One reason men lack vision is because they lack poetry in their lives. Men no longer sing or recite inspirational verse. Our boys are no longer required to memorize the great psalms, hymns, and poems of Christian manhood. This should come as no surprise. The 20th century has wreaked havoc upon chivalry and manhood. The transformation of poetry from the ennobling to the coarse, the banal, or the irrelevent is as much a sign of our national loss of manhood as it is of the decline of decency and civilization.Poetry is essential to a man's life. We should never forget that God chose to communicate through the language of poetry. A large portion of the Scripture from Psalms to The Song of Solomon - even the book of Isaiah in the original language - was written in verse. Why? Because poetry and song allow us to use the beauty of language to paint mental images of victory, of devotion, and of the beauty of life in Jesus Christ.This is why I often begin my speeches or end them with verse. For years, requests for these poems have poured in. Now, in Poems for Patriarchs, I have compiled the most inspirational and vision-communicating selections. The collection includes poems and prose both obscure and popular, but selected because of the profound way they speak to the most important issues in a man's life. They are neither fluffy nor frilly, foppish nor foolish, but virile and often sage, both as to their composition and character. Each chapter in the book contains a generous number of selections, some new, some ancient, but all designed to address the various biblical roles, relationships and seasons in a man's life, from early boyhood to his twilight years.