Raised in the Shadow is a powerful collection of poetry and prose. Written in one year, it chronicles the author's journey into awareness and the inevitable discomfort that accompanies personal growth. Told with stark simplicity and emotional integrity, it is poetry one can truly feel. Robert Bly says of these poems: "They're very fresh, and they have a certain drive forward into truth..."
I grew up in Sunland Tujunga, outside Los Angeles, and eventually made my way to Atlanta, GA and then to Nashville, TN. For years, I made my living as a carpenter, then contractor, and started and ran two successful companies. Building isn't bad work and I'm proud of the projects that I've done and blessed in the people that I met along the way. But I've always been a writer too and my love of words and good storytelling, in poetry and songs, is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
I wrote my book of poetry, Raised in the Shadow, in one intense year of reflection and scribbling. I was living in Nashville, a single father with two children and virtually no time or space for the songwriting career that had brought me there. Oh, and I was about to turn fifty. Poetry sustained me during that period and I wrote poems in response, short and direct and honest--the sort that I like to read myself.
Raised in the Shadow is one version of my life story in twenty-five poems.
Now I am a singer-songwriter, living in a small cabin in the desert near Joshua tree, CA with my wife and two cats. It took awhile. Many things do. But now I just write.
