The Old Stoic Faces the Mirror: A Life in Poems

Most of these poems focus on the thoughts, sentiments, and experiences of Fred Bassett. These are predominately narrative poems, but they include a mingling of lyrical poems. Together, they will hopscotch the reader over time from his boyhood into his elderhood. Other poems focus on family, relatives, friends, neighbors, and students--people he often interacted with along his spiritual and intellectual journey. There are also a few persona poems scattered throughout the collection. Obviously, they are but a sampling of those individuals whose voices came to him either through oral stories, especially the stories of his elders, or the written word. For one reason or another, he found himself drawn into the lives of some of these people and thus needed to let them tell a part of their story. In other persona poems, a few of the individuals, who have enriched his life or taught him important lessons, tell some significant part of their story. Bassett is very conscious of the fact that we are social animals, that we would not be human without social connections. These connections start at birth and follow us, at least in our psyche, to our death. Some of the poems are told on the slant, just as Emily Dickinson advised poets, but all of the poems are accessible. None are written just for academics or other poets.