Esmé Wonders How She’ll Die – for Lisa …perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eyes lie to me? – Terry Pratchett I shot the boy whose piano chanted in
Read moreWell, part self-promotion and part shout-out to a worthy online literary journal. I recently retired from writing poetry, but I still have things in submission and will likely continue trying to find homes for the things I have already written. I’m pleased to direct everyone to Poetry Pacific, where three of the poems from my latest book (“Photo Album: Venezia, 1562,” “Kitsune’s
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I have recently added “A Journal of Sound & Light,” the cornerstone of my 1989 book The Rainwater Chronicles, to the library here at the Pit. Enjoy. A Journal of Sound and Light (pdf)
Read moreI’m exceedingly proud to announce that two of my previous published poems, “Eleven Fables” and “To Be Continued (Ars Poetica)” (both in last year’s Pemmican) have been included in the Western State Colorado University Press anthology, Manifest West. This is a great new series and the quality of the work, which focuses on humor and the West, is outstanding. You can read the poems
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The Summer 2012 issue of Amethyst Arsenic, a great online poetry and art journal, is now available, featuring poetry from Cassandra de Alba, Mary Kovaleski Byrnes, James Caroline, Meaghan Ford, Hannah Galvin, Casey Rocheteau, Rene Schwiesow, Steve Subrizi and many more. Plus, art from Pauline Lim, Ivan de Monbrison and Jessica Pinsky. Also, yes, I have three pieces in it: “1638,”
Read moreIn 2005 my friend and colleague, Lars Bjuvberg, committed suicide in Stockholm. Lars and I weren’t all that close, but his death hit me in a way that I still don’t fully understand. Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that someone so very talented had escorted himself off this mortal stage. Or perhaps it was more complicated –
Read moreI’ve been ecstatic to have some of my poetry accepted in recent months (after the usual stream of rejections that typify the life of the not-yet-famous poet). In this case, the publication in question is Pemmican, an outstanding online journal that’s been around since the early 1990s. They pride themselves on publishing work that is “outside the mainstream of its
Read moreI am haunted by numberless islands… – WB Yeats Walking by the shore at dusk, air leaden with a faith in words. William looks up, says Maud, the sky is full of dragonflies. She stares beyond the sea. That’s nice, Bill. But I’ve a kingdom to burn. Your bugs will be dead by morning. Words are a piper, he says.
Read more– Imbolc 2011, 2:17am MST Old Ethan like a walking stick, daylong shadow: sets him after a halfway pole fifty mile through a dankling woods. October throwed his scarecoat down. November framed those woods a house of smoke. December painted the black days white. Come January, the ringnecks froze in place. Treelocked they’ll sit ’til April flumes their melted songs
Read moreOLD FLORIDA, GIVEN BACK -for Caryn 1. This song is a canopy road, as much between times as place to place, and spanish moss, ghost waters, kudzu, slinking like alligator eyes through the trees.
Read moreHere’s a draft of something I’m working on. To Be Continued (Ars Poetica)
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In 2003 I was fortunate enough to have a collection of my poems published as the featured chapbook in The Dead Mule, one of the finest publications of Southern literature in the country. Since then TDM has undergone some changes and my chapbook is no longer available in their archive. So I thought I’d pull it all together and make
Read moreHe is nearly finished, bella. They want it erected in the Piazza della Signoria. Already some are calling him a masterwork. That’s nice, dear. Can you move your things? Lucia is stopping by.
Read more– for Angela 1. The spirit country is too vast to string with wire, to arc into a blade-sharp wind and stand tar-soaked poles across the bottomless miles.
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lullaby pit 