Troth & Rapture: 400 Sonnets (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781940769226)

Stanley Thompson has continued writing poetry since the publication of his book, Sonnets of Life Well Spent. Of his now nearly 3500 poems written, 850 are newly written sonnets, and it is from these that he has selected 400 for this tome. A retired Naval Officer and pilot of carrier jet aircraft, he received his Master's degree in Meteorology at the United States Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He has taught college mathematics, statistics, oceanography, and naval history at four separate universities. Nonetheless a late entry into the field of poetry, he has embraced it fully, writing sonnets, pentameter verse, and in meter and rhyme of Keats, Shelley and Lord Byron. In an unnamed ode (yet unpublished) he has written about a fictional figure of Norse descent (he is of Norwegian blood) that chronicles his own heritage. This ode is of 173 stanza of eight line rhyming verse. He continues his life writing poems about everyday events; traveling the country in an aged Winnebago Mini RV, visiting coffee caf駸 and bookstores, watching trains (an activity that his wife has encouraged), gardening, observing birds and animals, and his many volunteer activities. Mr. Thompson resides in Southern New Mexico.