The Lost Generation

In the tradition of Edgar Lee Masters and E. A. Robinson, The Lost Generation echoes with voices groping in the congested confusion of a competitive and materialistic world. The characters in this volume struggle through the maze and mist of purpose and regret. Those that have discovered peace in their journey have done so through companionship and lessons learned through experience. Voices range from the contemporary who grope with baited needs "on the affluent avenue" and "the concrete tapestry" to Jesus with "weariness that feeds his despair" and Pontius Pilate, who at fifty, realizes that he has "wasted his life." There are stuffed souls in this volume, cluttered with the debris and emptiness of glitter and neon lights. And there is contentment in the quiet wisdom of age. There is love and the loss of love. There is hate. There is abuse and bigotry, and there is the transient satisfaction of "the brightest gleam," the black holes of drug and alcohol addiction, a world where "everything is for sale from Jesus to fresh air." Like the poems of Masters and Robinson, many of the characterizations may not be popular, but they are human, complete with the weaknesses and tragedies of the big sell, where "fault is roaming in the gloom," where the days of possibility "are like some old antique" and "the promise in conception is tossed among the dead." The Lost Generation is a storybook of poems not soon to be forgotten.