to form The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist.

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To view the structure of the book and the poem titles

Publication History/ Sample Poems

 

The Legend of the Fetal Poltergeist

is set to be published in 2010

More info coming soon