Pre-Owned The Freedom of the Ignored (Paperback) 0997310278 9780997310276

9780997310276. Pre-Owned: Good condition. Trade paperback. Language: English. Pages: 74. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 74 p. Poetry. THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED, the author's debut poetry book, asks the reader to move beyond the stereotype of a politician and invites the sharing of Senator O'Neill's most intimate details of his life as an elected official. In his poems the author conveys an ongoing journey informed by the complexity of his relationships with other legislators as well as his personal struggle in caring for his lifelong partner who has multiple sclerosis. This book offers a fascinating window into the lives of citizen legislators and the intensity of the decisions they often face as they fulfill their civic responsibility to us as elected officials.

"'Here lies a great poet and a great politician.' Coming across a tombstone with such engraved words, most of us might say, 'They buried two people in that grave.' But not if it was Senator Bill O'Neill interred there--an insightful politician with the soul of a poet, as this terrific book shows. We're lucky that Bill's still kicking, and writing, and a long way from needing a tombstone."--Senator Fred Harris

"New Mexico State Senator Bill O'Neill is a poet who happens to be a politician and a man with a long history of doing good works for others. He's a poet with a political conscience who doesn't necessarily write political poems. In his fascinating first book, THE FREEDOM OF THE IGNORED, O'Neill writes as a master appreciator about the world of legislative give and take, the culture of temporary hierarchy, the personalities that make a democracy work, and the nobility of those who consider the political arena to be a place as much for integrity to flourish as for movidas to be schemed. He is also a poet who can be honest about both love's survival though suffering and the humor that carries love along. Surely one of the most moving and powerfully made poems I've read i