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.
Friday, March 25, 2011
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.
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."
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."
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Waiting Is the Hardest Part
I should have known. Tom Petty had this figured out a long time ago.
Today is February 18, and Dowsing and Science will be released on March 1. In any long view, that is the blink of an eye, an instant. Right now, though, that period of anticipation seems like an eternity.
My author's copies will arrive any day now, and then the reality will start to sink in. My publisher is graciously sending out review copies, a great weight off my shoulders, and I can move on to the business of hoping and fearing what reviewers might say.
Publicity arrangements so far include a blog tour with four stops scheduled in the next couple of months. Anyone who would like to extend that tour is welcome to get in touch.
Barring anything disastrous, there will be a Washington, DC launch event at some point in the spring. One venue that seemed promising for that purpose is closing at the end of this month, so event planning begins all over again.
Now there are readings and talks to schedule, and invitations are more than welcome. Fortunate are the writers who have agents and speakers' bureaus, and it would delight me to become one of them.
But for now there is the waiting. So close, and so far away, is the publication of Dowsing and Science.
Today is February 18, and Dowsing and Science will be released on March 1. In any long view, that is the blink of an eye, an instant. Right now, though, that period of anticipation seems like an eternity.
My author's copies will arrive any day now, and then the reality will start to sink in. My publisher is graciously sending out review copies, a great weight off my shoulders, and I can move on to the business of hoping and fearing what reviewers might say.
Publicity arrangements so far include a blog tour with four stops scheduled in the next couple of months. Anyone who would like to extend that tour is welcome to get in touch.
Barring anything disastrous, there will be a Washington, DC launch event at some point in the spring. One venue that seemed promising for that purpose is closing at the end of this month, so event planning begins all over again.
Now there are readings and talks to schedule, and invitations are more than welcome. Fortunate are the writers who have agents and speakers' bureaus, and it would delight me to become one of them.
But for now there is the waiting. So close, and so far away, is the publication of Dowsing and Science.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
In Time for Valentine's Day (of 2012)
In all the excitement of recent weeks I have forgotten to mention an anthology publication that would have been perfect for yesterday but remains timely for Valentine's Days yet to come.
My poem "Intermezzo" (originally published as "First Blush") is included in the recently released Touching: Poems of Love, Longing and Desire, edited by Sari Friedman and D. Patrick Miller, which is the second volume of the Fearless Poetry Series from Fearless Books of Berkeley, California.
I am honored to appear in this volume with quite a few accomplished poets, who include but are not limitied to the following: Maureen Tolman Flannery, Linda Nemec Foster, David Knopfler and Sy Safransky. Last but by no means least among my neighbors in the anthology is Myra Sklarew, with whom I had the great good fortune to study while I was an undergraduate at American University.
Come for the poems, and stay for the photographs by Kelly Puleio.
My poem "Intermezzo" (originally published as "First Blush") is included in the recently released Touching: Poems of Love, Longing and Desire, edited by Sari Friedman and D. Patrick Miller, which is the second volume of the Fearless Poetry Series from Fearless Books of Berkeley, California.
I am honored to appear in this volume with quite a few accomplished poets, who include but are not limitied to the following: Maureen Tolman Flannery, Linda Nemec Foster, David Knopfler and Sy Safransky. Last but by no means least among my neighbors in the anthology is Myra Sklarew, with whom I had the great good fortune to study while I was an undergraduate at American University.
Come for the poems, and stay for the photographs by Kelly Puleio.
Monday, February 7, 2011
AWP 2011 and Ideas for AWP 2012
It was fun, and it was exhausting.
After a few days of attempting my best impersonation of an extrovert, I am now ready to sit back and make sense of AWP 2011 in Washington, DC, where I live.
There are many lovely people I see only there, or only there and a couple of other places during the year. I may sing their praises in a separate post if I can do justice to anything like the right number of people.
Yet the mind already turns to AWP 2012 in Chicago, where I have lived and studied; I grew up in the Far West suburb of Aurora.
While it seems unlikely that I will propose a panel for 2012 myself, a glance at this year's schedule suggested a few that others may wish to take on.
They are the following:
After a few days of attempting my best impersonation of an extrovert, I am now ready to sit back and make sense of AWP 2011 in Washington, DC, where I live.
There are many lovely people I see only there, or only there and a couple of other places during the year. I may sing their praises in a separate post if I can do justice to anything like the right number of people.
Yet the mind already turns to AWP 2012 in Chicago, where I have lived and studied; I grew up in the Far West suburb of Aurora.
While it seems unlikely that I will propose a panel for 2012 myself, a glance at this year's schedule suggested a few that others may wish to take on.
They are the following:
- No Text Please, We're Students: Reluctant Readers in the College Classroom
- Writing Auto-Erotic Identities
- Libel and How to Get It Right
- Dairy Queens: Gay Male Poets of Wisconsin
- New Opportunities in the Teaching of Fortune Cookie Composition
- He Takes Out a Felt Tip, You Take Out a Ballpoint: Writing the Chicago Way
- Establishing and Maintaining a Lactose-Intolerant Writers' Group
- When Your Promotional Strategy is Better than Your Writing: How to Hide the Gap
- War of 1812 Bicentennial Reading
- Desire and Ambivalence in the Rejection Letter
- Stranger Things Have Happened, but Not Many: When Political Poetry Is Actually Good
- Reconsidering William McGonagall
- Deservedly Neglected Illinois Writers
- The Barbaric Yawp, or Teaching Creative Writing to Dogs
- A Celebration of Solipsism: New Confessional Poets
- Prize Winners Display their Fabulosity
- What Would Nelson Algren Do?
- The Ego Has Landed: Projecting False Modesty Once Your Career Takes Off
I wish the best of luck to anyone who wishes to make these ideas a reality. Attribution of the original source will be most welcome.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Off to the Fair, or AWP and Me
To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, and do so badly, because I would not come to AWP, AWP kindly came to me.
AWP, generally pronounced by its letters rather than as rhyming with Walt Whitman's "barbaric yawp", is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. The initials also serve as shorthand for the annual conference, which begins today in Washington, DC, where I live.
Avoiding travel in a snowstorm of historic proportions is a stroke of good luck, and there are others. Without the burdens of representing an academic institution or speaking on a panel, I can take in readings and other events, as well as check out the Bookfair without any great pressure.
Of course, I will have a few goals and one scheduled event. Tomorrow, February 3, I will be joining edtor Jessie Lendennie and other contributing poets in a signing of Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology at the Salmon Press table.
Other projects will involve freestyle hawking of my wares. Newest among them is my sonnet "Botanical Garden," which is the February selection of Broadsided. I will be handing out copies myself, and others are encouraged to print out and post the poem, illustrated by Ira Joel Haber.
Also debuting at AWP is Issue 9 of Los Angeles Review, which includes my unusually long free verse poem "Labor Day at Venice Beach"--inspired, as they say, by actual events.
I am also in the pleasantly odd position of promoting a book I don't yet have in hand. My essay collection Dowsing and Science, described on page 49 of the Spring/Summer Catalog of the Texas A&M University Press consortium, will be published on March 1. It will be a challenge to make people remember the title of a book they haven't seen. Still, the collection contains essays of varying lengths, tones, and subjects, including a few personal essays as well as a preponderance of intellectual and cultural criticism, and that variety makes Dowsing and Science a compact and reasonably priced choice for classroom use as well as personal reading. (Yes, I am selling my book here.) It is presently available for pre-order from the publisher and online sellers in the United States and nine other countries.
Finally, I will be reminding people that they can still obtain my collection Settling for Beauty, which recently received a favorable review from poet and fiction writer Eric Hendrixson.
In the midst of all this I will have the opportunity to see friends and pass out my card, which includes the URL for this blog. Comfortable shoes will be crucial.
And now it's off to the fair or, in the word of British novelist David Lodge, "Whee!"
AWP, generally pronounced by its letters rather than as rhyming with Walt Whitman's "barbaric yawp", is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. The initials also serve as shorthand for the annual conference, which begins today in Washington, DC, where I live.
Avoiding travel in a snowstorm of historic proportions is a stroke of good luck, and there are others. Without the burdens of representing an academic institution or speaking on a panel, I can take in readings and other events, as well as check out the Bookfair without any great pressure.
Of course, I will have a few goals and one scheduled event. Tomorrow, February 3, I will be joining edtor Jessie Lendennie and other contributing poets in a signing of Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology at the Salmon Press table.
Other projects will involve freestyle hawking of my wares. Newest among them is my sonnet "Botanical Garden," which is the February selection of Broadsided. I will be handing out copies myself, and others are encouraged to print out and post the poem, illustrated by Ira Joel Haber.
Also debuting at AWP is Issue 9 of Los Angeles Review, which includes my unusually long free verse poem "Labor Day at Venice Beach"--inspired, as they say, by actual events.
I am also in the pleasantly odd position of promoting a book I don't yet have in hand. My essay collection Dowsing and Science, described on page 49 of the Spring/Summer Catalog of the Texas A&M University Press consortium, will be published on March 1. It will be a challenge to make people remember the title of a book they haven't seen. Still, the collection contains essays of varying lengths, tones, and subjects, including a few personal essays as well as a preponderance of intellectual and cultural criticism, and that variety makes Dowsing and Science a compact and reasonably priced choice for classroom use as well as personal reading. (Yes, I am selling my book here.) It is presently available for pre-order from the publisher and online sellers in the United States and nine other countries.
Finally, I will be reminding people that they can still obtain my collection Settling for Beauty, which recently received a favorable review from poet and fiction writer Eric Hendrixson.
In the midst of all this I will have the opportunity to see friends and pass out my card, which includes the URL for this blog. Comfortable shoes will be crucial.
And now it's off to the fair or, in the word of British novelist David Lodge, "Whee!"
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