Herein we have pickled poems that came loaded with meaning, ideas, fun/not-fun, excitement and drama, as well as acute observation. Nostalgia was a theme that emerged in retrospect, after we had made our selection. That being in the sense of painful recollection, and not, say, of old movies that remind the viewer of happier times and places. This nostalgia in the true sense – suffused with the pain of remembering that which can never be experienced again except in memory – burns brightly in allof us once we reach a certain distance, different for everyone, on the path towards a kind of maturity, or at least old age. Each piece here is full of life, and the experience of life, both loaded and unloaded. Read on, gentle reader, and reflect.
