This book will delight the easy reader while also intriguing the thoughtful scholar.  The poems are composed in formal structures that provide more tickle to the topics.  There are the quatrains of encapsulated rhymes in “The Pond and the Palace”, the heroic couplets of “Standing at Attention” and a balladic eclogue on aesthetics in a cow pasture in “Beauty and the Beetle”.  The book also contains three more balladic caprioles that jest and jibe on sundry subjects.  One visits ancient Macedonia where young Alexander the Great struggles at learning geometry with one of the most illustrious instructors of civilization on leave from the Lyceum - no less than the peripatetic Aristotle ponderously pacing in “A Classic Lesson”.    Another ballad comically portrays the ironic (or perhaps siliconic or maybe transistor-diculous?) introduction of Artificial Intelligence into the world of Academia with a computer that composes poetry – “The Milton Machine”.  The book concludes with contrasting “Presentations of Poetry” with the magical appearance of a mythical creature playing a supporting role, reminding us that the nature of creativity is not what we expect whether we consider the extraordinary novelty of scholastic exegesis or the whimsical flights of poetic fancy. The book’s back cover also provides a short little quip in verse of the Poet in the Park where the author depicts the ironies of the spinning wheel of fortune in the poem “Good Luck!” 

The Milton Machine ………….……..  3

Beauty and the Beetle …………….  19

The Pond and the Palace ………...  31

Standing at Attention ………………  37

A Classic Lesson …………………….. 43

Presentations of Poetry …………… 55

Brief Biography ……………………….. 76