Poetry and About Poetry

Marching Orders: Poems by Bill Glose My rating: 5 of 5 stars This powerful collection of poetry by veteran of the first Gulf War, Bill Glose, manages to be violently truthful, harshly hopeful, angry and yet forgiving. Probably only a combat veteran could have written anything with this truth; but only a poet gifted with the ability to find the right images and words could have made the ugly, fearful, heroic truth so beautiful and moving. This is one of the best collections of poetry I have read by a poet writing today. It should be read by everyone, whether they like reading poetry or not. Live the experience of our warfighters through the vivid language of Glose and, as he writes in “Homecoming,” “Never let it go.” View all my reviews

Marching Orders: Poems by Bill Glose My rating: 5 of 5 stars This powerful collection of poetry by veteran of the first Gulf War, Bill Glose, manages to be violently truthful, harshly hopeful, angry and yet forgiving. Probably only a combat veteran could have written anything with this truth; but only a poet gifted with the ability to find the right images and words could have made the ugly, fearful, heroic truth so beautiful and moving. This is one of the best collections of poetry I have read by a poet writing today. It should be read by everyone, whether they like reading poetry or not. Live the experience of our warfighters through the vivid language of Glose and, as he writes in "Homecoming," "Never let it go." View all my reviews

Thank you, Bill Glose, for recording the poetry readings from the April 25, 2019 event cosponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia and Germanna Community College.  Click here to watch and listen. 

Thank you, Bill Glose, for recording the poetry readings from the April 25, 2019 event cosponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia and Germanna Community College. Click here to watch and listen.

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” – Alexander Pope

The Poetry Reading at Germanna Community College the evening of April 25 was a success. Thirty-two attended the event, cosponsored by the College and the Poetry Society of Virginia. Jim Gaines, Beth Spragins and Bill Glose were joined by 8 students from my creative writing class and 6 others in reading their work. My students, none of whom had read their poetry in public before, all did a fine job. Looking forward to doing it again in October. 

The Poetry Reading at Germanna Community College the evening of April 25 was a success. Thirty-two attended the event, cosponsored by the College and the Poetry Society of Virginia. Jim Gaines, Beth Spragins and Bill Glose were joined by 8 students from my creative writing class and 6 others in reading their work. My students, none of whom had read their poetry in public before, all did a fine job. Looking forward to doing it again in October.

The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda My rating: 4 of 5 stars Neruda’s last and unfinished collection still contains a number of poems that are as wonderful as any her has written. These poems are both very person, such as the last poem he wrote to his beloved, Matilde (“Finale”), but also touch the universal if not the mythic (“Returning”). Many of these poems feel unfinished, not just because they have no titles, but they lack that final quality of workmanship Neruda gives to his collections as they are published. Read this collection regardless. Neruda unfinished is superior to so many poets writing today and the collection as a whole rewards us as we experience the haunting sea and silent bell. View all my reviews

The Sea and the Bells by Pablo Neruda My rating: 4 of 5 stars Neruda's last and unfinished collection still contains a number of poems that are as wonderful as any her has written. These poems are both very person, such as the last poem he wrote to his beloved, Matilde ("Finale"), but also touch the universal if not the mythic ("Returning"). Many of these poems feel unfinished, not just because they have no titles, but they lack that final quality of workmanship Neruda gives to his collections as they are published. Read this collection regardless. Neruda unfinished is superior to so many poets writing today and the collection as a whole rewards us as we experience the haunting sea and silent bell. View all my reviews

Thank you  Sky Island Journal  for publishing my poems  “Smith” and “Dark Sector Lab, South Pole, March 2014”  in Issue 8 Spring 2019. This is the first time my work has appeared in this journal. 

Thank you Sky Island Journal for publishing my poems "Smith" and "Dark Sector Lab, South Pole, March 2014" in Issue 8 Spring 2019. This is the first time my work has appeared in this journal.

Winter Garden by Pablo Neruda My rating: 5 of 5 stars A pensive collection as Neruda faces the Winter Garden of his dying. These elegiac poems sing with the imagery of nature and the lyrical voice of one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets as he faces the termination of his light. He addresses his literal last homecoming from France where he serves his native Chile, and a figurative homecoming as his “single journal” of life returns to the silence from which it came: I am a man of so many homecomings that form a cluster of betrayals, and again, I leave on a frightening voyage in which I travel and never arrive anywhere: my single journey is a homecoming. View all my reviews

Winter Garden by Pablo Neruda My rating: 5 of 5 stars A pensive collection as Neruda faces the Winter Garden of his dying. These elegiac poems sing with the imagery of nature and the lyrical voice of one of the 20th Century's greatest poets as he faces the termination of his light. He addresses his literal last homecoming from France where he serves his native Chile, and a figurative homecoming as his "single journal" of life returns to the silence from which it came: I am a man of so many homecomings that form a cluster of betrayals, and again, I leave on a frightening voyage in which I travel and never arrive anywhere: my single journey is a homecoming. View all my reviews

Two of the 10-minute plays written by students in my Spring 2019 Creative Writing class at Germanna Community College were performed by the class. They can be viewed on YouTube: Miscommunication It’s Nothing Personal

Two of the 10-minute plays written by students in my Spring 2019 Creative Writing class at Germanna Community College were performed by the class. They can be viewed on YouTube: Miscommunication https://youtu.be/4AGnaidW7Vs It’s Nothing Personal https://youtu.be/UKqqidk-pH0

The Yellow Heart by Pablo Neruda My rating: 5 of 5 stars Yet one more fine translation by William O’Daly of the late work of Pablo Neruda. This collection of a sort of magical surrealism displays Neruda’s social and political commentary partly hidden by personal mythologies and ironic treatments of the “poet” himself and other actors. Despite the humor, or perhaps because f it, there is a poignancy to the poems and indeed the collection as a whole. Neruda knew his cancer was going to kill him soon. And he had watched a his hopes for Chile were destroyed by the cancer of CIA-supported Fascism. His biting satire mocks those middle class suburbanites who buy and buy and still die, and all those who fall again and again for an endless track of champions and in a corner we, forgotten maybe because of everybody else, since they seemed so much like us until they were robbed of their laurels, their medals, their titles, their names. This passage has echoes of the Martin Niemölle

The Yellow Heart by Pablo Neruda My rating: 5 of 5 stars Yet one more fine translation by William O'Daly of the late work of Pablo Neruda. This collection of a sort of magical surrealism displays Neruda's social and political commentary partly hidden by personal mythologies and ironic treatments of the "poet" himself and other actors. Despite the humor, or perhaps because f it, there is a poignancy to the poems and indeed the collection as a whole. Neruda knew his cancer was going to kill him soon. And he had watched a his hopes for Chile were destroyed by the cancer of CIA-supported Fascism. His biting satire mocks those middle class suburbanites who buy and buy and still die, and all those who fall again and again for an endless track of champions and in a corner we, forgotten maybe because of everybody else, since they seemed so much like us until they were robbed of their laurels, their medals, their titles, their names. This passage has echoes

Gravel Magazine’s April 2019 issue includes my poems “Birth Season” and “The Art of Disharmony.” They have published 6 of my poems and I thank the Editors at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

Gravel Magazine's April 2019 issue includes my poems "Birth Season" and "The Art of Disharmony. " They have published 6 of my poems and I thank the Editors at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.