About

Who am I?–a question I often ask myself, without ever coming up with a
satisfactory answer: am I just a husband, father, professor, scholar,
writer, poet, or some combination that changes from moment to moment,
depending on the day, and time of day. . . .  Nah, not really–but it is
an intriguing way to begin–kind of mysterious and tormented, with a hint
of instability that promotes empathy in the reader, and lets all of you
know that I am a professor of English, down to my bones, and I cannot
help but play around with language.  My areas of specialty are 19th-20th
century British Literature, the novel, Tolkien & fantasy; my
dissertation was on Tolkien’s 1939 lecture “On Fairy-stories” in which
he created a framework, as I discovered, for the epic fantasy that I
used to critique several modern/contemporary works of fantasy, including
Tolkien’s.  I have taught at the university level for 14 years.  My
wife, of 39 years, is an elementary school teacher, although now
semi-retired.

As a poet, I am much like Wordsworth, while as a novelist, I am more
like his pal Coleridge, both of which illustrate the influence of my
education and areas of expertise.  My poems are predominantly narrative
in nature, reflecting, no doubt, the overwhelming impulse to tell a
story, using the compact, compressed form of the poem to narrate
significant moments in the daily life of the poet.  As a novelist, my
biggest influence is Tolkien, flowing out of my study of his ideas for
what he called a “fairy-story” for adults, what we term epic fantasy.