Hi! I’m Jim
My bio. reads much like some lines from my poem about a colonial bowl – “no mark of pedigree. No bearing in itself reveals a higher caste.” After graduating from Lafayette College with a math degree, I worked several years at IBM Endicott. While at IBM I took courses offered through a Syracuse University extension program and decided to take a leave of absence, which became permanent, and obtain a PhD in physics. Thus began my rather pedestrian career in academia. I later added an MS in Computer Science from WPI and taught for the next 25 years at Marist College until retirement. Since retirement I have authored the book The Life and Times of Walter Reuther, which offers a panoramic view of America in the twentieth century through the life of a man who was central to many of the events, movements, and debates of the time. As they say on Amazon, if you like this poetry book you may also like the style and prose of the Reuther book. I met my wife, Veronica, when we were grad students in Syracuse and several poems in Footprints reflect events in our life together. I cannot paint a compelling biographical cover to draw you into this book, or the Reuther book. I hope once inside the cover you will find the verse and content worth the look.
My Current Bookshelf
Footprints is a collection of poems written over a period of years in various verse forms considering a variety of subjects.
The book primarily examines the mid-twentieth century and the issues that consumed it – hot and cold wars, international politics, civil rights, emergence of a labor movement, and social policy. Reuther led an extraordinary life and was central to each of these themes.