Thoughts and Poems For The Educated Common Man

By Derek Zeller

This book of poetry and thoughts were written just about thirty years ago. I began writing out of a need to express myself with a medium none of my peers really understood. Poe, Clemens, Hawthorne, T.S Elliott, and Bukowski are just a few authors I read that opened my mind to not only poetry but philosophy and sentence structure. They shaped me, partly, into whom I became now. I found the manuscript tucked away in a box I had not opened until about a month ago and started going through the papers, laughing, remembering when I wrote these on an IBM computer with a green screen and no internet. The printer was a dot matrix, for those of you under 40 you can look that up. Thirty years ago I compiled all of my scribblings down from the handwritten notations I had made over a period of time throughout high school and while in college and working while not in college. I had, shall we say, an eclectic lifes and nomadic living situation that often stared me down, but I guess that will be for another book I may write, who knows.I was going to rewrite some of the poetry but then thought, nope, I am going to let this out into the world as is, raw, and unedited. The prose you are about to read comes from an already flawed kid that was just trying to emulate the masters that he voraciously consumed to that point. The style and pairing were thoughts I played with and it was sometimes less about the words and more about the style. I struggled with the last part of the book as well, this is the first book I have ever written. I decided to share a few blog posts/short stories. That I have written in the past few years with the last one finding its way for the first time ever in print.My name was different then, the second time I had a different name, a different life while living in a different world. I was born Derek A. Carver then my name was changed to protect the hapless souls that could not understand a child with a different last name than his parents in a small town, so I became Derek D. LaBaer hence the signatures you will see a signature in the writings. Lastly, after my mother's divorce to my stepfather, my Great Uncle stepped in and wanted us both to go back to the family name, Zeller. He paid for it, so I said why not. Like Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name, is still a rose." I often say that a rose by any other name would just wither and die. I am strange like that, you see.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1549943782
• ISBN13: 9781549943782
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"