Southern Comfort from Me

"Southern Comfort from Me" is my 53rd extensive 100-poem, or more volume of my classical rhyming poetry bringing my poetry total to more than 3,600 poems. I separated them into ten sections beginning with love and romance; continuing with humorous material; working through wisdom, wit and advice; and concluding with patriotic values and solemn pronouncements of our social deterioration. Somewhere in between are nostalgic emotions, creative experiences, exciting thoughts, myths from various cultures spotlighted, and imaginative mysteries.As a classical poet, my first and foremost literary responsibility is to write poetry that rhymes. To write with rhyme and rhythm takes patience, grammatical adjustments, tweaking word formations and concentrated effort. My secondary effort is to evoke and extricate emotional reactions that entrance, eviscerate, entangle, elevate, or emulate the spirit within each of us. My third endeavor is to attempt to maintain a regulated meter throughout the poem, though as a tertiary undertaking, the prior two have priority. This takes discipline and mental adeptness, a penchant for precision and a commitment to lasting verse of a higher order. It takes discipline to reformulate either a phrase or the entire poem to ensure and adequate introduction and memorable conclusion, among other things. Each word must be pondered and the question asked if there is a better, more meaningful choice. Mental adeptness means scanning the mind for visualization clues to be implanted, discovering synonyms that are more apropos, and rearranging the poem to form a logical construct.