Grounded: Poems from 3 Years - 2008 to2010

"Larry Goodell has me sitting up in the middle of the night, wondering about life, love, war, and death, talking with the creator. His poems and drawings are clear fables, alien stories, truth parading in spirals. His muse is full of imagination and wonder." Jules Nyquist, Director of Jules Poetry Playhouse. Hilarity and satire refresh my spirit although someone dear to me was struck down by drugs and alcohol in years 2008 to 2010. Addiction in any family is hell. So, part of my poem-journal is wrestling through the terror of being powerless to bring someone back to sanity. There's despair and there is release. Spoofs and jazzy improvisation lift the soul. Grounded is a 3 book, 3-year journey blessed with surprises that humor can heal at almost every turn. Over 50 drawings interlace and are driven by the poems. I love the breathing space a drawing gives between poems. Even from pain, surprisingly truth and release can be fruitfully generated. Drawings, sketches, despair, humor, satire progress into a personal spiritual search weaving everything together. Fried Dreams the first book lays the groundwork (here presented last). Foxhole Prayers moves in and out of the family angst but with spiritual questions pointing to answers. Poems are the music that saves. Remembering the Present refreshes my sober life. Here I am "grounded" in breathing, the simple repeated lesson. "You write with your experience not about it." I enter the "paradise of my love's eyes" and this book is finished. "Since the 'Sixties, ' Larry Goodell has kept that 'spirit' alive. And he continues getting stronger and more significant in his life and writings. He is a real poet. A true poet who has never once taken the academic way out." Gino Sky