Note on The Rip of Gales
Most of the poems, if not all, and quite probably all, in The Rip of Gales, were originally posted at my Facebook page. Not initially, but as time wore on, the idea planted itself in the back of my head that I might want to compile a book out of them, under the title "Facebook Poems." When the time came, as with my first gathering of poems for Embodiment & Release, the paucity of material surprised me. In its original conception, I had wanted to leave off certain politics-related effusions, or a poem like "Frantisek" (which was inspired by a video about his Polish squadron posted by a (FB) friend), which seemed so unconnected to anything else. (I was consciously thinking of Yeats' Irish Airman when I wrote it.) I scoured every status and note—and, now I remember, even every notebook in which those poems had been scribbled in the first place. By widening my scope a little, including some of those pesky political ones (the likes of which I would have previously posted online pseudonymously as I.M. Small), I found not only did I have enough poems for a slight book, but that they "hung together" well enough thematically to my liking.
In this sense, I consider the book a very apropos counterpoint to my first—the one by an unsteady and untried novice, the other by a wizened hand.
In this sense, I consider the book a very apropos counterpoint to my first—the one by an unsteady and untried novice, the other by a wizened hand.