Doug Hodges 
With a Certain Wide-Eyed Look 

This will be my third collection of poems. However, poetry flows throughout all my volumes. To me, poetry is a way of communication and it is diverse, overlapping prose, overlapping music … sad to publishers and those who would put creativity in a niche, I feel life as a great woven tapestry of creation … from a distance, maybe distinctions may be made; up close, all is a part of one, flowing this way and that … here a gentle stream, here a rushing river, here a great sea which, itself, may be calm or tempest-tossed. Yet, water is water. With A Certain Wide-Eyed Look is largely composed of newer poems, caught up in the mind and events of the day, with some quick flash-backs to times and writings gone by. For I, still, am no less a product of my past even as I am recreated with each new day. People and images abide, herein, which have touched my life. Readers, who know me, possibly will know these, as well; readers, to whom my writings are new, will possibly recognize these folk as well, even if by different names. For as new as are all ideas, images, personalities, there is a familiarity among the body of man and along the plain of existence and time, which is a common thread woven deep throughout us all.