Richard Negri

Training Wheels Richard Negri

There is a punctuation that takes place in people's lives that is frequently captured in photographs, music, literature, and other media. Poetry allows us to re-experience a moment, regardless of whether in that moment there is a memory, a prospect of the future, or a real-time experience captured in words unrolling in a rhythm. The poem becomes a medium to reflect on an experience similar to a meditation, identifying and labeling the experience as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In that spirit, the poem -- like meditation -- becomes a vehicle to assist in the natural movement of life. Training Wheels is a collection that delves into the poet's relationships to politics, friends and family members, spiritual investigation, music and poetry, and addictive behavioral processes, striving to be simultaneously honest and compassionate. "Processing these subjects led to a certain comfort and allowed me to do some inquiry around them with the motivation of finding how their unique rhythms resonated within me," says the author. The invitation to the reader is simply to appreciate whatever your response and relationship is to this work, knowing that what you experience in one moment may or may not be present in the next.