This volume is the 9th volume of my Collected Poems. All have been published through Author House. My primary goal is to use understandable language to express my thoughts, my feelings, my hopes. I want description and images to be accurate statements of feelings honest. I find irony helpful. I began writing in the late Fifties. My poems may be triggered by a word, a painting, something I have recently seen or experienced; something read; a conversation, a dream, a memory; or an event. My poems are necessarily personal, but I like to think that what I seek to express is not so different from what other human's experience, regardless of race, or nationality. Actually, writing poetry is how I deal with emotional crises and stress. It's a refuge where I can get far enough away from daily pressures to determine who I am, to be myself apart from work, family, and events. Many of my poems carry religious themes and overtones. That is not surprising, since my father, my maternal grandfather, and one uncle were ministers...as is my first wife from whom I am divorced. | Free Up/tie Down by Burton L Carlson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters