The Two Boots Word Vault

I wrote a Letter to  Thomas R. Smith about my beliefs for poetry, nature and the soul as a driver for our life forces, including our imagination and intellect.

On Sunday morning February 4, 2024 guitarist Josh Schmidt accompanied me for the first time as I read poems from my newest chapbook, From the Fruits of Our Accidents.

This episode is Part 2 of a Como Cottage Salon. from March 25, 2024.  Timothy and Dougie read poetry and talk about the various modes of spiritual experiences.

For Timothy poetry is a spiritual practice, and in this Como Cottage Salon Timothy and fellow poet and artist, Dougie Padilla, talk and read poems about the various ways one can experience the Spiritual realms.  Part 2 will follow next episode 

There is an ugly aftermath to the Vietnam War (and most wars) and it often is ignored by our desire to lionize our veterans.   They deserve our respect, but most of the time their deep problems are neglected, especially for our working class vets.

When I worked at the Red Wing Youth Correctional Facility, it was important that I take a stroll after work to rid myself of the stress and angst that adhere to one's soul inside the institution. 

The Divine Feminine power is met through love.  And our mothers are our first experience with love. Yet as we grow we find more and more ways to experience love. Here is a presentation I made on May 11, 2008 to the Christ Unity Church in Eau Claire Wisconsin.

In May 2006  Joy Soup,  a jazz big band composition by the award  winning composer, Dan Cavanagh, premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  My poem of the  same title was the trigger for Dan's inspiring piece.

Published in 1983, Men Don't Dance in America became an important poem for the emerging men's movement. The chapbook followed in 1984.  The recording of this chapbook includes the preface of uncomfortable facts, some uncomfortable poems, some grievous, and some joyful poems.  

In January 1978 I hitchhiked from Phoenix to Los Angeles on my return from a stint in Mexico after six months working at a school and clinic in the state of Puebla. This story carries the psychic pain of unresolved family issues.

In 1983 I went looking for a newspaper position. Instead, when I met a man who had the very kind of job I sought, I found an affirmation that my path was not in the journalism/mass communication direction.

Ibn Hazm's treatise on love, The Dove's Neck-Ring, was one of the great influences upon the European Troubadours.  He suffered deep griefs in his early life, and while in the midst of such grief, a friend suggested that he write about love and its many aspects in the human soul, in order to deal with his grief.  The Dove's Neck-ring is a prose treatise interspersed with Ibn Hazm&apo...

In 1983 I wrote this opinion editorial for the Frogtown Forum, a St. Paul, Minnesota neighborhood newspaper.  I was born in that neighborhood, just like my grandmother and father. My great-grandfather and his father-in-law had emigrated from Austria. When I was working in Frogtown as a community organizer, my son was born and spent much time with me in the neighborhood.

From 1997 until 2005 I taught at-risk youth at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing. An edited version of this essay appeared in Parabola, a magazine of myth and meaning, in its 2003 Summer issue.

 The Minnesota Men's Singing Group met with Robert Bly for almost 25 years. In 2007 I put together a small chapbook of my versions of Sufi poems for the group. This episode is the second of two recordings of those poems.

 The Minnesota Men's Singing Group met and sang with Robert Bly for almost 25 years. In 2007 I put together a small chapbook of my versions of Sufi poems for the group. This episode is the first of two recordings of those poems.

Poets and essayists, Timothy Young and Thomas R. Smith talk about Poetry as an examination of Life in many different ways.  The conversation took place in September 2014 at the Minnesota Men's Conference at Camp DuNord near Ely, Minnesota. Music from Dalyce Elliott's Blue Azalea.