The Raleigh Review is a promising new online literary journal based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. My poem, “Las Vegas, Age Fifteen“, is currently featured as the poem of the week on their website, where you can hear me read it aloud. In addition to falling in love for the first time, at fifteen I also followed in my father’s footsteps by taking up tournament chess. With the help of an ambitious coach, I played most of the cash-prize tournaments in Las Vegas, winning a small amount of money, and coming dangerously close to a jackpot. I gave up after a year, and to this day I have a visceral aversion both to Las Vegas and to any form of competitive gaming. Still, the masculine angst, psychological warfare, and neon-light-induced migraines eventually made good fodder for a poem.
Category Archives: Publications
Poem and Two Reviews in Poetry International
I received my contributor’s copy of Poetry International (SDSU Press, 2010) yesterday afternoon. It is an excellent annual anthology of poetry, essays, and reviews from the U.S. and abroad. I am honored to have my short poem, “At the Zoo” appear alongside poems by living poet-heroes of mine such as Yehuda Amichai, Stephen Dunn, and David St. John. I plan to read this poem tomorrow night at the Carnegie Art Museum as part of my set.
At the request of reviews editor Sarah Maclay, I also reviewed two books for this double-issue edition. Julia B. Levine’s Ditch Tender is voraciously associative in its exploration of the human condition. Robert Gibb’s World Over Water burns with the quiet intensity of the past. I am equally excited to discover new authors, books, and ideas about poetry through this 445-page literary tome. Like firewood stacked in the shed, there is fuel here to last all year, and I am grateful to have contributed my own small share of kindling to the mix.
Reading at the Ruskin Art Club
I spent a rich and meaningful afternoon reading poems with fellow Pacific University Alumni: Kathryn Belsey, Michelle Bitting, Jonathan Harris, and George Wallace–as well as eminent faculty member David St. John. The Ruskin Art Club played host, thanks to the ever-gracious Elena Karina Byrne, to this reunion of sorts. Afterward I heard audience members remark that they felt the variety and quality of the readings gave testament to the strength of Pacific’s writing program. David St. John kindly remarked that, to him, the real secret of teaching is that one actually gets back, through the students, so much more than one gives. It was an afternoon full of generosity and goodwill–not to mention outstanding poetry.
I also took this occasion to debut my new limited-edition broadside of the poem “Recipe for the Broken.” The poem was first published in “Walt’s Corner” of The Long Islander, the newspaper founded by Walt Whitman in 1838. Fittingly, the column is now curated by George Wallace. The poem and background image are printed on sturdy 8.5″ x 11″ paper as part of The Broadsider Volume 2, Series 12 (Poor Souls Press 2010), conceived and created by Paul Fericano. A limited quantity of hand-numbered and signed prints are now available for sale on this website.
Poem in The Ojai Bubble
I was pleased to receive contributors’ copies today of a promising new local publication, The Ojai Bubble. My poem , “All the Westerners in the Japanese Restaurant,” is artfully laid out on the inside back cover. The magazine overall–conceived, created, and printed in Ojai–contains a mix of thoughtful editorials, photos, and poems as eclectic and delightful as the by-turns-quaint-and-sassy small town I am proud to call home. Kudos to poet and journalist Nancy Gross for expanding in this direction, bringing new and familiar voices together under one shimmering cover.
This inaugural issue is available now at select locations throughout Ojai.
Poem Online at “A Change in the Wind”
One of my poems made its debut today on “A Change in the Wind,” Kit Stolz’s excellent blog about climate change. Kit frames the issues at the heart of this poem beautifully. I am pleased to have it put out in this way to his thoughtful readership.
It is also an incredibly timely, and circuitous, reminder (from The Muse, to me, to Kit, back to me today) of the importance of relating to nature on its own terms. In light of the recent wildlife tragedy in my own front yard, I find an odd comfort in rereading this piece that came through me, one day, quietly, into this strange world of ours.
Thanks, Kit, for giving quarter to this poem.
Three Poems in Iota 85
I received my contributor’s copy of Iota 85 today. It’s a beautiful and sturdy, perfect-bound volume with French flaps, packed with free-verse and formal poems and reviews from across the UK and worldwide. As I mentioned before, this is my first publication in a literary journal overseas.
I also happen to have recently made an audio recording for KPCC of one of my poems in this issue, entitled “Yellow.” That audio excerpt is available for listening on the Cyberfrequencies website. Another poem in this issue is dedicated to our son. It’s called “To Friends Not Knowing What to Say,” and explores how language fails us in times of loss.
I look forward to reading through this issue with interest. Copies can be purchased from the Iota website. They are also still accepting entries for their 2009 International Poetry Competition.
Poem in San Pedro River Review
I received my contributor’s copy of San Pedro River Review today. This, their second issue, features emerging and established voices from the rural Heartland and the wild Southwest–brimming with Studebakers, bandannas, milk cows, and greasy spoons. Strange company for my tribute poem to the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, wherein I give birth to a twin brother for his “Mr. Cogito” persona in a poem called “Mr. Ergosum Speaks.” Still, this character somehow seems to fit in to such rough-and-ready company, like a sly European gunslinger in a Western saloon.
Sadly, something must have gone awry with my email submission, as not all of the line breaks came out quite right. I didn’t think to ask for a galley. And so, for those of you who might wonder, I include the correctly-formatted text of the poem, below. Despite this minor nuisance (a peril of the electronic age), the issue came out terrific overall. You can pick up all forty six pages of delicious new poems from Antigone Books or Mostly Books in Tucson, Arizona or from Bart’s Books in Ojai, California–or order your copy by mail using the address on their website. It will no doubt turn out to be the best six bucks you’ve spent in awhile.
And now, the poem:
Poem in PoetryBay Online
I just discovered that one of my poems is now available in the Fall 2009 issue of PoetryBay Online. This issue is loaded with good poems from wonderful poets from the Pacific University MFA program–like my illustrious colleague and alumna pal Michelle Bitting, the ever-stunning Ellen Bass, tough-and-tender Dorianne Laux, and my esteemed former faculty advisers Joe Millar and Marvin Bell. Not to mention Robert Bly, Kim Stafford, Lyn Lifshin, and Nick Carbó–the list goes on. As online journals go, this one is a heavyweight, and I feel lucky to appear in such good company. Enjoy!
Interdisciplinarian
I had a great time recently meeting Julie B. Montgomery, a painter who incorporates words in her works, and Ken McAlpine, a wily travel writer, in a round-table discussion for the August issue of Ventana Monthly. “An Author, a Painter, and a Poet” sounds like the beginning of a joke–but turned out to be the start of a great conversation. The editor, Matt Katz, then focused our lively banter into a print article on “the quiet art of words.”
I also had the pleasure of reading some poems on Thursday night for the opening of the “Profusion of Thoughts” gallery exhibit at the Ventura County Administration building. Thanks to the ingenuity of the Ventura County Arts Council, this government building with its brutalist exterior plays host inside to an exciting collection of paintings and sculptures, making it one of the most well-trafficked galleries in the county (and, no doubt, a much nicer place to work.) This particular exhibit featured works from the Ojai Studio Artists–a friendly group of talented visual artists who live in my own backyard.
Engaging in these kinds of interdisciplinary dialogs is good for me. I begin to understand the peculiarities of my medium–words–through conversations with painters and sculptors. I understand more about the aims of poetry through conversations with prose writers. And, when it comes to the discipline of art, I find we all have a surprising amount in common. Julie, Ken, and I discussed a lot that didn’t make it to the page–about finding freedom in limitations, the discipline of craftsmanship, surrendering to life’s constraints, the inadequacies inherent in any medium, and the “total adequacy,” as Heaney puts it, that comes through when a work of art transcends its materials.
More and more, as I engage with other artists, I begin to see myself, not as a poet, but as an artist whose particular medium happens to be words. Strangely enough, this mindset seems to propel me into a more exciting relationship with words themselves, using words, as I said in our discussion (quoting Marvin Bell), to get beyond words–even as a painter gets beyond the paint. Yet even as I identify more with artists in general, my appreciation for the strengths and limitations of poetry itself has never been keener. It seems that, even as specificity in writing is often the means to evoking something universal, the more I identify universally as an artist, the more I embrace being a poet specifically.
Three Poems in Sugar Mule Online
Sugar Mule #32 just went live online, bearing three of my poems. As fate would have it, I plan to read two of these three poems tonight at The Artists’ Union Gallery in Ventura. The reading begins at 7:30PM. Bring a poem or two for the open mic.
And for those of you who can’t make it, for whatever reason–enjoy the poems!
“Road Sign on Interstate 5″ Now Available Online
“Road Sign on Interstate 5,” which received an honorable mention in the Rattle poetry prize and first appeared in Rattle #30, is now available on the Rattle website both as text and as an audio recording of me reading the poem.
The simplified tale of this poem’s creation is that I wrote it almost entirely in one sitting. But the more complete story is that it actually represents a kind of revision of several previous, less successful attempts at writing about my experience growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border.
I had seen the immigrant crossing sign numerous times during trips through San Diego. But it was not until I began to explain the significance of the sign to my wife, an Englishwoman, that I realized its symbolic power. My explanation of the human circumstances behind the sign and its necessity left her in tears. Sometime later, this poem came into focus on the page. Enjoy.
Poem in Silk Road
I received my contributor’s copies of Silk Road Issue 4 today. The journal is a publication of Pacific University, where I recently completed my MFA, and bills itself as “a journal of place.” This issue is bursting with tales from Minnesota, Kentucky, and Africa, and poems from the Deep South, Provence, and Mt. Fuji. My poem, entitled “How Can a Boy Hate Fishing?,” touches on the landscape of my childhood in the Imperial Valley–a desert farming community on the U.S.-Mexico border. The publication is beautifully done, and I look forward to perusing the stories and poems with interest.