Robert Coné

I write this memo at the conclusion of a thirty-year personal odyssey. Damaged Goods (Vols. I & II) represents the culmination (a journal, a log, a metaphor) of my introspection. Before I began this saga—the by-product of living in a family steeped in alcoholism and divorce—my insights were jaded, my anger was real, and my depression bordered on clinical.

Today, I understand that I’m okay and, though there are many others who lead lives of quiet desperation, I no longer count myself among them. I have learned to walk with one foot in heaven, one foot on earth.

Yet, to read the two volumes is to be cautioned: Beware! If you knew what you were getting into you would not go for the insight you seek may border on madness, depression and anxiety.

But if go you must, then go with God.

Best,

Dutch Robb

P.S.

When one presses wildflowers into a book it leaves an impression as faint as a watermark. This then is the purpose of the poems in my chapbook Pressing the Tallgrass: to describe how the prairie behaves—what it does, what it contains, what it knows—and to inscribe the artistry, the indelible marks, left behind.

R.C.