Reviews
Tom Greening’s poetry takes on the phenomenon and complexity of aging and of being an elder with uncanny depth, wit and his trademark existential humor–befitting his fifty-year career as an existential psychotherapist. Doing away with any lightness and political correctness, these poems will not only make you smile but they will help you face a topic most of us would rather not contemplate: our mortality.
Nader Shabahangi, PhD
President, Existential-Humanistic Institute
CEO, AGeSong & Eldercare Provider
Tom Greening deals creatively with life review, fear of dying, dementia, loss, and the comforts possible in older age. He accomplishes all this with his persistent wit, unique rhyme schemes, and novel imagery. With its honesty, candor, and humor, this book deserves to be read widely.
Carol Barrett, PhD
Professor, Union Institute and University
Author, Calling in the Bones
Poems for and about Elders (Revised & Expanded Edition) is available in ebook format at:
Apple iBooks
Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook
Google Play
Published February 1, 2017
Pages: 104
ISBN (print): 978-1-939686-18-3
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-939686-43-5
Tom Greening studied psychology at Yale, the University of Vienna, and the University of Michigan, but didn’t learn much. Nevertheless, he has practiced psychotherapy in the same office for 50 years. He was Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology for 35 years, and that may have affected his sanity. He is a clinical professor at UCLA and Professor Emeritus at Saybrook Graduate School. In college he read too much Chaucer, Pope, and Dryden, thereby becoming addicted to rhyming couplets. One of his narcissistic goals is to upstage Ogden Nash, while still paying tribute to him:
Cultures may crumble, titans may crash.
We’ll always have Paris, and dear Ogden Nash.
Since the original publication of Words Against the Void, Dr. Greening has been quite prolific, publishing Poems For and About Elders (Revised & Expanded Edition), Our Last Walk: Using Poetry for Remembering and Grieving Our Pets (with Louis Hoffman & Michael Moats), Nasreddin the Psychologist, and Animals I Have Known.
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Sally Gelardin
Poems
An Elder’s Resolution
Life Goes By
Your Desk Drawer
Rescue
Mr. Draper’s Photos
A Consoling Thought
Sirens
Stoic
Homeless
Dale’s Dog
To a Surgeon
Caring
Cancer Free
Senile Synapses
Hospital Waiting Room
My Mind
Exercise?
It’s Not Your Fault
Don’t Tell My Friends
My Ruse
Death Played a Trick
I Plan to See
Iatrogenic Ills
Senile?
I’ve Just Begun
Snail and I
If There’s Still Time
Reasons to Exist
Accept Death?
Don’t Look Too Close
Mortal Dogs
Warding Off Death
I’m in Everyone
On We Tramp
No Fun
Man vs. Tree
Transiency
Maple Syrup
Stopping
Burn My Poems
Still Here
Is There a Seer?
Old Dachshund
Not Aged
Carry On
Brain Fade
My Next Incarnation
Fight Death
Haunting Question
Bring Some Sense
To Live Forever
Master and Pet
How to Become Real?
How to Keep Young
Befuddlement
Not a Crank?
Assure Me
To Any Length
Don’t Laugh
Outwit Death
Not Tottering
Late Life Lunacy
One Last Chance
Fulfilled
New Year’s Eve with Dog
Afterlife?
Addicted to Life
Walking Slowly
The Past
Aging
Evasion
Lizard
Resist Change
An Inspiration?
Worth Doing?
Delaying Death
Anti-Aging
Fighting Aging
Burden
Still Seeking
Aging with My Dog
We Will See
About the Author
