Friday, March 25, 2011

This Book Is Priced to Move!

If you've read this blog more than a time or two, you may have noticed the occasional reference to my second collection, Settling for Beauty.


Perhaps you thought about purchasing a copy but held off because you needed to save money.


Now you can do both--have my book and save money.


"How can that be?" you might ask.


That is a very good question, and I just happen to have an answer.


Right now Settling for Beauty is priced to move at one of the leading online booksellers. Yes, that one. You can have a 76-page book of accessible free verse for less than you might spend on a burrito.


If you have any remaining doubt as to whether you should purchase a copy of Settling for Beauty, this might help. Should you buy the book and not like it, I will refund the sale price of the book to the first five individuals who state that they do not like it and can provide proof of purchase.


Obviously, this works on the honor system. Anyone who likes the book but would lie to get a small refund has to live with himself, and I still won't be out much money.


If you are still on the fence, here is one more to chance to check out the link.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The Nervous Breakdown

In spite of the recent and ongoing disaster in Japan, and a wide range of other national and global developments, the subject line does not describe my mental condition. Yet.

In this instance, The Nervous Breakdown (TNB) means a Los Angeles-based online journal whose home page sometimes bears the slogan "Fighting the power since 2006," so its age in Internet years is approximately a whole lot.

As it turns out, Poetry Editor Uche Ogbuji graciously gave me space for not one but two pieces earlier this month.

The first is my poem "In an Atrium". This short free verse poem may not be ripped from the headlines, as they say, but it is based on real events and home furnishings.

The second is a self-interview, which proved more challenging than I expected. Knowing the answers is one thing, but coming up with the questions is quite another.

Whatever you think of my work, you may want to poke around TNB's poetry archives, which include poems and self-interviews by poets including Mihaela Moscaluic, Kathleen Rooney and the legendary Lewis Turco. Also featured is work by Timothy Steele, with whom I've had the great good fortune of studying at the West Chester University Poetry Conference.

You'll find plenty else to like in the fiction, non-fiction and review sections, among others.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Work in The Lineup: Poems on Crime

The other anthology shoe has dropped, in a good way.


My poem "From a Deposition" is one among many by more than two dozen poets in Issue #4 of The Lineup: Poems on Crime, edited by Gerald So.


I am grateful and amazed to see my own work in the volume as poems by far better-known writers such as crime novelists Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman, and poets Randall Watson and Charles Harper Webb.


If you're trying to convince someone that poetry touches on real life and real people, you may want to share this collection. It includes vice, theft, muggings, murder and post-traumatic stress disorder, all in language that is moving as well as accessible.


As a man once said to me while he was trying to sell me a possibly gold chain in Chicago, "Don't cheat yourself, treat yourself."