Story Behind The Book
I started writing poetry in 2001 while I was still a professor of microbiology at a medical school. I immediately fell in love with the freedom and creativity inherent in poetry and found it much more enjoyable to write than the scientific writings for research grants, research articles, reports, etc that I had done for years. I have been writing poetry ever since. I like rhyming poetry; Poe and Tennyson are my favorite poets. I also like to tell a more complete story in my poetry. This led to the development of my writing story-poems, which I call storoems. I have become a prolific poet. Poetic Musings of an Old, Fat Man is my third published collection of my poetry since 2003. I like to think I have become a pretty good poet; I was the only poet to have two of his poems win an award in the 2008 Tom Howard Poetry Contest, an international poetry contest in association with Winning Writers, Inc. My storoem, "The Old Salty Poems" won the $1,000 prize for second place, and my free-verse poem "The Assembled Waiters" won $200 for High Distinction. I think that you will find my poetry to your liking if you will give it a chance.