"Song of Melete," a collection of poems, is an unconventional love story organized into six parts, each prefaced by a letter from our speaker to the mysterious Melete. The work centers around the timeless form of the tragic romance, and the ironic, comedic, often absurd reality of unrequited, unfulfilled, and never-quite realized love. Its central theme is the tragic fear that keeps us from dreaming and hoping, that makes us complacent in our love lives, that drowns aspiration, and that settles for the easy, the familiar, the comfortable - the slow waking-death of the unaware self that ends...

"The Flapdoodle Follies" is a celebration of words. Sometimes archaic, perhaps a bit bizarre - but always beautiful - words have a power to transport or transform, to tickle and tease, and to terrify. Strung together in this way or that, a melody emerges, sometimes bubbling along, sometimes crashing with vicious, thunderous force; the result need not always be pleasant to be enjoyable. Words also have the power to inspire our imaginations, to set us off on a journey of reflection and exploration or on a madcap adventure into the unknown. Without a preconceived story to tell, the author lets...