Come Say Hello Before I Go

Introduction

This collection of my poems includes poems I have written over more than seventy years, far back into my younger years, when I was a ditch-digger for the WPA and then an artist depicting people at work during the depression years.

My Writing Beginnings

I began to write by writing on the backs of my pictures and paintings, usually something about what was in the picture, what moved me to compose the picture, my thoughts and feelings about what I was depicting that was part of the human experience. Later on, I began to write poetry about art and painting—what it felt like to paint, what went through my mind and heart as I set myself to the task of painting, how I felt about the subjects of my painting, be they human, animal, plant, or an especially evocative scene. I wrote extensively of my feelings for my wife and son. When my wife died, I poured my grief into poetry about my feelings of loss.