Amazon To The Prairie and to God by Harold L. Gray DieseleBooks World Audience Publishers Category:  Poetry Publisher: World Author Publishers ISBN-10:  1934209589 Type: Fiction Pages: 120 Copyright: April 1, 2007 ISBN-13: 9781934209585 Sorry but I can't get my own name out of the title area. Headaches with trying to cram a poet and a writer all on the same site. This posthumously published book is my attempt to share my father's youthful passion for writing poetry. Dad had come of age on a small, dusty Illinois farm during the Great Depression, where he still found the wherewithal to pursue a college education and follow his many dreams. He began writing in high school, but his time spent at Kansas State Teachers College (now Pittsburg State University) provided a revealing outlet on paper for both his love of the Kansas prairie and for God. A war and his desire to follow the dreams expressed in his lines meant leaving his writing passion in Kansas, the state he would eventually return to in retirement and to be buried, as he once had written, on a Kansas hillside. Fortunately, my father saved his working and finished drafts for me to find. Why he never wrote another line after 1941, I can only guess. At least, this very personal and insightful collection of poetry helped me better understand my father. Kevin L. Gray, Paola, Kansas     Excerpt "At least he captured the spirit of Kansas in his poem [To the Prairie and to God], as he did in so many others." -- Kevin L. Gray

Raymond F. Hilliard, Professor of English, University of Richmond
"The rich variety of poems in this collection conveys the sensitive and often lyrical response of a young Midwesterner to the world around him at a time that now seems quite distant to most of us, the late 1930s and early 1940s. The poems display an exuberant interest in the possibilities of poetic form (I admire the use of repetition in "Die Slowly in Kansas," for instance), wit (for example, "On the Strand" and "To a Lunchkit") and a serious religious temperament ("One Cross and Two Others," for example). Harold Gray's son has lovingly prepared these poems for publication, and his highly personal introduction provides a moving portrait of a man who was many things--devoted father and husband, bookkeeper and accountant, Boy Scout Leader, outdoorsman, Navy nurse during World War II, devout Christian and poet. One finishes a reading of the poems with great appreciation, but also with regret that Harold Gray did not continue adding to them after 1941. This collection is "worth looking into."


Stephen E. Meats, Professor of English and Department Chair, Pittsburg State University and Poetry Editor The Midwest Quarterly
"The poems of Harold L. Gray, which range from humorous to serious, reveal a young man grappling with the great questions of purpose and being that trouble all serious thinkers. They also show, through echoes of numerous 19th and early 20th century poets, particularly Carl Sandburg and e. e. cummings, that Harold was a careful student of poetry."