Large Fierce Mammal

For those of you eagerly awaiting your chance to read The Book of Dark Sentiments, I’m releasing here the contents of that tome’s Introduction:

Dark Sentiments is the name of an annual series that appears on my Large Fierce Mammal website every October, each day of that month presenting observations and tales of people, things, doings, and goings on that come from the dark side of Nature, human and otherwise. “Darkness”, as it inspires me, isn’t limited to expressions of evil, mayhem, and bad outcomes. Something can also be considered “dark” if it is unknown, misunderstood, or incorrectly interpreted.  So, depending on your sensibilities good reader, I believe that if the title of this book, let alone the name of its author,  didn’t dissuade you from picking it up, then you will find some modicum of entertainment in what follows. Nevertheless, you may also come to find, albeit too late because by then the arrow will have already found its mark, that some portions are best avoided by those imbued with that tortured combination of empathy, clarity of visualization, and a propensity for nightmares.

My inspiration for the poetry that appears here comes to me through tendrils that lead back to a multitude of personal explorations, discoveries, waypoints, and encounters, all of which have contributed to making me Me. It also comes in no small part from a love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Service, from which I find myself seeking an atmosphere of the sort that might prevail if the two found themselves snow bound for a month in a lonely cabin far from anywhere.