POEMS FOR MEN IS OUT!!

[00:00:46] Some smoky coffee shop in a time long past, right? A time when poetry wasn't tethered together with snow cone colored hairdos and the fact that incendiary devices might lurk underneath the, I don't know, the pride flag cape tied to the back of the person's body who was screaming out the verse.

[00:01:13] No, gather together for this day, which is, it's a big day. POEMS FOR MEN is out. POEMS FOR MEN exists. It now exists with its beautiful cover, with the resounding statistics that are etched into the cover from now until forever.

[00:01:37] And the most important part of all, right? The most important part of all POEMS FOR MEN is its method of meeting men. Meeting men and reminding them that, dude, this play has been on a very, very, very long time. And it's played out just this way for a very, very, very long time.

[00:02:05] And while life can be brutal, and while life is suffering, you have to understand that there is at the very least brotherhood. And it's not just brotherhood of those who you, you know, exist on this plane with today, but it's brotherhood that has existed on this planet for hundreds, thousands of years.

[00:02:29] Right? And if you don't believe me, I'm going to read to you from Sonnet 29, just five lines, William Shakespeare. Out of the pages of the very book we speak of, what is this page? What is this? You start to quote page. Page 18. Sonnet 29, William Shakespeare. This is one of those sections of the book that are bold. So you'll be able to find this real easy.

[00:02:56] In some portions of the book, well, in some of the included texts from other poets, I boldened, bolded? Bolded. The text to take your eyes right to the lines in that poem that really stand out to me. So you're not just kind of, you know, because there are poems like Matthew Arnold's Rugby Chapel. That is, it's a long poem. But there's some parts in there that are so powerful.

[00:03:24] But here in Sonnet 29, you know, William Shakespeare in his sonnets does more than just love, lovey-dovey stuff. You know, he does the whole gamut. And in Sonnet 29, it is basically the man poet, the man poet, the man's lament poet, right? And right about in the middle, he says,

[00:03:49] And look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope. Right? No matter who you are, no matter what man you are, you could wake up. You could wake up in a Bugatti, a bed-made Bugatti, whatever. No matter what man you are, you look upon yourself and curse your fate from time to time. Right? Right? You live in a box, you live in a mansion.

[00:04:18] You wish me like to one more rich in hope. I wish I were a man with more hope. I wish I were like the poor guy who had more hope. I wish I were like the rich guy who had more, you know what I mean? Featured like him. Featured like him. Think about that. And I look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope. Featured like him. Like him with friends possessed. Oh, I want to look like him. I want to have friends like him. Desiring this man's art and this man's scope.

[00:04:49] Right? These are the insecurities of men, and women even, to some degree, that are part of the human condition. Right? But he wraps this whole stanza up. Well, not really stanza. But he wraps this whole succession of lines up with the trap that all people fall into from time to time. I, myself, I've fallen into it several times.

[00:05:17] Just in 2025 alone. He says, And look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope. Featured like him. I want to look like him. Like him with the friends possessed. I want his buddies. I want to have cool friends like him. Desiring this man's art and that man's scope. Right? With what I most enjoy contented least. And to me, this is the saddest of all.

[00:05:47] Right? This, to me, my sword in the throat of this is Warhammer right now. Right? Because, and I know you guys are probably tired of hearing about it. But I really am contented with this hobby. You know what I mean? It really, it doesn't make me more prepared. It doesn't add anything cool. It's really not a cool thing. It's really kind of a dorky thing.

[00:06:15] And a silly thing. And I absolutely love it. And it's so easy, man, for people to get stuck in a world with what I most enjoy contented the least. Right? Because you're worried about money. You're worried about the woman. You're worried about the car. You're worried about the house. You're worried about the cologne. You're worried about the hairdo. You're worried about the shirt. And everything's got to be put just perfectly and just so.

[00:06:43] And your whole life is tethered up into this. And then you've got the career. And everything is tethered up and wrapped up in just this sort of way that you think it's supposed to look. And all that time and all that money and all that effort gets sunk into these things. These fruitless things that you're doing for other people. And then you realize, oh, shit. I also got to... But I really do kind of like bowling. You know?

[00:07:13] What I really like is whatever. Fishing. You know what I mean? What I really like is X. And I'll never do it anymore. Because I'm too busy stuck. I'm too busy stuck. Cursing my fate. Wishing I had more hope. Wishing I looked like him. Wishing I had friends like him. Wishing I... Oh, man. You know? A lot of people who don't appreciate Shakespeare, they think like Romeo and Juliet and sonnets about love and all that.

[00:07:43] But what his superpower was, was capturing... This is what his real superpower was. It was not only capturing the things that made up life in his life and in his purview and putting them into plays and into poetry. He was capturing the timeless. Right? He was capturing the timeless. The things that would some 500 years later now

[00:08:13] be just as powerful as they were back in his day. 600 years. Well, no. 500 years. Pause for coffee sip. I'm drinking Wawa coffee today. My morning is a little weird. We are... It's off to the fishing hole today to celebrate. Celebrate the book release. You will be getting a podcast from EJ Snyder later today, probably around noon-ish. Myself and EJ Snyder, the first of EJ Snyder Naked and Afraid,

[00:08:42] the whole nine yards, man. He was fun. I never actually talked to the guy before. But he was a lot of fun, man. He was a good time. He's part of this Prepper Camp Speaker Series we're doing. So you're going to get to hear from him. You're going to get to hear about his background. He's pretty... He lets it rip. But... So hang in there. Some of it gets a little long-winded because he's got a lot of stuff on his plate and he's got a lot of experience. Tremendous experience. But you'll learn a lot.

[00:09:10] He's going to have some great classes to teach for sure. But yeah, we've never really... We talk about the classes in passing. We talk about the 60 classes and all that in passing. But we rarely get to the point where you get to meet the people. You know? Yeah. It's rare. What else? I want to read with you a little bit. I'm supposed to pick my dad up here in like 15 minutes but I don't think it's going to happen.

[00:09:38] I'm going to take my time with this. Have fun with you. Amazon.com. Poems for Men. James Walton. Type that in. It'll come up. It's a beautiful cover. Oh my God. Okay. Let's read this one. This one... I just had a minute heart attack. Minute.

[00:10:06] Because I rushed this poem in to the book in the final hour. Right? I really did. I mean, I rushed this thing in like the last... I might have finished it up the last day before submitting it for published. And it's an important one. And I had several iterations of it and then I had changed some of it and put some back. Yeah.

[00:10:35] This poem all was born out of one moment. I mean, it's born out of a lot of moments and it's born out of a lot of conversations that you have with your family and kids and all that kind of stuff. But it was really born out of one moment. And I don't remember... I was talking to myself. Maybe I think I feel like it was like on a drive home from school. My oldest, right? And I could tell that through this year he's really been beaten to death

[00:11:03] by the platitudes of older men. You know what I mean? You should this and in my day that and yada yada. Like, you know. I just tell. You can just tell when you talk to him and you see the look in his eyes when you say certain things. You know, like, okay. This guy's getting... He's getting enough. And I forget what I was saying to him but it was not something critical or anything like that. And he just gave me this weird look and he was like, well, let me guess. It was way better in your day.

[00:11:33] And then he looked down. And... I don't know. You know, these little weird moments that might not sound like anything to you they stick into me like a hot brand. You know what I mean? I see them and I see sort of like... And you know what? A lot of times like I'll impart great meaning into something like this a moment like this and he probably doesn't even remember it. He probably forgot it. But there was something there. There was something there. There was like a...

[00:12:01] A woefulness about life and the future of life and all that. You know what I mean? And just coming up the way that they're coming up with the existential dread and all that kind of stuff. It pushed me to write this poem called To My Boys and that's really it. Right? And I think you'll understand exactly what I'm trying to get at. Right? Doom.

[00:12:32] It's a good opening. Doom. The word that looms over every generation. It's the truth. Graying and yapping. Men will claim this time lost. Their time was better. The truth is it's never been better. Your generation is the closest to truly knowing the truth. The truth rarely comes with wide hips and blue eyes. However,

[00:13:01] nothing gets better without it. The cost of your age is distraction and convenience. Make more than you take. Remember above all my sons, each day it is you who makes your reality. The markets, the news, the feed. Powerless. You knock the arrow. You pull the string. You fire on target each day.

[00:13:31] Should you ever feel the hot claws of despair simply question your aim. What is your target? To be a man is to give. A man's attention is gold to a woman. A man's attention is safety, confidence, and strength to a child. You are power. Men of my generation have forgotten they are power. Suffering is part of the deal.

[00:14:00] Build a relationship with it. Choose what you suffer that the suffering not surprise you as much. If it's too much to bear, wake early and slow down. See the world. God made you an entire world to enjoy. See every leaf, bird, listen to every morning song. Watch the sun set and rise.

[00:14:30] And when all else fails, there's always fishing. Yeah. That's that, PBN family. That is that. Yeah, we got a lot of great ones in here, ma'am. Someone is going to read the poem Questions from the Other Side and it's going to be, it's going to be the,

[00:15:00] it's going to pour. That's all I could say. It's going to pour. It's going, it's a tough one. It's a tough one to read. Suicide, another tough one to read. There's a lot in here. There's a lot in here that pours out from me and a lot in here that pours out from the body, mankind, if you understand. What else should we read you?

[00:15:32] Be in love. The sole female who made her way into poems for men, Anne Bront. I thought it would be Christina Rossetti, the daughter of, I'm sorry, the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Awesome poet in her own right. Actually more famous than him, truly. But The Narrow Way by Anne Bront, The Narrow Way is just so good. It's just so, it's the message of our time, you know.

[00:16:02] And I put these two lines in bold because they really, I mean, I'd be lying if I said they didn't change my life when I read them. And this is not an old standard for me. This is a newer poet that I read. The poet is not newer, but the poem is new to me. Maybe a year, two years max, right? But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose. I cannot

[00:16:31] think of a message that is simmered down into two lines like better than that for our time. You know what I mean? I hope it resonates. It's just so powerful to be in the age of comfort and convenience. But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose. We do a lot of craving this day and age, men in particular, right? Craving for this job or this money or

[00:17:00] this car or this girl. And it all comes with, you know, you just better be prepared to grasp at the thorns in order to get the rose. Nuptial Sleep, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, one of my favorites. Nuptial Sleep is one of the first ones I read by Dante and just always, I don't know, just always sat with me. Yeah, it's a

[00:17:30] beautiful one. A lot of personal stuff. The Orchard Pit, Sirens. Sirens is a great one, man. Sirens is a weird one. I'll tell you the backstory on Sirens one day. Really, really weird. When I wrote Sirens, I had just this insane revelation about, well, you gotta read it. You gotta read it. It's pretty clear, right?

[00:18:00] Oh, how about Matthew Arnold Urania? This one I wrote because, I don't know, I just, the first time I read this poem, the first line of the poem, just so, was so my wife, it was amazing. You know? I'll read you the opening. she smiles and smiles and will not sigh while we for hopeless passion die. Yet she

[00:18:30] could love, those eyes declare, were but men nobler than they are. I don't know, when I read that, I just, it always makes me think of Michelle, right? There's a really silly poem in here called Marriage that I think, if you're not married, it won't make any sense, but if you're married, it'll be like, pretty much, right? A.E. Hausman was another poem that came in very late.

[00:19:00] It's poem 31 from his collection More Poems, and it is, I really included it in the women's section for, did I put it in women? Oh, it rounds out the women's section, doesn't it? Yep, Seeing and Experiencing Life is right after the end of the women's section, or the section on women, is rounded out by this poem by A.E. Hausman, because it really is fundamentally about something that all men have to wrap their head around at least

[00:19:29] at one point in their life, and it's that sometimes you just don't get her. Sometimes you just don't get the girl. Despite your best efforts, despite how you feel, despite the fact that in the moment you feel like there was one woman put on this earth for you and it was her and no matter what happens, life can only be sufficient if you have her. And a really important

[00:19:59] skilled man is to be able to survive that, to be able to walk away from that. Because I like you better than suits a man to say, it irked you, and I promised I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us we parted stiff and dry, farewell, farewell said you, forget me, farewell, I will, said I. And the poem goes on to explain just that.

[00:20:28] To explain just that. Yeah, that's an important part of being a boy and a man, really, truly. I could tell you stories. I could tell you stories. When I was about 12 years old, there was a 19-year-old girl I used to chase around, call, bother incessantly because I swore, I swore there was a chance in hell. I had no idea. You know what I mean? But you

[00:20:58] get smitten. This is what it is. Those we lost. The poet who loses his pen, his life does end. This is my own work. Though he stumbles amongst the masses, at distance he appears the norm. 30 years ahead, a eulogy read, but make no mistake, this poet's long been dead. Yeah. This poet who loses his life, the poet who loses his pen,

[00:21:28] his life does end. It's weird. I mean, yeah, things die in us. Sometimes we get them back, sometimes we don't. The menu is great. The menu is a phenomenal. Like, old, old, old poem I wrote probably 12 years ago called A Run Through Tired Woods is in here also. It's out, folks. It is what it is. I'm not going to beat it to death anymore. There's some greats in here. There's some amazing

[00:21:58] poets in here. There's a lot of my own work. Like I said, it's about 40 or so poems. And you're going to enjoy it, man. Maybe it is the gift. Maybe it's not the gift for Father's Day, but what I can tell you about this is there's at least one person in your life who needs to read it. Could be you. Could be you listening to me right now. But if it's not you, maybe it's somebody younger. Maybe it's somebody older. One of the first people to actually reach

[00:22:28] out and express serious interest in the book, like, oh, I can't wait to read it, and reach out via email, was a woman. So I'm doing a lot of targeting in men, and I probably need to open it up. The end of a show like this, didn't even wake my son up yet. But this is all because of you guys. Period.

[00:22:59] Make no mistake about it. This moment, this day, where I get to release this book, and I woke up like a cranky bitch. I mean, just a cranky baby this morning. I've been cranky the last couple days. I don't know what it is. I might know what it is. But anyway, here we are. You know what I mean? In this moment, in my life, a man who really has no, never, never,

[00:23:30] no reason to be upset. I mean, really. And I just want to thank you. That's all. I want to thank you because this is it. This thing doesn't come to fruition without you. Most of the books that I've written, the Christmas hook, never. The darker trails, never. Those books never come to life if not for you. Poems for men never comes to life if not for you. Because you're the audience. You're the people. You're the readers. You're the guys who go out and gals who go out and buy the books.

[00:24:01] And then I say, well, you know, I'm not a New York Times best seller, but I'll tell you what, this book was meant to exist. Spread the word, folks. Tell everybody to get their hands on it. Like I said, what's really cool about poems for men, I think, in terms of the gift-giving side of things, is it's a $10 topper. Like, it's $10. You got Amazon Prime, it's $10 free delivery. So, even if dad wants

[00:24:31] a thing, or you have plans to get dad a thing, you just throw this on top. Like, what can you even get for $10 anymore? You know what I mean? But, I appreciate you guys. Enjoy the day. Like I said, The Rising Republic is out. The EJ Snyder podcast will be out eventually at some point today. That's out in video as well. That'll be on YouTube and everywhere else if you follow us over there. And that's it. That's it, man. It's going to be a big weekend.

[00:25:01] Heading up to the Jones Homestead tomorrow. We're going to have some fun with the Ration of Ruin, guys, celebrate a little bit. It's a good life. I hope yours is too. Maybe more importantly than hoping your life is good, I hope that you can recognize the good things in your life. Right? Enjoy the rest of your day, folks. It's Friday. Got to enjoy that a little bit, right? Talk to you soon.