Bill Halligan

Poems on Alaska and Other Planets Bill Halligan

Thomas William is a practicing psychotherapist and a published author. His previously published novel, The Alaskan Saga of Thomas Churchill O'Brien, a social satire of life in contemporary Alaska, reveals (exposes?) his love of laughter and his concern and awareness of what is best referred to as "the human condition." So, too, are these traits and feelings evident in this volume of poetry: sugar and spice, a laugh and a tear. Dr. William is John Doe, Mr. Everyman, and strives to exhibit(again, "expose"?) the feelings and fears seasoned with hope and humor of all of us who are temporarily confined or sentenced to this one life we all have to struggle with, to see to its completion. The poems herein adhere to no rigid standard of form. Scholarship is not their aim. They do, hopefully, flow freely with the poet's thoughts of the moment. Too, these poems follow no rigid psychological or philosophical intensity of sameness or pattern. A statement of passionate belief, a thought of the moment, may be followed a few poems later by an equally intense contradiction, again, the thought of that moment. Our attitudes and feelings are in a state of constant flux. Dr. William is sincerely convinced that all humans, in one form or another, have a touch of genius, be it baking wondrous cakes and bread, repairing broken-down engines, or dwelling on Einsteinian mathematics. Consequently, he also believes that he does not write his poetry, but that it merely flows from an unknown source through him as thoughts for his poetic interpretation.