Established 2002
Howdy. The accompanying photo is of an art work titled “Checker Players” by Milton Avery. And my latest poetry five-pak is now available! Click here. In a world hostile to old friends, at my age they’re probably dead; where you grew up they’re probably dead. The café counter talk at breakfast was tattoos, who and …
In love with otherness, the reading of extractions, expulsions, changes in season is only a device to allow toxic white males willing to assume higher than average risk and be reidentified, recategorized, and reclassified in order to get away with murder, a protection fee before our attention zip lines to our lunch, crispy pheasant breast, …
I’ve seen George Tooker’s paintings in museums and private galleries, and photos of his work online and in books. He was white, which might bother Yale, and gay, which wouldn’t; neither matters to me, there’s a spirituality in his work that transcends all this bureaucratic, academic identity/branding nonsense we love to mire ourselves in. Scroll …
The Amateur Emigrant, by Robert Louis Stevenson (written 1879–80, published 1895). The author aboard ship from Europe to New York. He seems to have had full access to the different areas of the ship, the different classes of accommodations, the working conditions. He apparently talked with everybody, passengers and crew. His accounts of events, his …
Art work photo: “Enchanted Garden” by Patssi Valdez Text: Mary Shelley “Peace is a lovely thing. It is horrible to image the desolation of war; the cottage burnt, the labour of the husbandman destroyed…Cannot it be that peaceful mediation and a strong universal sense of justice may interpose, instead of the cannon and bayonet?”
Another set of five poems now appears on my page, “The Conference” and four additional pieces. This set takes a different tone from the first set (Make It Yours + 4). While a sense of play still pervades, the tone can be rougher at times, the awe of our folly unfiltered. The fulsome praise and …
On my page you’ll find Make It Yours + 4, a pdf selling for one dollar and containing five poems. The collection is essentially an anthem to delight, a countermeasure to dread, a doom blocker and a gloom stopper. Make It Yours +4 also carries an “for mature readers” warning. The warning is for language, …
The photo above is art work by one of my favorite artists, Betye Saar, and is titled “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima.” Most of the women I’ve worked with in my career, if you tried some Matt Lauer or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein boorishness with them, what they would do is, first they would …
I just informed three magazines that I was withdrawing from their consideration a poem I had submitted to them several months ago. I can’t sit around and wait while editors make up their minds, so I am sharing the poem with you. Click here which goes to my WUTR page and you’ll find “Poem [Elena …
I’m sure I’m not the only writer who has a writing home (or homes) away from home, where she or he takes the process to a new environment, if only to refresh the mind. Moving the usually solitary process into the public realm—having to maintain focus while the world is right in your face—is, I …