The following information is the first part of the Introduction in each volume (with some exceptions).  It presents some background information on the motivation and reasoning for this collection. The balance of introduction, and some details of that volume can be viewed by clicking on "About each volume" link and following the links.

Welcome to the (xxx) volume of “The Definitive Collection." Thank you for choosing this book.

This collection of books is the final project of Gary's journey of creating poetry books. This journey began in 2003 with Gary's first book, “A nod and a smile.” At the time of publishing it, Gary had no idea that such a journey would be undertaken. He had compiled the book, and had the layout designed by a company. It was published under his own name, and as far as he was concerned, that was it.

Little did Gary know, what would follow. Little did Gary know, how many poems that he would subsequently write. Little did Gary know, how many people would find value in his first book.

So it was, that almost five years later, he would continue his journey of creating poetry books. Over the next two years, Gary would publish twelve small books under his publishing name "Outside The Square Publishing." These books included a slightly revised, reformatted, and smaller sized version of Gary's first book, “A nod and a smile.” Gary has now called them, his small poetry book collection.

To finish off, Gary reviewed his entire collection of poetry, currently over 2700 poems. He selected what he considered the best of the best (from mostly work not already published, with some exceptions), and place them in “The Definitive Collection.

At first, Gary decided to split the collection into blocks of 500, with an expectation that “The Definitive Collection” would be a five-volume series. After completing the first volume, Gary quickly discovered that the original idea of five volumes should be abandoned.  As you can see, the project expanded considerably to now include 12 volumes of poetry, and one Index volume.

Also at the start, Gary decided that the optimum size for each book should be around 200 pages, both from a cost of production, a manageable content size, and potentially an interest perspective. The last point was made along the lines of “the bigger the book, the easier for the reader to lose interest.”

The poems in these books are presented in the order in which they were written (with several exceptions).

The aim of these books is to touch the reader in such a way, that the person will want to pause and ponder each poem after reading it.

Is such an aim achievable? Now that is a question that only you, the reader, can realistically answer. What I hope is, that for my part, I have given you enough encouragement and inspiration, to at least think about each poem.

The rest is up to you.

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