Love Ever After: Selected Sonnets, 1971-2024

Poets have for centuries embraced the sonnet as an elegant form for conveying images and sensations about romance, hope, passion, commitment and nostalgia. Not coincidentally, these are the themes the author of this book has written about since 1968 in Conversations with Quij?te, and Impressions Through a Timeworn Lens, both from Sunstone Press. This new book features forty sonnets, written in Shakespearean form, which the author composed over a period of fifty years, from 1971 to 2024. Presented in the order in which they were composed, these sonnets represent two highly distinctive periods of the author's life: the idealism and romanticism of his youth; and the nostalgic reconciliation of his golden years.

Inspired by an ideal love affair that fortuitously befell two star-crossed lovers in 1968, the early sonnets (1971-1975) chronicled this magical love story as it unfolded and evolved. These early sonnets were part of the communications and sensibilities shared by idealistic lovers who too soon realized their endless love, only to leave their idyllic romance among the ruins of the "love generation." The author's more recent sonnets (2020-2024) look back fifty years at this storied affair with a more seasoned and sensible lens. The author reconciles the special moments and the idealism he experienced in the 1970s as "love in the moment," while celebrating the reality and romanticism of the poet's long and enduring marriage to yet another idyllic dream. These unique sonnets demonstrate why past experiences in love and romance can have meaning and value even in the twenty-first century, where the realization of true love can be far more complex and challenging.