The Prologue to the Pokerbury Tales

By Hank Kellner

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales during the 14th Century, he created portraits of characters who are as alive today as they were in the days when knights rode in tournaments and fair maidens granted merci to lovers who pined away for them. Indeed, we chuckle as we read about the Wife of Bath, the Lawyer, the Miller, and the other Canterbury pilgrims whose foibles and weaknesses were no different from those we see in modern men and women.

In The Prologue to The Pokerbury Tales you will meet twenty-nine modern travelers who, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, agree to tell stories as they travel toward Pokerbury where they plan to gamble and win money. In this work you’ll meet such fascinating “pilgrims” as the Movie Star, the Psychiatrist, the Widow, and many more. Read on to discover more about these people, their lives, their loves, and the impact they have on other contemporary characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hank Kellner
• Release date: Oct 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311154361

Hank Kellner

Hank Kellner is a veteran of the Korean War and a retired associate professor of English currently based in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of 125 Photos for English Composition Classes (J. Weston Walch, 1978); How to Be a Better Photographer (J. Weston Walch, 1978); Write What You See (Prufrock Press, 2010); and, with co-author Elizabeth Guy, Reflect and Write: 300 Poems and Photographs to Inspire Writing (Prufrock Press, 2013).

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Introduction

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales during the 14th Century, he created portraits of characters who are as alive today as they were in the days when knights rode in tournaments and fair maidens granted merci to lovers who pined away for them. Indeed, we chuckle as we read about the Wife of Bath, the Lawyer, the Miller, and the other Canterbury pilgrims whose foibles and weaknesses were no different from those we see in modern men and women.

In The Prologue to The Pokerbury Tales you will meet twenty-nine modern travelers who, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, agree to tell stories as they travel toward Pokerbury where they plan to gamble and win money. In this work you’ll meet such fascinating pilgrims as the Movie Star, the Psychiatrist, the Widow, and many more. Read on to discover more about these them, their lives, their loves, and the impact they have on other contemporary characters.

Prologue

When autumn comes and leaves from trees do fall

And flowers droop and die in every hall;

While frosty winds that blow with all their power

Do take the life from every living flower,

And those same winds with every chilling breath

Blow fiercely when they hearken frosty Death,

The tender shoots and birds do disappear

While one and all we stop to shed a tear.

Then soaring birds do mute upon us all

While flying through the darkened smoggy pall,

And people long to journey near and far

By train and plane and also in a car.

And specially from every town we know

To Pokerbury in the West they go,

Their poker winnings and slot hits to win

That they new lives of leisure may begin.

And so it was that on an autumn day

In New York where I stopped while on my way

Prepared to go to Pokerbury town

Not