Brian C. Coad

Not Bad for a Farm Boy from Cornwall: Poems About Poetry, Places, People, Politics, War and Other Things Brian C. Coad

Some of the poems in this collection were written more than sixty years ago. Some were written less than a year ago. Most were written in-between. This is a book for browsing, rather than for cover-to-cover reading. Probably every reader will find some poems to like and some to dislike. It is the author's hope that not every reader will like and dislike the same poems. For the reader's convenience, the poems are presented in groups resembling chapters. Each group follows, more or less, the categories listed in the book's subtitle. These poems, not in chronological order of writing, draw on the author's life experiences. His Places poems visit Cornwall, England, (A Visit Home, Cornish Carn), where he spent his early years; Venice, Italy, (Venice, Italian Caffe, 1947), (where he did his Army service, and various parts of the United States (Blue Pacific Villanelle, where he has lived for the past forty years. The People poems range from The Patient, (a German Field Marshall in Italy) to Orphy and Eury-girl, to The Brown Shirt Poem, a personal anecdote. The Politics poems include A Welsh View of American Health Care, and The Ghazal of Two Problems. The War poems include Names on a Granite War Memorial, and the sonnet, Horse. Many of the War poems involve aircraft. The late century was the century of war in the air. A good many of the Other Matters poems, such as Quantum Love Poem, The Solar Flare, My Thrips, and At Shakespeare's Grave have science fiction themes. The author has published many science fiction stories in the leading magazines. Other works of the author's published by AuthorHouse, are: Wally Mason's Adventures in the Patent Trade (a novel.) Notes of a Patent Attorney (a story collection.) The Aluminum Gospel (a novel.)