Gerald Bosacker
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INTERVIEW WITH GERALD BOSACKER
1. On your website, you state that when you write, you like "weaving words into
prize-winning poetry and surprising short tales that borrow heavily from the
fascinating people" you met in your "world-wide travels." Tell us a bit about your
career and the effect it has had on your writing.
After a sour star, juvenile delinquent and loser, I became a very successful salesman becoming
eventually Vice President of Sales for a multi-billion dollar chemical company. Tiring of playing
a part in the pollution of our life generating oceans, I retired early and returned my efforts to
advocacy of environmental preservation as a consultant, where I honed my dormant writing
skills, as a necessity to being heard. I am most proud of my writing on our stewardship of the
planet Earth. I also am a Quaker and resent warfare, especially for monetary gain. These
two issues dominate my thousand poems published one place or another.
2. In your poetry, there is an incisive questioning of the things we take for granted,
for instance, the fact that "gravity" is believed to be "gravity" because Newton saw
an apple falling and concluded that was "gravity". Tell us--what inspires you to create
this satirical, inquisitive speaker?
Thank you for considering my poetry incisive, and if so, it is because of evolutionary revisions.
I write my message first and then continue to nibble away, at the clumsiness. None of my
poetry is worth reading in its first draft. Each new change seems to me, an improvement but
that is but my opinion. My poetry most resembles Longfellow, so it is passe and out of current
style. Yet, it pleases me, and that is my primary ethic.
3. Elsewhere you say you "churn out tons of poetry". What is better for the poetics,
the mass production of poems (with the hope of finding the occasional jewel) or the
slow production of poems in which the author will not move on to he next work until a
perfect one is produced?
I write tons of bad poetry, and consider that the first step. Then revise, revise, and then send it
forth to weather criticism and rejection, even though I am well pleased with my lines.
4.Is the poem "Advertising Truth", I like so much, a connection to your days in
advertising? In other words, what did you learn in the business world that you find
applicable to the production of poetry?
ADVERTISING TRUTH is somewhat a confessional. I abused my gift of gab for monetary
gain and truth was not always my guide. I am now penitently honest and seek the glorification
of truth, sometimes satirically but always seriously intent.
5. Your books: tell us a little about them.
My short stories seem to me a blend of Jonathan Swift and O'Henry. I am an incurable
moralist but mask my lessons with satirical excess, or reverse psychology. Of my ten
published books, none are totally finished as I would and do continue to revise. Anything I
have written is available as a PDA for review at http://www.bosackerbooks.com My best
book is CONFESSIONS OF A MAD POET and I consider it innovative.
GERALD BOSACKER'S POETRY
ADVERTISING TRUTH
The most successful fiction writers are those
that mask the issue of thorns on a rose,
pushing wormy apples, as protein enhanced fruit.
Labeling Adescent guaranteed@ on a parachute,
assuring us we won=t keep floating in the sky.
When used, you will come down, they did not lie.
How euphemistically, I am informed of fact,
in advertising that is camouflaged with tact.
Hyperbole is the ad copy writer=s norm
from soft pedaling to those that over-inform.
Ads for Pharmaceuticals that I must obtain
now warn of side effects like death and pain,
and these frank admissions legally insulate
them from judgments courts might advocate.
MIRACLE PALEONTOLOGY
Praise the paleontologists,
learned men who unerringly create
a skeleton which each insists
is realness we can not debate.
Passed dinosaurs have lost their meat,
leaving lots of fossilized bone.
Do guesses make them complete,
no skeleton gaps left unknown?
Does imagination help them know
the entity they would restore
and where each piece of bone should go
to make their ancient dinosaur?
MISSING DETAIL
When monkeys stare at us and blink
do they know we're their missing link,
or do we just suspect they think?
Do we look strange without a tail?
Did evolution somehow fail,
putting short tails on just the male?
GRAVITY
Isaac Newton watched an apple fall
and then decided gravity was law
which indicates to me a fatal flaw,
since that don=t explain gravity at all.
Each hollow molecule's concavity
has vacuum that sucks on the next,
and this great suction simply collects
and that's how we get gravity.
PICKING ETIQUETTE
You can pick a wife or a rose,
and then quite sensibly
the right card, your teeth or new clothes,
a guitar, a friend or your foes,
and often, quite privately
that icky stuff between your toes.
Pick garden weed that stubborn grows
and winning numbers I suppose
or your butt when no one knows
but mothers and teachers agree
it's never nice to pick your nose.
Gerald Bosacker studied journalism, but found success as a graphic arts salesman, which evolved
through serendipity and pandering to his superiors, into a Vice Presidency of an international
corporation, a role neither deserved or greatly appreciated. Early retirement, an unskilled and naive
victim of corporate politics, provided opportunity for his first love of weaving words into
meaningful poetry. Starting late, Bosacker churns out tons of poetry, and displays them pro-bono,
hoping for acclamation or bare acceptance, while he is still mortal.
1. On your website, you state that when you write, you like "weaving words into
prize-winning poetry and surprising short tales that borrow heavily from the
fascinating people" you met in your "world-wide travels." Tell us a bit about your
career and the effect it has had on your writing.
After a sour star, juvenile delinquent and loser, I became a very successful salesman becoming
eventually Vice President of Sales for a multi-billion dollar chemical company. Tiring of playing
a part in the pollution of our life generating oceans, I retired early and returned my efforts to
advocacy of environmental preservation as a consultant, where I honed my dormant writing
skills, as a necessity to being heard. I am most proud of my writing on our stewardship of the
planet Earth. I also am a Quaker and resent warfare, especially for monetary gain. These
two issues dominate my thousand poems published one place or another.
2. In your poetry, there is an incisive questioning of the things we take for granted,
for instance, the fact that "gravity" is believed to be "gravity" because Newton saw
an apple falling and concluded that was "gravity". Tell us--what inspires you to create
this satirical, inquisitive speaker?
Thank you for considering my poetry incisive, and if so, it is because of evolutionary revisions.
I write my message first and then continue to nibble away, at the clumsiness. None of my
poetry is worth reading in its first draft. Each new change seems to me, an improvement but
that is but my opinion. My poetry most resembles Longfellow, so it is passe and out of current
style. Yet, it pleases me, and that is my primary ethic.
3. Elsewhere you say you "churn out tons of poetry". What is better for the poetics,
the mass production of poems (with the hope of finding the occasional jewel) or the
slow production of poems in which the author will not move on to he next work until a
perfect one is produced?
I write tons of bad poetry, and consider that the first step. Then revise, revise, and then send it
forth to weather criticism and rejection, even though I am well pleased with my lines.
4.Is the poem "Advertising Truth", I like so much, a connection to your days in
advertising? In other words, what did you learn in the business world that you find
applicable to the production of poetry?
ADVERTISING TRUTH is somewhat a confessional. I abused my gift of gab for monetary
gain and truth was not always my guide. I am now penitently honest and seek the glorification
of truth, sometimes satirically but always seriously intent.
5. Your books: tell us a little about them.
My short stories seem to me a blend of Jonathan Swift and O'Henry. I am an incurable
moralist but mask my lessons with satirical excess, or reverse psychology. Of my ten
published books, none are totally finished as I would and do continue to revise. Anything I
have written is available as a PDA for review at http://www.bosackerbooks.com My best
book is CONFESSIONS OF A MAD POET and I consider it innovative.
GERALD BOSACKER'S POETRY
ADVERTISING TRUTH
The most successful fiction writers are those
that mask the issue of thorns on a rose,
pushing wormy apples, as protein enhanced fruit.
Labeling Adescent guaranteed@ on a parachute,
assuring us we won=t keep floating in the sky.
When used, you will come down, they did not lie.
How euphemistically, I am informed of fact,
in advertising that is camouflaged with tact.
Hyperbole is the ad copy writer=s norm
from soft pedaling to those that over-inform.
Ads for Pharmaceuticals that I must obtain
now warn of side effects like death and pain,
and these frank admissions legally insulate
them from judgments courts might advocate.
MIRACLE PALEONTOLOGY
Praise the paleontologists,
learned men who unerringly create
a skeleton which each insists
is realness we can not debate.
Passed dinosaurs have lost their meat,
leaving lots of fossilized bone.
Do guesses make them complete,
no skeleton gaps left unknown?
Does imagination help them know
the entity they would restore
and where each piece of bone should go
to make their ancient dinosaur?
MISSING DETAIL
When monkeys stare at us and blink
do they know we're their missing link,
or do we just suspect they think?
Do we look strange without a tail?
Did evolution somehow fail,
putting short tails on just the male?
GRAVITY
Isaac Newton watched an apple fall
and then decided gravity was law
which indicates to me a fatal flaw,
since that don=t explain gravity at all.
Each hollow molecule's concavity
has vacuum that sucks on the next,
and this great suction simply collects
and that's how we get gravity.
PICKING ETIQUETTE
You can pick a wife or a rose,
and then quite sensibly
the right card, your teeth or new clothes,
a guitar, a friend or your foes,
and often, quite privately
that icky stuff between your toes.
Pick garden weed that stubborn grows
and winning numbers I suppose
or your butt when no one knows
but mothers and teachers agree
it's never nice to pick your nose.
Gerald Bosacker studied journalism, but found success as a graphic arts salesman, which evolved
through serendipity and pandering to his superiors, into a Vice Presidency of an international
corporation, a role neither deserved or greatly appreciated. Early retirement, an unskilled and naive
victim of corporate politics, provided opportunity for his first love of weaving words into
meaningful poetry. Starting late, Bosacker churns out tons of poetry, and displays them pro-bono,
hoping for acclamation or bare acceptance, while he is still mortal.