More directly, the question comes down to this: What makes my work unique? What makes me unique? (My niche?)

As I once would have answered, somewhere back along the path to here:

“My work largely seeks to map organic geo-history, the overlapping energies of a locale and its spirit(s), as truthfully as I can, however fragmentary the result. Since personal relationships, including marriage, appear as places hovering within this landscape – both influencing and influenced by the larger ecosystem – I investigate them often with a concern for the larger, more timeless harmony (Logos).”

My, my, what can I say about that now? Or:

“This investigation of the invisible vibrations has also led me to cherish alternative cultures that embody healing energies – Native cultures, Amish, Mennonite, Quaker, and so on – in contrast to our increasingly rootless, violent, unstable society at large.”

As for the question, “What do you want to be different after this effort? This project?” Well!

“I hope to renew an awareness of the wonder of the universe and an appreciation for our own unique places within it. Out of that, roots and a radiance of peace.”

Or: “How do you want to be remembered? Then think of your customer (reader). What exactly do you want people to say when they speak of you to others? Are you representing your quintessential self consistently? (Image is everything. Brands need an unchanging core.)”

And so, to continue: ”Jnana – a unique, distinctive name – reflects my originality in bridging of many diverse currents into a larger vision. Compression, clarity, highly polished with a raw edge.”

Or a mission statement?

“I summon others to join our waiting Quaker worship and community. (This is how I got here and what I’ve experienced along the way to Truth … ) (Look for young adults, especially.)”

What have I not asked that people ought to know?

“I am part of a generation that has not come to terms with its hippie past – both positive and negative. While we’ve retreated from the general effort to push the envelope, to advance to Edge City, to demolish boundaries, we’ve also failed to examine what we learned and carry from that experience. Instead, there’s a society-wide state of denial that is bound to erupt in unanticipated ways – likely, without any sustaining wisdom.

“When radical currents from both coasts connected in academic nerve centers in the Midwest, furious confrontations erupted, overturning repressive constraints of institutional America.

“The hippie movement that is usually thought of as the Sixties actually appeared most fully during the Nixon administration, 1969-74, and brought changes that younger generations now take for granted.

“Crucial to the outcome were personal transformations that few today will speak of.”

~*~

Well, that’s some of what I’ve wrestled with in my zig-zag journey to here. Other writers will have to speak for themselves. Some of my responses sound today pompous and airy, but I’ll leave them at that for now.

A writer is allowed to aspirations, no?

~*~

You can find my novels and poems in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They novels are also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

In being held aloft as the epitome of English language and arguably world theater, too, the Bard of Stratford on Avon stands as an overbearing, even oppressive, figure.

Any writer since has faced the reality that by definition no one else can measure up, period. The fact that others have managed to carve out niches in the field in the centuries since is remarkable, considering.

Still, William’s presence was the reason I didn’t major in English when I transferred to Indiana University in mid-sophomore year. The department required a Shakespeare course predicated on memorization, something that’s not high in my skillset.

Beyond that, my focus has been on contemporary literature, at the time fiction and non-fiction but soon turning to poetry as well.

As a contrarian, I see no value in iambic pentameter, which we don’t speak, OK, and when I wrote in the form, the lines were always needlessly wordy. I like tight, direct, distilled, edgy. Later, the more flexible lines on Japanese poetry fit my ear as more reflective of American speech, at least as it was being applied by some West Coast poets. Count me in.

Not to deflate the Great Bard myth, but long ago I came independently to debunk William Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays. Nobody could have such an acclaimed vocabulary, for one thing, especially in the days before a thesaurus or dictionary. As for such a wide panorama of human values and foibles? Maybe it was a committee or at least a collaboration of greats – you know, a circle of improvisers whose takes were dutifully taken down as dictation – I was willing to accept that much. Sir Walter Raleigh has his backers as the likely author, and his poetry is more vernacular than his contemporaries, more akin to what we were doing in America in the 20th century.

Remember, though, having to memorize his plays, or at least the great moments, was the swing factor in why I majored in political science instead. Otherwise, I would have continually been trying to rewrite it. Instead, avoiding the Bard, I was still able to minor in English abetted by the Comparative Literature department.

More recently I’ve embraced the argument that Emelia Bassano Lanier was the actual playwright. From the existing evidence, she was better read and had a wider command of foreign languages. She likely had more time for composition, considering all the time Billy Boy would have been tied up as a theater manager, director, and actor. To pursue the fuller case, you can start by looking her up online.

~*~

For my own quirky entry here, I’ll remind you of my own Hamlet, a collection of poems spread over five two-scene acts with intermissions and intermezzos.

You might say it has more in common with Chaucer, though, with a rock ‘em, shock ‘em beat.

You can find it and more in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

Rather, so much arises in the intersections with so many others. It’s part of the role of the artist as a witness.

We could consider the death of my ex-spouse’s second husband, for example, or the death of my current spouse’s first. Some hit closer to home than others.

Even the activities of others in our own households that aren’t exactly ours individually.

Add to that the ways others would see us, in contrast to our own versions.

These are typical of things that still impact our own individual life stories. Our lives could have led to so many other possible outcomes, after all.

Let me admit that my life is enriched by what others do around me, even when I’m not actively engaged. I want to share in their glory … or whatever. The way a sports fan does.

A writer is ultimately an observer, not just a participant.

For example, as a poet and professional journalist, I found that the police radio scanner in the newsroom more accurately reflected romantic relationships in America today than any collection of English love poems. You didn’t have to sit next to a police scanner to perceive how sexual relationships had taken a peculiar turn.

Or, from another perspective, growing up in Ohio, I had thought our family had no colorful traditions or legacy. Only after moving on to both coasts and, by chance, embracing the faith of my ancestors did I come to see how much Grandpa and Grandma were discarding the very things I was reclaiming and how thoroughly they were adapting to a changing urban environment. Despite all the time my sister and I spent with them, I came to realize I really didn’t know them, after all. Just who are grandparents, anyway? Does anyone’s fit our idealized image? Only recently, learning that Grandpa proudly advertised himself as Dayton’s Leading Republican Plumber, did I find the key to unlocking their story and its place in history.

I had no idea Grandpa’s lines had been Quaker through North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Northern Ireland, and Cumbria, England. There was nothing of the pirate attack that left an orphan to arrive in the New World, where he eventually settled on the frontier of Pennsylvania and later the Carolina Piedmont. Nothing of our gold mine or the pacifism in the face of the Confederacy, either. Grandma’s lines, meanwhile, had been Dunker – another pacifist denomination – and a pioneer family settling a corner of Montgomery County, Ohio, that up until the First World War was as Pennsylvania Dutch as the Lancaster and York counties it had left. These are not the American histories we typically see.

What kind of person would describe himself as Dayton’s Leading Republican Plumber? My grandfather did, though it was only years after his death that that tidbit finally allowed me to know who he really was. It’s really a remarkable story.

As for the others who crossed my path in college or the upheavals after?

I have no idea where most of them have gone.

Of the others, the results aren’t always what I anticipated.

I do know that none of what I see around me is being faithfully examined on television or the movies, something I’ll argue is cultural impoverishment.