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The End of an Ordinary Life: A Memoir in Verse
WINNER, 1st Prize in Poetry, Writer's Digest Self-Published eBook, 2017
This volume contains the best examples from 30 years of dedication to the craft of poetry, laid out end-to-end to form a story of those years as the author lived them and recorded them. Like photographs in an album, we are shown the boy who became a youth who became a man and then an old man, the light and shadow of those pictures formed of words on a blank page. The story sometimes digresses, sometimes reaches out to a future that has yet to come, but it always remains grounded in the desire to bring the reader into each moment as powerfully and viscerally as the author felt when living and writing it.
Arranged in four sections, the reader is given guideposts for the journey:
- The Birth of an Ordinary Life
- The Youth of an Ordinary Life
- The Age of an Ordinary Life
- The End of an Ordinary Life
The last section contains one poem of the same name, wrapping up the reader's travels with the author's dedication to making the end of the story, as well as his own, worth the journey.
This volume contains the best examples from 30 years of dedication to the craft of poetry, laid out end-to-end to form a story of those years as the author lived them and recorded them. Like photographs in an album, we are shown the boy who became a youth who became a man and then an old man, the light and shadow of those pictures formed of words on a blank page. The story sometimes digresses, sometimes reaches out to a future that has yet to come, but it always remains grounded in the desire to bring the reader into each moment as powerfully and viscerally as the author felt when living and writing it.
Arranged in four sections, the reader is given guideposts for the journey:
- The Birth of an Ordinary Life
- The Youth of an Ordinary Life
- The Age of an Ordinary Life
- The End of an Ordinary Life
The last section contains one poem of the same name, wrapping up the reader's travels with the author's dedication to making the end of the story, as well as his own, worth the journey.
169 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 28, 2017
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About the author
Craig Allen Heath
5 books3 followersCraig Allen Heath decided he wanted to be a novelist at age fourteen. He achieved that goal fifty years later by publishing his first novel, Where You Will Die, in 2022.
In those five decades he wrote hundreds of poems, songs, stories, essays, articles, plays, and scripts. The published portion of that catalog earned him the equivalent of a long weekend’s lodging at a Comfort Inn somewhere along Interstate 5 in California’s Central Valley.
He made his living during that time as a journalist, teacher, and technical writer. This portion of his output kept body and soul together, making him a decent prospect to marry, raise a son, see a bit of the world, and have enough left over to buy that comfy recliner his teenaged self never thought he'd want.
He lives in southwest Washington state with his wife, Pat, too much lawn to mow, a vegetable garden, and a mischievous pair of doggos, shepherd Lobo and husky Aura, whose antics earn them the nicknames Thing 1 and Thing 2.
He released the next Eden Ridge Story, Killing Buddhas in 2024, and is now working on the third in the series, Reason Not the Need. Having finally done what he said he wanted to do five decades prior, he says he’ll keep doing it until he runs out of ideas, or the sun explodes, whichever comes first.
In those five decades he wrote hundreds of poems, songs, stories, essays, articles, plays, and scripts. The published portion of that catalog earned him the equivalent of a long weekend’s lodging at a Comfort Inn somewhere along Interstate 5 in California’s Central Valley.
He made his living during that time as a journalist, teacher, and technical writer. This portion of his output kept body and soul together, making him a decent prospect to marry, raise a son, see a bit of the world, and have enough left over to buy that comfy recliner his teenaged self never thought he'd want.
He lives in southwest Washington state with his wife, Pat, too much lawn to mow, a vegetable garden, and a mischievous pair of doggos, shepherd Lobo and husky Aura, whose antics earn them the nicknames Thing 1 and Thing 2.
He released the next Eden Ridge Story, Killing Buddhas in 2024, and is now working on the third in the series, Reason Not the Need. Having finally done what he said he wanted to do five decades prior, he says he’ll keep doing it until he runs out of ideas, or the sun explodes, whichever comes first.
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