Fragments: Poems and Narratives

Fragments is a collection of 73 poems, stories and epic narratives about how our possibilities, experiences and choices are defined by the arc of past and present human history and ideas. The vital struggles between knowledge and unexamined belief, modesty and pretence, beauty and brutality, individual freedom and collective power, rationality and ideology and excellence and banality are key themes that run throughout these insightful, lyrical and evocative compositions. You will find compelling word craft with depth, color, immediacy and lingering latency as the forces that shape us in pivotal and amplified moments are depicted and considered. Momentous events such as the signing of the Magna Carta, the victories of Alfred the Great and the struggles of the American Revolution as well as achievements of great minds such as those of Aristotle, DaVinci, Mozart and Russell appear here. Taken together, these compositions suggest that we are at our best and most authentic when we commit to living as consciously as possible, as a project towards evolving understanding and enlarging personal freedom. The major sections of this book are: "Love, As Measured"; "Perhaps Truth, Perhaps Beauty"; "A Boy, Once Becoming"; "Past Voices, Present Echoes"; and "In England, A Center Found". Key Words and Themes: Love, Friendship, Kindness, Truth, Rationality, Paradox, Beauty, Youth, Self, Knowing, Believing, Thinking, Power, Freedom, History, and England.