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READ POEMS BELOW. Billy Gamble
enjoyed rhymes when he was a small child. But as he grew up
(or tried to grow up), he learned that he should cast away (or
try to cast away) his childish ways. He went to school. In kindergarten
and grade school he recited nursery rhymes. But later in his
high school and his college literature courses he learned that
"poetry" just simply does not rhyme.
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All
poems below taken from
Heartlines and Lyrics
Click on title to read poem
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ORDER
Heartlines and Lyrics
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He was confronted with a knowledge that "true poets"
use words that people like Billy Gamble can not understand
or comprehended. And the words somehow didn't rhyme. Poetry
was no longer fun. It was confusing, not enjoyable. It was "work."
Somehow Billy Gamble "faked" his way through
his English courses. He received passing grades even though
he was often not able to follow the lectures or the reading
assignments from the first to the last day of classes. (Continued
below)
Maybe other students felt the same. He has to
think many did, although they never confessed it to him. But
as he was exercising deception and moving toward his high school
diploma and his three college degrees, "Doctor" Billy
Gamble found a refuge of sorts in country music lyrics and
tunes. There found the fun of childish rhymes again.
But alas, again he found that his Sisyphean mountain journey
through life--in the eyes of many of his academic colleagues--was
not supposed to be fun. These colleagues looked with an utter
disdain upon country music much as his English professors had
held for rhymes, that is, at least for rhymes that could be
understood. But nevertheless, in the mode of a Sisyphean creature
searching for new pathways onward and upward, be they futile
or bountiful ones, Billy Gamble persisted. He even found
friends and colleagues that also liked lyrics and simple rhymes.
Although it was a peer group requirement that every person between
ages 8 and 30 look down their noses in disgust for country music,
he was even able to find friends that actually liked this genre
of music.
Billy Gamble was not alone. In fact, he and two of his
friends even ventured to write some lyrics and tunes and take
them to Nashville in the search for fame and fortune. Alas,
the desire for sustenance and some modicum of self esteem, took
him and his friends back to other day to day pursuits. But the
love of lyrics and the excitement of writing simple rhymes with
simple words and tunes--the essence of the country music mode--has
persisted. Now over 30, at least two times--he moves boldly
forward in pathways he walked long ago. In his Heartlines
and Lyrics, Billy Gamble unapologetically, brings
together many of his simple rhymes and song words along with
those he also wrote with his friends as well as some others
written by friends.
Still confused about what literature is, what poetry is, and
what writing should be all about, Billy Gamble offers
that he might in the end actually be a poet (though perhaps
not a true poet), as he presents the readers at the beginning
of this collection with a simple non-rhyming story from which
has flowed the ideas for many of the rhymes that follow.
Like the rest of us, Billy Gamble's journey has been
an uphill one often burdened by large boulders on his shoulders.
But climb on he has, and climb on he does, as he often pauses
to take the medicine that cures the urge to stop--he takes the
medicine of celebration. The Sisyphean struggle is bearable
for many only if they can infuse a healthy and close-to excessive
dose of celebration into their rock bearing travails. Heartlines
and Lyrics represents a source of celebration for Billy
Gamble's journey with his friends.
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