Aspire: Poems by Arnold David Richards

In Aspire, Arnie Richards’s latest book of poems, he visits the many corners of his world, kisses them tenderly, and breathes life into them. A precious good morning to each. Arnie is not a bystander in psychoanalysis, in politics, in love, or in poetry. He’s engaged and happening now. He holds inside him everything he’s ever learned, everyone he’s ever known, and every place he’s ever been. This collection of poems is a Book of Knowledge. With many poems having one-word titles, he takes us through the vocabulary of his life and the dictionary of his world. He writes, “my poetic mind beats like my corporeal heart” and indeed it does and the beat goes on. In Aspire, he aims higher.
–Daniel S. Benveniste, PhD author of Libido, Culture, and Consciousness: Revisiting Freud’s Totem and Taboo

The richness of Aspire, poems by Arnold Richards, is the richness of who he is, a highly accomplished psychoanalyst, writer, educator, thinker. He discovered he was a poet at the age of 90, and aspired to fulfill his destiny as poet. In the first poem in this collection, he describes this process, “a lifetime of other thoughts and a lifetime of experience”. In another poem, he realizes, “I write poems to connect with people, connection requires empathy”. His empathy connects with my delight in his poetry! –Merle Molofsky