Feral Tenderness

By Arthur Rosch

A lifetime of poetry and photography gives a unique view of life, nature, the world, and the universe. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: WordCrafter Press
• Release date: Jan 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781386605751

Arthur Rosch

Art Rosch was raised in the suburbs of St. Louis. He attended Western Reserve and Wayne State University, but wasn't much of a student. He worked through his teens and twenties as a jazz and blues drummer. He met a girl who liked poets, so he became a poet. He found that he was attracted to the writing more than to the girl. He began exploring the novel form in the late seventies and wrote his first novel around '77. It was terrible.In 1969 Art moved to the San Francisco area. His first sale was to Playboy Magazine in '78. The story won "Best Story Of the Year" and he enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame. Since then he's been doing what most writers do: collecting bales of rejections and honing his craft. He has published in EXQUISITE CORPSE, TRUCKIN', SHUTTERBUG, POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY and, yes, CAT FANCY. Art loves science fiction and fantasy and much of his writing is inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance. He teaches courses in amateur astronomy and photography through local parks and recreation centers.

Book preview

Observations of Life

Zizz!

Seeing Is Believing

A blinded soul

is a stubborn thing.

It must be ground and battered,

shocked, in the hope that one day

it will remember how to see.

So stubborn, it keeps its eyelids

tightly shut, until it must be thrown

into the furnace of stars, and exhaled

into the loneliness of space.

So blind that it must be exiled

time and again, into bodies that are afflicted

with warts, boils and tumors.

Wake up, wake up!

Its eyes stubbornly clamped,

it inherits careless mothers and cruel fathers,

like cold water in the face of the soul,

that it may through pure reflex

open its eyes, and see on the horizon

a glimpse of the home

from which all souls come,

to which they will, someday, return.

A stubborn thing is a blinded soul.

It has no memory of its memory.

It does not know

of the domain of seeing souls

who grieve for their lost brethren.

Won't you see, won't you remember?

they cry. To the blind

it is a faint and distant sound

drowned by the thunder

of clenched and blaming hearts.

Here it is, here it is!

Just open your eyes, just remember.

The glue that holds