Several years back, the good folks at Tupleo Press came up with the idea for The Million-Line Poem. Poets would submit two lines—a couplet—and the world would see what a collaborative poetic effort could and would became. My two lines were from a poem I wrote long ago about The Combat Paper Project, which per Wikipedia, was“formed to help veterans cope with experiences in the war…
My poem, “The Weight of Too Much,” was published in Margie: The American Journal of Poetry in Fall 2006—one of my first poetry publication successes! Margie is an annual literary journal based in Chesterfield, Missouri that features the work of the nation’s leading poets. It journal was established in 2000; it is named after and dedicated to the memory of Marjorie J. Wilson (1955-1977). …
A while back, when I was putting together my abecedarian book-title manuscript, Miss Scarlet in the Library with a Rope, I struggled to find a book I’d read whose title began with the letter X. Then I searched for any book, figuring I could then read it. Nada
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Fence Magazine has accepted two of my poems for publication in Winter 2024. They eschew those (often boring, too often bragging) boilerplate author bios in favor of something entirely different and fun. Each author accepted for publication must submit a statement about what you have been reading recently and maybe a bit about why…
My poem, “Gift Event for Our New Gilded Age” has been accepted for Fall 2024 publication by Gumball Poetry. Per the website, Gumball Poetry is a “single micro-journal in a capsule machine.” After over a decade offering poems published in various venues across the U.S. and on the web…
It’s nearly nine p.m., a July summer night. I’m sitting out in our garden on one of the new chairs that go with the new table where four can comfortably sit, even eat—en plein air entertaining finally and at long last. It’s actually quite nice to have a large enough table. I put hydrangea in a vase in the center and even with my sunset clutter—telephone, two magazines, a glass of white wine—there’s still plenty of room to breathe. Even my pink and orange oilcloth from Corvallis days fits. Maybe this will become my new summer writing room. Especially this time of day when the sun is nearly down and there’s no glare on the iBook screen
A while back now, Sugar Mule published one of my poems in their ongoing project called Via Walt Whitman: a 21st Century Gathering. It is an ode with one of those (hopefully necessary) long explanatory titles: “Ode to the Past & Present Wilt of the Daisy, Bellis perennis, Pressed in The Illustrated Leaves of Grass, a June 1973 Graduation Gift from L.” This poem later appeared in my chapbook, Eternity a Coal’s Throw, published by Burning River Press…
Two of my poems, “On Not Looking Away: A Cento” and “At Harriet Tubman’s Grave in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York,” have been accepted for publication in the Winter 2024 print edition of Fence. Per their website, “Fence is committed to publishing from the outside and the inside of established communities of writing, seeking always to interrogate, collaborate with, and bedevil all the systems that bring new writing to light.” You can read about their history here…
Below is the first poem I ever wrote in couplets aka two-line stanzas. The lines in my poem, “Leda before the Swan”, do not rhyme which means it immediately broke all of the usual couplet rules. Oh well. Couplets are traditionally lines of the same length bearing pairs of successive rhyming lines…
I spent most of this day in my green sanctuary. Away from the world. Hiding out. Holing up by choice. This, the day after the thirty-four guilty counts convicted as felon you-know-who. I weeded. I watered. I fertilized. I scrubbed more green algae from the dahlia fountain. I recycled. I re-planted. I watched birds—goldfinch, sparrows, the flicker—cheep and bounce and hop…
