The Past is a Foreign Country, and Other Poetic Thoughts
The Past is a Foreign Country, and Other Poetic Thoughts
New publications and coming attractions!
On April 1, I published my little book—For a minute there, it seemed like something was happening.—a long poem about hope and missed chances at the end of the last millennium. It draws from my experiences in New York City in the late 90s, when I worked as a magazine writer and the brand-new internet was just beginning to supplant print media.
I’ve been so happy to hear from readers who remember that era the way I do, as an exciting time of real possibility, a golden age of…something…that didn’t last for very long.
I think this book tells an important story about the past and the present, and hope you pick one up at some point (or maybe forward this email to someone who might). It’s also my most musical book to-date. Some of its rhythms may be familiar. You may even find yourself dancing along, literally, as you read!
In the meantime, you can click over to one of my favorite online journals, The Closed Eye Open, for a triple shot. My poem “Circadian,” a prayer that we learn to live with (and not against) the natural order, is featured in Issue IX. And two of my short poems—a haiku-like poem about memory called “Flashback,” and a poem that mixes Eastern spirituality with the art and craft of weaving, called “Warp and Woof”—are among the March selections in the Maya’s Micros section.
Thank you…
…to my friends for nominating Jigsaw Men for a Saboteur Award for “best novella.” It’s so gratifying to know my work is appreciated, and so encouraging! I hope more people will find it as a result!
Coming soon…
Be on the lookout for another little book, coming in June. Sometimes I Still Pray: A Family Album will be available for Father’s Day. It’s a collection of poems, photographs, and stories about my family…a record stretching across five generations, from immigrant Brooklyn in the early 1900s to suburban New England in the early 2000s. I’ll have more to say about it later, but it’s exactly the kind of book my father always wanted me to write.
Over at Wee Sparrow…
For our third anthology, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press team has chosen the theme of WATER. Submissions are open on May 1.
All royalties will be donated to a water charity.
And while I’m on the subject of Wee Sparrow, nominations for the Saboteur Awards are open now and we’d love a best-anthology nomination for “Hope Is A Group Project”!!
Excerpt from “For a minute there…”
Just kids with keyboards creating
something new from the remainders
of a golden age, the final innovation
in print, the last soft-core sensation.
The celebrity, the pinup,
the star could be…anyone now,
even me.
And yet…
I thought the solution was simpler.
I sat at that desk churning out good copy,
believing there had to be another way,
believing I was destined for an old-fashioned glory.
Luna speaks…
