The Cover is Here!
My City of Yesterday will be available on August 21
On August 21, I will release my next little book, My City of Yesterday. This is a very special volume to me.
Like most of my other little books, this one is a single poem written in a variety of styles and voices. Unlike the others, this one flirts with a real narrative: a hero’s journey…leaving home, getting lost, returning changed.
Echoes of Odysseus in the American suburbs.
Like a hero—albeit a flawed, old, grouchy one—I seem to have been chosen by the gods this time. As I was completing the poem, I had two conversations, in rapid succession, with artists I admire greatly…and both offered to collaborate.
My friend Pete Shorney (@peacockpete on Instagram) and I found ourselves discussing Homer one afternoon. Pete revealed that he had created a sequence of pictures based on The Odyssey and wondered if I could use them. I can! I can! Wait until you see how they light up the pages of My City of Yesterday!
Just a day before that conversation, I was admiring the work of a different artist, Ted Randler (http://Randler.gallery). We were talking about water imagery when Ted showed me the painting that is now the beautiful cover of this book. The painting is called “He Dreamt of Rousseau in the Moonlight,” and it inspired me to write one more section…and I’m so glad I did. It really is the perfect cover for the poem, and I am enormously grateful.
I’m not superstitious—possibly a little spiritual—but this book felt like it was coming together for a reason. I can’t wait for you to see it.
“Autumn Grasses in Moonlight” in The Ekphrastic Review…
Check out my poem, “Autumn Grasses in Moonlight,” in The Ekphrastic Review, July 22. It’s a diptych poem inspired by a diptych painting by Shabaka Zeshin…a mixture of art appreciation, literary aspiration, and Soto Zen practice. It’s short and lyrical, and I’m happy it found a home.
The Be True podcast is back for more…
I have now recorded four episodes of my podcast, Be True, available here on Substack as well as on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you’re already listening, thank you!!!!
In each episode, I read a poem I’ve published and discuss its origins, its significance to me, and its inspirations in music, art, literature, family lore, etc. I drop one every couple of weeks, keep them short, and try to keep them moving fast. You don’t need to know the poem before you hit play (although I hope you’ll want to find the poem after listening).
My goal is to present each poem as the center of a larger constellation of ideas and experiences—some personal, some local, some general—as the opening of a conversation about what the hell we’re all doing here on this planet.
Be True is new and evolving, but it connects my present life as a poet to my past life as an academic and teacher, and to my deeper past as a pop-culture magazine writer…and I’m really excited about it. I hope you’ll join me when you can, and please tell your friends about it if you like what you hear.
Preview excerpt from My City of Yesterday…
Shaken earth was not his enemy as he staggered out of the river, nor was the sting of his isolation. Instead he dreaded being naked with only a broadleaf for cover. That was real danger.
Luna speaks…
