Paul F Wackell

Unrequited Paul F Wackell

"Unrequited" is a collection of poems about events, emotions, relationships, friendships, people and memories from the authors life. This debut collection includes poems on topics and experiences that touch many of our lives, from simple pleasures, changes of season, memories of loved ones, love and loss, regret, betrayal, and a deeply personal search for humanity and spirituality. In these poems Paul not only narrates his experiences and events in his life, he seeks to dig deeper into them, to explore their nuances, and discover their deeper meanings. To quote the author "Much of my work is me just trying to make sense of the events of my life, and looking for answers to questions that might very well turn out to be rhetorical." As the title of the book reveals, many of the works in this collection including "Unrequited II", "Unrequited III", "Loved You Anyway", "Love Is", and "Unrequited Still" explore the thrill, the pain, the agony, disappointment, desperation and desolation of unrequited love. Love and loss in poems like, "Paths Once Crossed", "Am I", "Lost Love", "Angel Watching", and "First Kiss" play an important role in many of these works, something that most people can relate to and empathize with from their own lives and experiences. The collection though much ado about love, it also covers a wide variety of other topics. The poem "A Simple Strange Dream" chronicles a funny dream about a friendly skunk. Other simple light hearted optimistic poems include, "A River", "Rising Moon", "Dream Dancer", "God II "and "God III", "First Tulip", "Cooling Joyous Summer Rain", "First Snow" and "The Rumble of Trains", "I Sing My Mind Electric". Just the opposite, poems like "God", "Nothing", "Through Grace" and "Unnoticed" are deeply personal inquisitive works that ask meaningful, intense, questions of god, of himself, and of the universe. Paul also explores the sobering topic of clinical depression in poems like "Depression", "Unnoticed", "Life's Biggest Lie", "Don't Tell Me", "Forever and Tonight", "My Confession", "Winter Wind", "Sometimes Life" and "Sometimes Fear". While not an easy topic to explore, it took the author years to come to terms with depression and this poetry helped him work through many of the issues that have played a central role in his life for thirty plus years. Among the authors favorites from this collection are "Pollywogs, Skipping Stones & Happiness" and "Her Hands" that chronicle two childhood recollections involving his Nana and Granpa. The collection in "Unrequited" is simple and yet complex, both sad and optimistic, light hearted, naïve and yet highly inquisitive, rhetorical, soul searching, filled with poems about, love, new love, lost love, the innocence of love, lust, and many more things life affirming and life exploring. Paul describes himself in his poem "I Am, Again" "I wish now to be No more than I am A poet, and a wanderer, Traveling this earth Augustly searching For everything!"