Ruminations: Stories, Essays, and Poems

Ruminations is a collection of random, but sometimes related, stories, essays, and poems spanning a writing journey of over fifty years and encompassing the author's experiences in the military during the Vietnam War, a side diversion to earn a living as a practicing attorney, and then a writing career after he was paid to go away in a corporate merger. The hiatus from being a lawyer provided an opportunity to travel and reflect on life, and the end of life, and how his life had played out over time. These reflections, along with drafts of stories and poems and scraps of paper tucked away in a file cabinet, provide the grist and foundation for this collection.The Vietnam-era related works have common themes running through them, and all except the essay, "Vietnam Story," and the poem, "The Wench is Dead," were written in draft form while the author was in Vietnam or shortly after his return home and gathered dust until he turned to writing full-time. Each of the essays or creative nonfiction stories has its genesis in something the author experienced (e.g., "Strangers on the Appalachian Trail") or learned from his family history ("The Poisoning"). The fictional stories were inspired by a mélange of life experiences and observations and thinking "what if ..." ("Across the Divide") or by current events ("Break the Bubble"). The poetry comes from staring out windows and the author's love of irony, paradox, whimsey, allusion, and allegory. As stated in the first poem, "I Am Not a Poet": "I record impressions, images, ideas, conundrums, /if not from the heart, from the amygdala." For what they are worth, these are eclectic ruminations about life, love, death, and whatever else the author stumbled across over the last fifty years. James Garrison Bio A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law until returning to his first loves: writing and reading good literature. His novel, QL 4 (TouchPoint Press 2017), set in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, has won awards for literary and military fiction, and it was a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. His second novel, The Safecracker (TouchPoint Press 2019), has won legal thriller awards, and it was a category finalist in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. His third novel, What Seems True, (TouchPoint Press September 2021), was inspired by the 1979 murder of the first Black supervisor at a Texas Gulf Coast refinery, a crime for which the shooter was never convicted. His most recent work is Ruminations: stories, essays, and poems, published by TouchPoint Press in February 2024. His creative nonfiction and fiction works and poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies. Sheila-Na-Gig nominated 'Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry' for a 2018 Pushcart prize.