The work is divided into six sections, which represent the emotion or motivation behind the speaker's obstacles in society. These obstacles may become reminders of the triumphs and failures of a young man's experience, trying to incorporate the wisdom that his older compatriots offer him. The writer's poetic influences lie heavily with the American Modernists. Some poets become characters or subjects within poems. The idea of creating a world within a poem stems from the rejection of tradition posed by the Modernists. Some of these created worlds hold Romantic ideals of grandeur, but most are simple alternatives to an alienating society. A piece like Don't Feed the Sea Lions, suggests that there are negative consequences to creating your own poetic world. It's easy to get lost or to bring abstract ideas to reality. For example, the lion tamer oversteps his bounds by feeding fish and puts others' safety at risk, though the character is based on a historical man, who operated in this manner in the Florida Keys. Some poems offer a safe vehicle to explore alternate realities and fantasies. Other poems seek to explore the damage society does to people, creatures or works of art. In Dead Burmese, the reader confronts the speaker's realization that a dead snake on the side of the road holds insights into the American public's acceptance of raising exotic pets and then releasing them into a foreign ecosystem.--Abstract.