Collected Plautdietsch Poems and Selected Plautdietsch Stories

The author has been guilty of versifying from his early elementary school years in the Kansas public school system of the 1930s. Although the early efforts were nothing more than collections of unconscious iambic and trochaic feet, compliments from teachers, parents, and friends lent sufficient encouragement to keep the fascination alive. The present collection consists primarily of the efforts of recent years, all earlier examples having unfortunately disappeared with the passage of time. The emotions, the inner and outer aspects of the author's young life with which these poems deal, were created and shaped during the Great Depression years of the 1930s. These experiences, heightened by the memory of the economic poverty and hardships of his family situation, caused a deep seriousness to develop in his psyche and most of the poems clearly reflect that.