With keen insight and irrepressible spirit, Kentucky poet/songwriter J.E. Pickens delivers a riveting collection of his best work spanning over 30 years – Rockets To the Moon. Published by Xlibris, the book features 89 poems and songs.

“Compiling what I believe to be my best work has been a labor of love,” Pickens said. “By definition, the collection is eclectic in both style and subject matter – there’s something in there for just about everyone.”

An award-winning journalist for three decades, Pickens looks life in the eyes and doesn’t blink – illuminating tragedy and triumph, sin and salvation, despair and deliverance, and the universal quest for romance and love.

Nights get cold when there’s no one to hold/This blanket’s my only companion/It’s like living hell so I scream and I yell/Hear my heartache return from the canyon….

Writing with passion, wit and conversational clarity, Pickens reveals memorable characters embroidered with a variety of fallacies and attributes.

My third cousin Bertha/they said she was worth a/million point five in her prime/But she went off a-rambling/and soon took to gambling/returning home without a dime….

“Some of my pieces are clearly autobiographical, some are pure fiction, and others are a bit of both,” Pickens said. “Readers will laugh, cry and, most important, be compelled to think as they read this work.”

You play the hand that’s dealt you/even when the cards are lame/You choose to either bluff or fold/It’s all part of the game….

“This compilation isn’t candy-coated,” Pickens explained. “It’s about the ups and downs, the highs and lows of love and life – representative of the myriad triumphs and challenges each of us experience.”

Pickens earned a Writer’s Digest Top 100 international award (14,000 entries) for the poem “Silent Treatment” and first place in the Paramount Nashville International Songwriting Contest for “True Love Will Do That.”

As the title implies, hearts, souls and spirits will soar as readers climb aboard and blast off Rockets To The Moon.