A poetic autobiography using a blend of prose and verse to describe Koenig’s initiation to a new life as a man and as a poet.
Jeffrey David McClough
Psychotherapist, New Mexico:
"A marvelous creation whose combination of poetry and prose are masterful and solidify the movement of (Koenig's) life story, touching (the reader) as only honesty and insight can. The revelations in An Invitation To Life are proof of the restorative power of creativity... and beauty."
Excerpt From Preface
"Not knowing why, since my mid-teens I have felt the strange need to write a story of my life. Now I realize my purpose was actually to find the way to a new life.
In order to relate this journey -- of my soul carried along inside the vehicle of my writing -- I first studied my journals and poems over thirty-five years, begun around age fifteen. I have come to believe, through the nearly ten years of constructing this book, that universal, natural stages of spiritual development can guide a person toward the life one's soul dreams of, and was born to live.
Hopefully this story, with evidence from my poems and journals, will support that belief, illustrated by the four phases of the butterfly's life cycle—egg, caterpillar, cocoon, and finally butterfly.
For the first time my poetry and teaching came into harmony with each other, thirty years having gone into this process, as described in Shedding Leaves To Wings.
Shedding Leaves to Wings
. . .The leaves are forming
Around my aging body,
The brilliant scales
Of the wings
Of the butterfly
Of my soul's life,
And these, though seeming
To fall randomly,
Are landing in harmony,
As though each leaf
Were destined to alight
In the design
Of this unique butterfly. . .
Out of the hundreds of accumulating butterfly verses, I began to assemble a second new book of poems, based on the stages of butterfly's life.”