Paul Goodwin has done many things for a living, including college professor, Army linguist, film reviewer, editor of Trivial Pursuit, information designer, financial writer and author of a newsletter about investing in Chinese stocks.
After 53 years with the love of his life, he lost her in 2023. Now, still reading and writing all kinds
of stuff, he lives with his cat in Dover, New Hampshire. There is much more to his story.
Just buy him a cup of coffee and ask.
This is a book of poems written over many years. Lots of them were created to be read at monthly meetings of the Portsmouth (NH) Poet Laureate Program. They were written to be read aloud and are (I believe) best enjoyed that way. The collection isn’t what I’d call thematically unified; the subjects are all over the map. But there are some thematic clusters, including mild rants about the generations, luck, poetry, science fiction and the concerns of those who are rich in years and view the aging process with appreciation and occasional regret. If I’ve been successful, you’ll find a variety of attitudes, leavenings of irony and occasional dips into standard rhyme schemes and meters. Given my impatience with much modern poetry, I’ve striven for clarity, and hope that I’m not often caught being poetic. I’ve tried to keep my knife sharp. I hope you enjoy these poems.
Purchase Preliminary Findings on Amazon
In his ars poetica, “Deeper Meaning in the Poetry of Paul Goodwin,” Goodwin half-winkingly proclaims, “I write for amusement, / For kindness and affection. / I aspire to wryness, / Aim to knock small chunks / Off larger truths / And set them on the table / In a quiet voice, / Show off a bit. / That’s all the deeper I go.” But Goodwin does go deeper in this, his debut collection. It embodies an underlying wisdom, accrued over a lifetime, that emerges through the surface veneer of the poet’s wit and verbal play. Goodwin’s honed images flash with startling insights, because he knows the best poets must always pack a metaphoric switchblade in their jeans. Regret, for example, “aches like an unset bone.” Fear of Covid makes Goodwin treat his neighbors “like feculent Petri dishes.” And here’s his take on childbirth: “Like a basement boat, / Built by an overly ambitious crafter, / Getting the finished product out / Can just about wreck / Both the job site / And the project.” “Reap and sow what joy you can,” this generous poet counsels, and “You learn something every day / If you are not careful.” Reader, beware, Preliminary Findings is a joy.
Richard Foerster, author of Boy on a Doorstep: New and Selected Poems
and With Little Light and Sometimes None at All
There are pleasures to be found in the words of an aging contrarian. Paul Goodwin’s ironic attitudes toward younger generations range from pity (“I’m sorry for the young ones/who have learned their sex from porn”) to defiance (he asks young people to consider their “…total incomprehension/of what it means to be/my age. And, In the meantime,/Fuck off.”) Goodwin’s poems are full of edgy advice on topics like death (See “No Longer in Service”) and the fate of the planet (as in “Fixer Upper,” about selling the Earth to aliens). If you are in the mood for a dose of mordant humor, Paul Goodwin is your poet.
Andrew Merton