Looking Askance (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780998640518)

In how many ways can Americans or humans in general not communicate? Looking Askance illustrates some ways from the standpoint of someone who is sorely offended by this common and persistent failing.

Beginning with a sensitive individual who, in wanting to score a social success, is demoralized by "hypocrisy guilt," it moves to the person who withdraws from socializing due to ulterior motives that interfere with the simple need to socialize; then there is the person who in seeking connection through social media, feels the futility of communicating in a two- or even one-dimensional environment.

Eventually in this collection, frustration becomes more interpersonal and intense. Varying style-wise, rhyme and alliteration are used as satirical instensifiers, while direct invective uses exaggerated comparisons to make its most egregious points. On the other hand, at least one poem recognizes the evasiveness inherent in communication as necessary, while another decries our vulnerability to distortions in the political arena.

We can surmise that writing about frustration in communicating may be one way to rise above it or at least temporarily relieve it; nevertheless, it may be that in the current new century, we humans are becoming more removed from each other and stifled in our need to connect.