THE GATHERING GROUND

I decided some months ago to take on a new book project.  My father died back in 1983 and left behind some interesting papers, notes, that sort of thing.  He was a minister, but that wasn't the extent of his lifelong work to carry "the word" to people.  Writing was his firt love, and he produced a lot of poems over the years.  He also wrote some prose, hundreds upon hundreds of sermons, kept up a weekly newspaper column . . . was an artist at times, and a talented musician.  And he didn't publish any of his work, and so I'm finally getting around to organizing a book, mostly of his poetry.  I'm going with a working title The Gathering Ground, and not because I'm gathering together his writings for the book.  If there was anything he loved more than writing, it was a gathering of people.  A gathering to him meant opportunity to spread the word, and he was a helluva good preacher.  I can't capture that in a book, but I can highlight some of his religious poetry.

I did a book of collected poetry some years ago, and I thought this would be easy.  Wrong.  I'm having to wade through lots of old papers, and that's tough on me because it brings up a lot of old memories.  I've found things he wrote back in his teenage years, when he was a soldier back in 1931, when he was a minister in South Carolina (my childhood years), and when he was growing old in retirement.  And I'm learning things I didn't know about the man.  I'm finding lots of old letters, some written by me after I left home and started a career of my own.  I don't like digging up old bones, and I don't like having to decide what goes into the book and what is left out.  I can see already that this won't be a short book, not like most poetry books.  I could chop it up into several small books, but that would mean I'd have to go through this process again.  I think once is going to be enough for me, and I want to present something he'd be proud of.  Good poetry deserves a good presentation, don't you think?