It's All About Love, is all about love - the seeking, the losing, the wishing, the passion, the exhilaration, the humiliation, the joy, the sadness. It is about all types and kinds of love - friendship, parental love, elderly love, childish infatuation, teenage romance, early adult entanglements, dating, marriage, old age and retirement. It's about kiddy crushes and nursing homes, about mom and pop and One Night Stands. It's all about love. Some of the poems are very serious, others are funny. Some are sentimental; some are cold. My favorite poet was Robert Service. He was often accused of writing poems that were on the intellectual level of a child and others that were considered refrigerator poems. A refrigerator poem is the type of poem that one might snip from a magazine or a newspaper and fasten on the refrigerator. I would guess that many of my poems would be considered, in certain intellectual circles, as refrigerator poems. Like my idol, Robert Service, I would be more than pleased to have a poem of mine fastened to someone's refrigerator. I also believe, as Robert did, that on closer inspection my intellectual friends might find much to think about in some of my "little ditties." Every poem in this work also contains a prose introduction. I borrowed this technique from my buddy, Robert Service, also. He used this prose introduction style in his volume Ballads of a Bohemian. I immediately fell in love with it. I felt the contrast between his prose and his poetry was wonderful. More important to a young aspiring poet like myself, was the insight. I felt that Mr. Service was giving me private tutoring in the art and inspiration behind the writing of a poem. I can only hope that just maybe, I could provide such inspiration to other young, aspiring poets out there struggling in the wilderness. What impressed me most about this technique was how a simple, everyday experience could stimulate the mind of a poet and end up becoming a most intricate and fascinating piece of art. I was very impressed by Robert's wonderful imagination along with the music of his words. I, of course, had many everyday experiences just as Robert did. Now could I turn them into works of art? That would be a serious goal and a huge challenge.
About the Author: MEET THE AUTHOR Richard Edward Noble was raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He attended St. Rita's grammar school in Lawrence, Central Catholic high school also in Lawrence, Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill and Merrimack College in North Andover. His mother and father and grandparents - on both sides of the family - were Lawrence textile workers. Richard lived in Lawrence until the age of twenty-seven and then migrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he met his wife Carol. Richard and Carol have been a team for over thirty-five years. Richard has been a truck driver, a butcher, a boner, a breakdown man, a dishwasher, an oysterman, a fruit picker, a restaurant manager, a chef, a small butcher shop owner, a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, a fry cook, a broiler man, an expediter, a restaurant line boss, a hole digger, a swill collector for a pig farm, a raw bar man, a sous-chef, a tomato sorter, a sander in a spray paint factory and the owner/operator of an ice cream parlor and sandwich shop in Carrabelle, Florida. These experiences and many more were published in Hobo-ing America - A workingman's tour of the U.S.A. and other works by this author. Richard is now retired and working as a writer. He writes fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. He published a column in a local newspaper. In 2007 he received a first place award for humor from the Florida Press Association for this column. Richard has a variety of interests - philosophy, history, politics, the American and world labor movements, economics, poetry, music, biography, autobiography and the unique history of Lawrence, Massachusetts.