I am so pleased to share that my dear old poem, "Leaving the Party," has just been published in the Spring 2019 issue of Alluvian! The issue theme is "The Grey Zone: Human and Ecological Triage."
We danced like satellites, I think, last night,
spinning, the Christmas lights in our glasses,
our bottles. (read poem)
Soot, by Sam Linstrom, b. 1992
What a perfect end to my three days in Ames for the Home Voices Festival—I was just preparing to return home when I learned that my poem, "Soot of a Young Star," was nominated by Narrative Northeast for a Pushcart Prize! This news is all the more gratifying because the poem was so important for me.
I'll be joining fellow Iowa State MFA alums Marissa Landrigan and Colin Rafferty, along with current students Eric Fisher Stone and Crystal Stone, to read from our books and other creative work, this coming Sunday, January 27, from 2:00 to 5:00 in the Ames Public Library. I hope to see some old faces and get to know many new ones! Details below:
I was thrilled to discover today that my poem, "Church of the Epiphany," was publi
shed online this week in Bridge Eight!
whichever one had weathered best the words
of students to their parents, old ones now
to dead.
Read the whole thing here.
John Stempien and I are pleased and deeply excited to announce that we have signed a contract with Comstock Publishing, an imprint of Cornell University Press, for publication of a completely new anthology of writing by Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion: Essential Writings.
The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion collects the best and most accessible literary garden writings of Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Father of Modern Horticulture. Despite Bailey's huge influence as a journalistic popularizer of amateur gardening from the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, and despite the rise in recent years of widespread interest in gardening, such an anthology has never been compiled until now. The essays and poems that make up the collection include work from Bailey's most beautiful literary and philosophical books, as well as essays from periodicals that have never been published in book form and even an essay that Bailey read over nationalized radio in 1930 and has never before appeared in print. The result of about a decade of research and collecting on the part of the editors, The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion will provide the best introduction available to those unfamiliar with Bailey's writing, and for the seasoned Bailey enthusiast it will offer a trove of delightful and unexpected marvels.
Image: János Thorma, Daydreaming in the Fields (Wikimedia Commons)
My poem "Day Sleepers" is now live on Commonweal Magazine's website, coming to print soon in the September 21 issue! Read it now and let me know what you think:
Around midafternoon, our dreams slip out to have a walk around.
They slough off the brightness of day, cloud our vision
and take our pulses. (read poem)
detail from the issue cover
It was a joy to return home from my summer residency and wanderings to find my contributor's copy of Broad River Review's 50th Anniversary Issue in the mail, which includes my poem "Ice Sheet Archive."
softly: lettered peninsular shapes
at the edges of these pages part
with one gloved finger's brush
Image: Pixnio
I'm ecstatic to have my poem "Sunrise, with Motherly Influence" included in the Summer Fiction Issue of Commonweal Magazine. This is my fourth contribution to Commonweal, and it's a special poem to me for a number of reasons.
We drink coffee though it tires us,
we love our partners and in loving
we forget our work. (read poem)
Image: Consolidated Edison power plant in Manhattan (Hope Alexander, EPA)
I am beyond grateful to have two more poems in the forthcoming issue of Commonweal Magazine, one of which is dedicated to the lovely Monique Edwards and both of which are online now!
Read "Annual Thaw" here,
and read "Found in the City," dedicated to Mo, here.
the water, the worms, the city become
a room resonant with confusion and us . . . (read poem)
I'm very pleased to share that my poem "Sweet Potato Elegy" has been published in the May 18, 2018 issue of Commonweal Magazine, available online here! Here's a teaser:
I used to think a tumor like a stone
or tuber could be lifted from the land
it lodged in. This was not so. Sweet orange flesh
of future bloom, you'll spread your steaming funk
for us tomorrow if I tend you well . . . (read)
image from Elements of Agriculture, for Use in Schools, 1903