Thank You, Life

Noted poet David P. Gollub writes of the author's poems: "Ordering them into a collection by categories drawn chiefly from my own intuition, I have discovered that while individual poems reflect single, simple facets of life, the collection as a whole displays life in all of its variety and its complex contradictions. There are poems affirming a Creator and expressing thanks, but also one in which the poet, out of the pain of his heart, demands of the Creator why things must be as they are. In the section of love poems, the longest in the book, there are poems about young love, old love, enduring love, broken love, suffocating and liberating love, sweet love, embittered love, betrayed and betraying love, and love that shows a transcendent loyalty. There is also an underlying compassion for all conditions of humanity. The poet pities the oppressed and the imprisoned, but also the jailer who is in a way shackled to the prisoner. Here, then, is an encyclopedia of experience composed of vivid articles from the point of view of a young poet, traveler, and lover of the world." Author Bio : Poet/playwright Fikre Tolossa, Ph.D., is a humanities professor at Lincoln University, Oakland, California. Born in Ethiopia, he spent a year in a Wisconsin high school, then joined Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa. He studied creative writing at Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow, graduating as a Man of Letters. His Ph.D. was in comparative literature (magna cum laude) from the University of Bremen, Germany, where he taught literature. He has composed stage and screenplays, authored historical works, and two poetry books in German. His two dramatic epic pieces in rhyming verse in the tradition of Dante, Goethe, and Milton titled "Heaven to Eden" and "Promise Fulfilled" have been highly rated.