ABOUT THESE POEMS They say "may you live in interesting times" and mean it as a curse. The times that followed those represented in my previous book, "Into The Dark", fit this intent with sneering perfection.
As "Into The Dark" covered a period of years leading up to the onset of my sobriety, the current collection picks up after the long period of silence (nearly a year without doing any writing) that immediately ensued, and follows through the years 1986 and 1987. By 1987 I had resumed the pace of writing that I had attained in 1984 but had fallen away from amid the difficult intervening times, a level that is reflected in the distribution of the poems here, with about one third from 1986 and two thirds from 1987.
Again, these poems are arranged in chronological order, and were selected on a month-by-month basis to give an even feel to the flow of time. Hopefully there is movement here, hopefully life gets away from being "Amid These Empty Years".
- B.M.T., 1989
