The book that inspired me to write was Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.  Although I was disturbed by Miller's male-chauvanism , his passion for life and his love of writing filled me with a deep desire to write.

In the introduction to this book,  Poet Karl Shapiro calls Miller, "the greatest living writer."  

Much of Miller's work was banned because he wrote freely of xex.  His goal was not to write about the erotic but to describe the whole truth of life as he knew it.

Much of my own writing is about canonized saints  who loved life and humanity with great compassion.  Mother Teresa, Called to Love; What Mother Teresa taught Me, Working With Mother Teresa, the Saints of  Molokai , Dorothy  Day, A Passion for  Peace.

Miller put a series of incompatible words together  and created wisdom."Man is not at home in the universe.  The deepest question is why.  The very asking is cosmic sabotage." His vocabulary is intense and shocking.  He writes with a vengence.

 "I will give you Horatio AAlger as he looks the day after the Apocalypse when all the stink has cleared away." 

He wrote, "I have no money, no resources, no hopes.  I am the happiest man alive."  

A radical optimist who could celebrate  his  own problems , managing to see  the beauty and joy of existence even in a slum or sewer. 

He found repugnant a world paralyzed by traditional gross caricatures. posing as truths.  

He described Mrytle Avenue in New York City  as "full of the magnificent emptiness of progress and enlightenment, emptier than a vacuum,, emptier than the word  God in the mouth of an unbeliever."

His work is powerfully visual.  He stacks daring words on other shocking words as a painter mixes colors.

Every time I read Miller I am torn between continuting to read his  compelling words and putting the book aside so I can return to my computer and attempt ti describe my soul on paper.