Bücher von Thomas Grissom

These stories explore the human heart in conflict with itself, created out of the human spirit and brought to life by the experiences and imagination of the writer. Each story depicts the struggles to resolve those human dilemmas that confront, confound and confuse us in making the choices that determine how we live our lives. The more troubling and controversial the questions, the more relevant and compelling the story. These are emotionally charged stories about things that matter—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion—that speak truth to life’s mysteries and perplexities, the only kind of stories worth writing or reading. Includes Readers Guide.

Over the course of several evenings, in a fashionable bar and lounge situated in the foothills at the edge of a large desert city, the narrator tells his strange story. Under the guise of trying to discover the meaning of life as it should be, he instead slowly reveals life as it is. What unfolds is a story about the dilemmas faced by twenty-first-century man, the scientist-technician in the words of the narrator, and as such it becomes the moral autobiography of anyone and everyone. What renders the story provoking and compelling is the peculiar stance adopted by the narrator relative to the events of his story. There is a philosophic and parodic tone to the narrative, behind which the narrator maneuvers, poses, postures, confounds, and gradually reveals his meaning. From his youthful pursuit of truths revealed by science and technology, to his growing alienation and estrangement from society, to his eventual reconciliation with art and the role of the artist, the narrator surveys the cultural landscape of our time. What the reader witnesses is the development of a modern human consciousness. The twists and turns of the narrator’s position are on the surface paradoxical and puzzling. Is he merely an incurable romantic, a cynic or only a realist? The story related by the narrator is fairly straightforward and clear. But what meaning to ascribe to the events revealed by the narrative is posed as a problem for the reader, leaving the reader to ponder at last what, if anything, is resolved. Includes Readers Guide.

Poetry is to be found in everything around us, in the simple everyday events of our lives, in the small things we think and feel and do, in our most private thoughts and innermost concerns. All we have to do is pause and take the time to look and listen and heed. The poems in this book are gleaned from a kind of poetic journal kept by the author over a period of time to record whatever he was thinking and whatever was of immediate importance. Taken all together they trace an intellectual as well as an actual journey through the inner thoughts and outward events of a lifetime. They are crafted in a modern idiom out of plain, unadorned words in free verse lines that mirror the patterns and natural rhythms of spoken language, creating a connection between the poet and the man on the street. These are private poems, made no less private by sharing them, conceived and written with no real thought of anyone ever reading them. They were impelled nevertheless by that most basic of all human impulses, the need to communicate with others. And in that spirit they are presented here.Thomas Grissom is also the author of three other collections of poems: Other Truths, One Spring More, and Neither Here Nor There, all from Sunstone Press. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is Emeritus Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. In addition to poetry Grissom is the author of several works of fiction as well as non-fiction.

In this new edition of the author''s first collection of poems, he writes about those simple truths and everyday experiences that inevitably shape our lives. With uncompromising honesty, these poems speak with a vibrant, dynamic voice. In poetry simple and uncluttered, with a flowing rhythmic style, they state their message lucidly and pointedly, creating an affinity between the poet and the man on the street. These are poems from the heart, written openly and honestly with always the abiding conviction that they should "tell no lies." Poems that never seek to deny the reality of those other, darker truths of our existence, movingly expressed by one who sees clearly in his own life and experience the central elements of the human condition. THOMAS GRISSOM is also the author of three other collections of poems: "One Spring More," "Journal Entries," and "Neither Here Nor There," all from Sunstone Press. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is Emeritus Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. In addition to poetry Grissom is the author of several works of fiction as well as non-fiction.