Paraphernalia in My Pocket: Poetry of Rich Feitelberg, #1

By Rich Feitelberg

A selection of poetry spanning 35 years, including many that have been published elsewhere. Now all this poems are collected in one place. The collection focuses on several themes including, love, death, nature, emotions, and relationships. There are also poems that do not fit any category, such as poems on being middle aged, observations about life, and a poem cycle that tells a story of a man and his marriage.

 

Rich is a poet and novelist, author of the fantasy series the Aglaril Cycle, but he began by writing poetry. His love of words, nature, dogs, and his struggles and observations all come out in this collection. 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: ManaSoft Books
• Release date: Sep 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781311607836

Rich Feitelberg

Rich Feitelberg is a poet and novelist, author of the fantasy series, the Aglaril Cycle. He also has collections of short stories and poetry available too. Rich is an avid map collector, and student of popular culture. Growing up on a steady diet of comic books, science fiction, and fairy tales of all kinds, Rich soon began weaving his own tales at a young age. These activities continue to this day, as Rich is working on many new projects, and writing more poems and stories.

Book preview

Paraphernalia in My Pocket

A collection of poetry

by Rich Feitelberg

ManaSoft Books

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

Version 1.0, December, 2014

Copyright © 1981-2014 by Rich Feitelberg All Rights Reserved.

Visit http://feitelberg.net/aglaril/

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may not be reproduced or transmitted in whole or part in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission by the author.

ISBN 13: 978-1-3116078-3-6

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my college poetry instructor, Kenneth Gibbs, who got me started writing long poems,

My mother, Rose, who has had a lifelong love affair with poetry,

My cousin, Susan, who read my early poems and took them seriously,

My wife, Liz, who also loves and writes poetry,

And my friend and co-worker, Heather Johnstone, who has encouraged me to keep writing poetry.

Somewhere in my mind

I have a pocket;

There I keep

Paraphernalia —

stuff I’ve picked up

along my way.

And into this medley I reach

And pluck out poems,

Bubbling like a philter

from a witches cauldron.

Introduction

You hold in your hands a collection of poems that I’ve cobbled together over the last thirty-five years of my life. Many were written in the early 80s, in college, when I first began to write and understand poetry. Many others are more recent and were written in the 21st century.

As you will see, the poems cluster about certain key themes: nature, love, and death. However, I have several focused on the internal conflict of the individual, poetry, my dogs, and on specific emotions.

Rounding out the collection are a few other poems that don’t really fit these other themes.

Over the course of years, I’ve come to see that the best poems, like fiction, tell stories. Certainly most of mine do; some are explicit stories, conveyed by tone of voice and which I call the story poem; others are implicit, relying more on imagery and vivid language and less on the speaker of the poem’s voice.

I have also created the observational poem, one that is more about making an observation than telling a story. These are less satisfying for me but I think much modern poetry falls in this category, which explains why I dislike many modern poems.

I am hoping this collection is only the start of more poems. With luck, those future volumes won’t take another thirty-five years to write.

Enjoy.