Abouts Books

By Nicole Langan

For years friends and family members honked - and failed to get his attention. Strangers raised eyebrows at (and avoided contact with) this rhythmically mumbling stroller of Scranton, Pennsylvania streets. You yourself might have suddenly swerved, swearing, to avoid colliding with this raptly self-absorbed pedestrian.

Richly earning both his surname and a reputation for affable eccentricity, Patrick Walker has always walked - definitely not marched - to a decidedly offbeat drummer. A scholarship winner to Scranton Prep, a University of Scranton honor grad, he has long puzzled family, friends, and acquaintances alike with his virtual scorn for conventional success and utter indifference to staples - like computers, cell phones, and above all, cars - that seem like vital organs to most of us.

Now, with the publication of his maverick poetry collection, Pegasus at the Plow, readers can see for themselves what Walker's long ramble on the road less traveled was about.

Having avoided high-tech distractions, and above all, the full-time work needed to pay for them - for the sake of honing his craft, Walker has made a breathtaking lyrical departure from the humdrum prosiness of current poetry. Unapologetically deploying the classic poet's full panoply of tricks, Walker's poems sing with a music worthy of his mentor Yeats and yet have a terse, witty edginess no hardened cynic could mistake for Hallmark.

And, above all, there is the music: by dint of sound-testing his poems ("tasting the soup," he calls it), Walker has come to know them all by heart. The result when he reads - or better, recites - is a spontaneity and feeling far less akin to poetry reading than to inspired performance art.

A throwback in its music and attention to form, Walker's book offers readers an added delight more typical of verse tomes of yore: the meticulously crafted illustrations by his "co-conspirator," Virginia Cody. His partner in life as in art, Cody, the dedicatee of several Walker poems, was actually the motive force behind the publication of Walker's book. "I'm an idea guy; she's a force of nature," said Walker. The couple lives in Factoryville, Pennsylvania - where Walker now has a car and computer access - with Cody's daughter, Anna, and the family's two dogs, Rosie and Lilly.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFO ON PATRICK WALKER

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 9, 1958, Patrick Joseph Walker has always been a seeker of truth in all things. His earliest perceptions of life were colored by familial devotion to Irish clan and the Catholic Church. An early scholar, he attended Scranton Preparatory School and was later accepted into the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Program at the University of Scranton. During a hiatus from formal education, he worked as a staff writer for the Legislature in Saipan. When he returned to the United States, he was awarded a Philosophy Fellowship at Fordham University. Today, he "works" as an editor and proofreader of educational materials for a local correspondence college. His "real" work, however, involves studying the works of Blaise Pascal and Friedrich Hayek. He lives in Factoryville, Pennsylania, with his artist POSSLQ, Ginger Cody, her daughter Anna, and the family's two dogs, Lilly and Rosie.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFO ON VIRGINIA CODY

Virginia Cody is a retired Air Force officer, the recipient of the service's Achievement, Commendation and Meritorious Service medals. After retirement in 1989, Cody attained a Masters Degree in Education from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, and went on to teach in both the Virginia Beach area and in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She moved with her daughter, Anna, to the Scranton area in 1997 and taught Language Arts and Social Studies at the Scranton Hebrew Day School. She is a self-taught artist and owns a commissioned pet portrait business called Pencilled Pet Portraits.

BOOK DETAILS
$9.95
ISBN: 9780981461908 & 9780981461915
5.5" x 8.5", paperback, 60 pp, 2008
Available at Amazon.com

Nicole Langan
info@tribute-books.com
http://www.tribute-books.com