It's Been a While

2009?  Has it really been 10 years since I've posted anything here?

At that time, I was still in Texas.  Since 2012, the family and I have been living in Taiwan.  And now, we're ready to return home.  There!  That's the kind of summary I like...short and simple, like those miniature trailer trailers that preview the movie trailer you're about to watch on YouTube.  Come to think of it, that is a rather recent development since the last time I've written a blog on this page.

But why come back?  Well, I have found it to be somewhat challenging to come up with a blog title that really captures the essence of what I'd like to write about.  And then I thought to myself, "Why re-invent the internet?"  The Passenger's View is just as relevant to who I am now as it was for my life and mode of thinking when I first started the blog.  In fact, I don't even want to change that picture in the header.  There's a lot of meaning in the title and the image, something to which I will speak in the future perhaps.

The reader will find just a few posts from those days past, mostly poems.  I'm not very fond of those efforts.  My style of poetry has changed (for the better, I hope) since then.  Formal verse has really taken hold of me.  I struggled to grasp meter when I was first starting out.  Then I came into contact with some really wonderful poets who truly understood the foundations of English verse.

James Matthew Wilson's book entitled The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking was most certainly the starting place for me, and it served me well in at least two ways.  First, it answered some philosophical difficulties I was having with not only poetry, but art in general.  I saw chaos all around me, and much of today's poetry seemed hollow (and still does).  James' book deals with the historical changes that have led us to this current state of artistic emptiness. 

The second benefit that I derived from Fortunes was an introduction to names of living poets who adhere to some sense of formal, metrical poetry.  In particular, Timothy Steele was mentioned, and not just for his own poetry, but also for his excellent All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing, which has become something of a road map for me in learning how to understand and compose metered lines of poetry.

I do feel that I have grown as a person since I first started this blog.  It would be a terrible waste of a decade to not have changed at all in some positive way.  And I have yet to mention anything about our time in Taiwan for the past seven years, which will probably become one of the regular topics here, if my laziness doesn't get the better of me, causing me to wait until, say, 2029 to reappear.

The Passenger's View -- I'm definitely a passenger in this life; and I don't find that something to be ashamed of.  I only fool myself into thinking I'm driving at times.  As I grow older, I feel myself led by a Greater Love than any of us  can fathom.  When I try to take the wheel from time to time, disappointment may follow.  When I'm led, carried along as it were, I'm able to trust and at the same time look back in that mirror to see all the Goodness that has been with me in the journey.  Join me.  We'll see what comes next!