Richard Sinay, Longtime California English Teacher, Releases Poetry Collection on Love and Loss

Richard Sinay, who taught English and reading at the high school and college level in Orange County, California, for 35 years, has released a new poetry collection, "When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought..." The book, listed at https://www.amazon.com/When-Sessions-Sweet-Silent-Thought/dp/1965216188, is his ninth publication. It follows a run of nonfiction titles on education, family and golf. The poems center on two experiences, the joy of finding and being in love and the sadness of losing it. Sinay writes that he hopes readers will find "one or two" poems that help them reach the same emotions he describes.

The title is the opening line of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 30, one of the best-known meditations on memory and regret in English poetry. In that sonnet, the narrator spends most of the poem in what the book's description calls an outcast state. He mourns failures in love, in work and in the use of his time. The mood turns when he thinks of the person to whom the sonnet is addressed. The thought of that person immediately lifts his spirits. Sinay uses this reversal as the organizing idea for his collection.

Poetry about love is among the oldest and most widely read forms in English. It is also a form many readers meet first in a classroom, often through Shakespeare's sonnets. Sinay spent three and a half decades in that setting, teaching English and reading to high school and college students in Orange County. His new collection draws on the same source material he would have put in front of students, but it speaks to adult readers in their own voice. It is aimed at general readers who want verse about relationships rather than a scholarly study of the sonnet form. The book is a reminder that a Renaissance idea still maps onto ordinary emotional life.

The central claim of the collection is that love moves a person in both directions. In the book's description, Sinay writes that love "can bring one down and lift one up to new heights of happiness." The collection is built to reflect that range. Some poems are upbeat and are meant to give the reader joy and happiness. Others, in the author's words, share "the agony of lost love" and are meant to bring sadness. Rather than settling on a single mood, the book follows the pattern of Sonnet 30, in which grief and gladness sit close together and a single thought can shift the balance.

The structure gives readers a way to approach the book by feeling rather than by sequence. Someone who has recently fallen in love may gravitate toward the upbeat poems. Someone coping with the end of a relationship may seek out the poems on loss. Sinay frames the collection as a set of emotional reference points, with each poem offering a reader a chance to recognize a feeling. His stated hope is modest and specific: that a reader will find one or two poems that carry them to the emotions he describes. The book makes no claim to teach a theory of love or to offer advice on relationships.

The collection is a departure from the books that make up most of Sinay's bibliography. His recent work includes two titles in his Confessions Series: Confessions of an English Teacher: How Textbooks Affect Literacy Improvement and What to Do to Solve It, and Confessions of an English Teacher: All About the Teaching of Writing at the High School Level. Those books address instruction, literacy and writing pedagogy. This one speaks to emotional experience. It uses a classroom classic as its starting point but is written for readers outside the profession, and it carries over the author's long familiarity with how poetry is read and taught.

"I hope the reader finds one or two that help them reach the same emotions," said Richard Sinay, author of the collection.

The book is aimed at readers of love poetry, both those who prefer verse that celebrates romance and those drawn to poems about heartbreak. It may also appeal to readers who know Sonnet 30 and want a contemporary collection that follows its emotional arc. Teachers and former students who know Sinay's work in the Confessions Series may be curious to see his turn to verse. Because the poems are organized around feeling rather than argument, the book can be read in short sittings, one poem at a time. For readers who have experienced both the lift of new love and the weight of its loss, the collection is meant to offer company in either mood.

Sinay's career outside the classroom has produced a varied body of work. His first book was Who We Met on the Way to Stanford: A Father's Memoir, an account of how he and his son met famous golfers while pursuing a golf scholarship at Stanford. His second, How to Get a Golf Scholarship to Stanford: A Parent's Guide, was written for parents of golfers. His third, Observations of America and My Ancestral Past: An Epistolary Autobiography, is a daily account of a twenty-five-thousand-mile trip around the country. He then wrote Crazy Little Children Are Jangling the Keys of the Kingdom: The Estrangement Epidemic in America. The poetry collection extends that range into a new genre.

"When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought..." is listed on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/When-Sessions-Sweet-Silent-Thought/dp/1965216188. Readers can use that page to see the available formats, current pricing and purchasing options. The book is categorized as poetry. Journalists, reviewers, librarians and educators who want to learn more about the book or request an interview with the author can reach Sinay through the contact channels associated with the release. No review copies, event dates or special editions have been announced at this time.

The collection adds to a bibliography that now spans nine publications across memoir, education, sports and family life, and it marks Sinay's first book of poetry in that list. Two of his most recent titles belong to the Confessions Series, which examines how English is taught in California high schools and community colleges, so the poetry collection also shows the author working outside his established subject areas. Sinay says he spends most of his time reading, writing and playing golf, and the new book reflects the first two of those habits. Further publication plans have not been announced.

About Richard Sinay and the book: Richard Sinay taught English and reading at the high school and college level in Orange County, California, for 35 years. He lives in Palm Desert, California, and is the author of nine books, including the Confessions Series, a Stanford golf memoir and parents' guide, an epistolary autobiography of a cross-country trip, and a study of estrangement in America. His newest work, "When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought...," is a poetry collection about the joy of finding love and the sadness of losing it. More information and purchasing details are available at https://www.amazon.com/When-Sessions-Sweet-Silent-Thought/dp/1965216188.