Poetry Book Release!! (chapters on ADHD and Grief)

“Provisional Conclusions” is now a reality!

The book contains 53 poems and is organized in 4 sections: “Thinking Out Loud”, “The ADHD Chapter”, “Loss”, and “Love and Nervous Energy.”

This is from the back cover blurb:

“A diagnosis of ADHD at age fifty-five can make you stop and think. So can losing your daughter to a drunk driver two days after her eighth birthday—or looking up at the majesty of the Big Buddha in Phuket after getting lost in the mountains on the way there.

“Spanning a period from high school in the seventies until a few hours before it went to the editor, the poems in Provisional Conclusions explore these topics and more: being a parent, being a man, living with ADHD, the legacy of Howard Thurman, the myth of objectivity, the delight and terror of raising a family, the dreams of Korczak Ziolkowski, and even a quick peek into hell. Poet Mike Fedel also considers race, sex, love lost and found, philosophy, consciousness, and God—what is she like, anyway? Sections include “Thinking Out Loud,” “The ADHD Chapter,” “Loss,” and “Love and Nervous Energy.”

“Offering accessible observations on a wide range of topics, the verses in this collection consider the raw emotions associated with love, grief, and ADHD.”

If you do buy a copy, please post comments on the site where you made the purchase, it helps writers in the long run for them to see feedback.

AND feel free to make any other comments here or email me directly.

I hope you enjoy some of these poems. Find you favorites and let me know!

Thanks!

Quick history: Over a year ago now, my good friend Catherine Powers asked me “when are you going to put together a collection of your poems?” We’ve both been writing since high school (at least!) and she’d recently put out her own wonderful collection 28 Years Since My Last Confession (check it out!). I went through my writing, both old and new, and chose the ones I hoped would make people smile, think, and feel something.

Yearly Interview Questions

For the last many, many years, I’ve tried to do a yearly interview with our daughters Amy and Lisa. I have one of those dad fantasies that Lisa will find them fascinating  to watch when she gets older (and that Amy would have).

These two pictures are scans of the list of questions I’ve been using. The list has evolved over the years and I don’t always keep to the script, but I think they’re a good jumping-off point.

I’m posting them because some new friends asked me about them and I said I would. I’m hoping they will spark some other parents to do something similar for their kids. I’d love to know what other kinds of questions you come up with – let me know.

I’ve often thought about rewriting them, cleaning them up, but there’s something nostalgic for me about working off the original list…

The first image is my list of questions – along with notes I’ve added over the years.

The second image is a list Lisa generated some years ago. I think she was about 9 or 10. We have a lot of fun with this list – though often she won’t answer all of them.

I hope you enjoy these and that you think about doing this with your own kids. Or maybe with yourself?