A CLOSED MIND IS AN OPEN TRAP New And Selected Poems is a collection of Steve Michael Pape's newest poetry combined with a generous helping of the best poems from his previous collections, as selected by the author. When he published "The Awakening Soul, his first book of poetry, in October 2009, Steven Michael Pape introduced himself to his readers by saying that he had been writing poetry for 18 years. Eighteen years is a relatively long time to be at your craft, especially when that time frame places Mr. Pape's first poetic efforts at the tender age of seventeen. 17 is a pivotal age for a young person, then, now and in any era, in this or any other century. And while many thoughtful adolescents write poetry, most of them do not continue to do so for more than a few years at most. They write until they feel that they have properly vented their innermost thoughts or until they are distracted by family, careers, video games or other worthwhile pursuits available in the twenty-first century. So here is Steven Michael Pape still at it, his soul still awakening, still believing in the potency of the spoken word: "This is the spoken word, and this is the truth An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" ................................................... "Some of them real and some dredged from the depths There are tales of life and then tales of death." There are many poems here about life, death, and death in life, and life in death. The death in life poems are mainly about the machine, a recurring concept which seems to describe the lot of the present day working class young Englishman: "We are part of the machine Rusted by the sweat of innocents Held conscious by our thoughts." But then: "Some refuse the control, Militant minds in chaos united Trying to overthrow the machine." Innocence is another recurring theme, in both the new poems and in the selected, older poems. Despite the raging unemployment, the unpaid bills, the despair he sees everywhere in his native land, Mr. Pape finds solace in the word itself, in the memories of his own innocent times and in the faces of the children, just born and yet to be born, for whose future he is both cautiously optimistic and solicitous. While there is no more than a slight glimmer of hope in the poems about his city, there is something of a ragged beauty to be found there, amongst the stark, realistic observations he makes of the streets he walks daily. Much more beauty, hope and enlightenment appear in the frequent poems about nature, about the night and the moonlight: "Vibrant bright full moon tonight It's everywhere in my sight Eclipsing heaven with its glow Encased by planets with its show. A vast light bulb in the black sky Just a hint of cloud covers the eye Mysterious night full of desire Brightest midnight do not expire." This is a poet, who has come into his own, who writes out of anger, despair, love of family, love of nature and his own observing mind observing his soul observing itself: "People are born as others die, It's all the same in my minds' eye Buddhists teach of being reborn, A pretty girl, a rose, a thorn." In the poem, An American in Paris, which ends with the lines, Le poete est mort, Le poete est mort, Mr. Pape also writes: "Tonight will be his calling, the day of his rebirth In an upstairs apartment as the night draws still He feels the end approaching, he is ready The strangest life he has ever known." No doubt. you will come to the same conclusion when you have read and re-read and digested the poems in this fine collection by a richly talented and devoted writer: Le poete est vivant "