About the Books
HOMOGENIZING RELIGION
Send spaceships into the cosmos with return-address nameplates to search for extraterrestrial life and perhaps find cabbages growing somewhere or a planet full of Einsteins—these are astronomical crapshoots. They are mankind’s dream of communing with another species. We tried for millennia but still lack dialogue with other earthbound animals, microorganisms, or any of the 4,200 religious deities we imagined. There are only one-way discourses. What is it we are up against? This is a story of what happened before, during, and after we experienced omnicide.
Discrete Thoughts Collected Poems
It is fitting on this first day of spring, in the first month of my eightieth year, that I finalize the poems I used to chronicle events, sensations, and observations since I was fifteen years of age. It is time to move on to other forms of expression.
Despite numerous public performances, peer awards, and publications, I never thought myself a poet. Rather for me, the process is a recreational interlude for someone who writes poetry contemporaneous with witnessing life. Many of my early poems reflect events as they unfolded. The more thoughtful ones evolved over time, as my opinions crystallized. Always I felt obligated to inject tasteful, sardonic humor that reflected the irony of each experience, and my personal satisfaction in recognizing it.
Finally, I enjoy the precision, cadence, and meter of rhyming despite considering it out of vogue since the late 20th century. It just seems to me if a poem requires explanation, it should never be written.
Life through My Glasses
Life through My Glasses, a new collection of poems by Herbert Siegel, combines two additional art forms for added dimension and meaning, resulting in a unique approach, more functional than poetic icons of earlier eras.
Original paintings and illustrations allow book lovers to visualize the subject of a poem, and selectively inserted “call-outs”—used ubiquitously by journalists—engage the reader in the poet’s choice of a formal structure or free verse.
This, his fourth collection, presents a contemporaneously written continuum of life ensconced in many forms of poetry, including universal observations of nature, ancient storytellers, gastronomy, and biographies—usually ending with a touch of sardonic humor.
“Life through My Glasses is beautiful … an intriguing form combining poems in an unusual shape, comparing life and nature … nature and resurrection … life immortal. I cannot add or take away from this masterpiece.”
—Yvonne Byrd, 2006 Senior Poet Laureate of Texas
“Life through My Glasses reads beautifully, Herb. It’s a grand finale for your book … a masterpiece.”
—Dr. Kim Gorman, University of Kentucky, University of Houston
“I have to say I feel enriched and inspired having read through your work. Thank you so much!”
—Andrea Strudensky, DLitt, faculty, Vanier College, Montreal, Quebec
