My name is Vincent Placanico; I am an Army veteran, a college student, a husband and father, and a full-time employee. I have had many experiences in my 40 years, some good, some bad, some pleasurable, and some painful. I have learned to accept the good with the bad, and the pleasure has exceeded the pain. This book is a series of poems that I wrote while taking a long, honest look at who I am. It takes you from my early years of drug and alcohol abuse through suffering from the death of my father, to how I look at the world now. Most of the poems are in narrative form and are easy to understand. Some of them tell a story about certain parts of my life, and others paint a picture of emotions that I felt, like saying goodbye to my wife and kids when I deployed to Iraq. When I write, I try to put myself in the moment that I am writing about, so the reader will feel the emotions that I felt. Some of my poems are sad and angry, and others are funny; many are just a look at the world through my eyes.
About the Author: My name is Vincent Placanico, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. As a young man, I succumbed to peer pressure; I became lost in a world of drug and alcohol abuse. Shortly after graduating High School, I realized that if I didn't get away, I would probably end up dead or in prison. To get away, I joined the Army, which turned out to be the best decision that I ever made. Although I still drank my share of alcohol, the Army got me away from drugs and put me on the path toward getting my life together. While stationed in Germany, I met my wife, Heidi, a German girl who already had twin boys. Shortly after getting married in 1998, we found out that Heidi was pregnant; this was the defining moment in my life. I was no longer only responsible for myself; when I became responsible for the lives of others, I learned what it meant to be a man. Now, eighteen years later, Heidi and I have Five total children, and we survive on a middle-class income. I finally decided to use my GI-Bill and learned that I enjoy writing. I found that writing poems comes naturally to me, I just sit down and write the first thing that pops into my head and I work off of it. usually within an hour or two, I have a poem. I just finished my first book, it is a short poetry book called Devil Dog, named after my Basic Training Platoon. The book is a series of poems where I ask myself and answer the question: "Who am I?"