Poetry Sketches

Poetry Sketches: A Peace Corps Memoir is Eldon Katter's second book of art and poetry. The first, Nature's Poetry, was what he called a "senior citizen project" and focused narrowly on encounters with nature. This book has a much broader theme than nature. Poetry Sketches is a life's journey through art and poetry. To guide the reader on this personal journey, the author introduces a sequence of themes: Beginning, Becoming & Belonging, Connecting Cultures: The Peace Corps Experience (including excerpts from letters written to his parents, poems written during training, teaching in Harar, Ethiopia, the long trip home, and re-entry crisis), Global Pursuits (including poems and sketches from the post Peace Corps years in Uganda, West Africa, and Middle East), and a final theme Retirement & Reflection (an octogenarian's perspective on then and now.) The author shares excerpts from letters, journal and diary entries, along with copies of sketchbook pages. Through this compilation of ephemera, the author reveals a series of life-changing experiences and a pathway to an expanding world view.