Here's a Book You Ought to Read

John Griswold, head of the fiction writing program at McNeese State, has published a great book of essays -- "Pirates You Don't Know" -- from University of Georgia Press. Ought to be on everybody's reading table. See my review in Arcadia's "Online Sundries."

Two Poems

'Poydras Review Blog' has published my poem, 'Chamber Music at Assisted Living,' and 'Bluestem' has published 'Prairie Night.' Thanks to the editors of both journals for publishing my work.

TV Leaves Poetry Alone - And I'm Glad

Yo Yo Ma is a great musician, but I didn't like his Silk Road Ensemble when I saw it on TV. What bothered me was the unrelenting visual focus on performers' facial expressions and body movement. I hope TV never discovers poetry. See my "Online Sundries" column in Arcadia.

A Powerful Young Poet Out of Illinois

I've been asked to be a regular monthly contributor to the "Online Sundries" feature of Arcadia, an exciting lit magazine based in Oklahoma City. My first contribution is a review of Austin Smith's powerful new book of poems, Almanac, from Princeton University Press. Smith grew up on a farm in northwestern Illinois and writes about it as if it's at the heart-stopping center of human experience -- which in his hands it is.

Lania Knight Reads 'The Catch-all' for Poetry Month

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the student lit magazine at Eastern Illinois University published videos of faculty and students reading poems. Faculty member Lania Knight generously chose one of mine to read. See and hear it here.

'The Catch--All' this week's feature on 'The Heron Tree'

The Heron Tree, the product of three Arkansas college faculty members, puts up a new poem on-line every week and collects them all at the end of the year for a print publication. I'm very pleased to have a poem on the page this week. It may jog memories of clearing out the parents' things and finding that the task deepens your understanding of who they were. Hope you enjoy it.

THE CATCH-ALL

When we cleared out the garage

for the last time, it was still there,

the grimy-white bookcase that held

paint cans, tools in a fishing tackle box, 

jars of unsorted nails and screws.

He owned a store; she played organ

at church; they raised three children.

Only people who believed walnut 

would always be plentiful in America

would have painted over it. Only people

who believed things don’t fall apart 

would have relied on one screwdriver,

a saw, a hammer and a pair of pliers.

Scrubbing, scraping, sanding,

I bring up the old, close grain.

I'm in Arcadia. It's Nice Here

Very happy to have this poem in the current issue of Arcadia Magazine. Please check out this fresh, handsome magazine out of Oklahoma City.

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING PROCESS?

I keep a map on the fridge

with heavy-item pickup zones on it,

and I cruise those neighborhoods

looking for wood. 

Most is junk, 

busted-up pressed-wood, 

moldy ply, 

slab-cut, quick-growth pine. 

You learn to spot such stuff a block away 

and roll on past. 

Then something pulls at you: 

clean lines, 

the way light reflects off the grain

of spruce or maple,

and you stop

and pop the trunk.

On the bus and off again, feeling better

Have you ever gotten on a city bus in a bad mood and got off in a good one? Here's a recent poem of mine about that experience, published in the 2013 Chaffin Journal, out of Eastern Kentucky University. 

MORNING BUS

As you step down into the weather again,

remember to thank the taxpayers

who helped get you there,

the people behind the scenes

who worked out routes and schedules,

the driver, who drove,

the people using walkers,

the people taking up two spaces

all by themselves,

the mothers with children in strollers,

the jittery students in wet shoes and earbuds

who all got on and found a place to sit,

room to stand, a strap to hang from,

expanded like yeasty dough into each

niche and crevice, kept the pressure on

until they squeezed that gray bubble

of old age you woke with

up into your throat and out

like a baby's burp.

On climate change, highway litter, love notes and Tibetan flags . . . .

Here are two recent poems of mine, related by environmental theme and loose lines of irregular length. C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag published them in its Fall 2013 issue. "Prayer Flag" appears here in a slightly revised version. C4 is an on-line and print journal based in Boston, at http://chamberfour.com/


 BEYOND THE TIPPING POINT

The summer it was no longer possible
to deny what we'd done

the roses were particularly beautiful
everyone said so
the mornings bright and calm
the nights starry

and parents and grandparents
came unmoored from long marriages
and dated and went steady like adolescents
and broke up and went steady again

writing love notes in pencil on lined paper
and doodling arabesques and spider webs in the margins
folding and unfolding and refolding the sheets
to read them over and over.


PRAYER FLAGS

Unaccountably they lift my spirits,
these plastic grocery bags the color of old teeth,
caught in fence wire, blown to tatters
by the patient prairie wind

thirteen thousand miles
from mountains where Tibetan flags
blue, white, red, green, and yellow,
shake blessing on the world.

Here's a poem of mine in "Split Rock Review"

Split Rock Review is an on-line magazine out of Duluth. The editors recently published this poem of mine, whose title roughly translates from the Latin as "A Defense of His Life." Hope you like it. See it in the magazine at  http://www.splitrockreview.org/aplogiaprovitasua.

APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

When I’m dead and scattered,

say I didn’t video class reunions,

hoard photos or hang on

to drafts of all my poems. Say 

I was in the present as the present fell 

away from itself. I found 

a good used Stanley plane today,

bought groceries . . .  And already

memory’s down to the etceteras,

so quick the present, like a comet

that sheds its disappearing tail,

like ginkgoes that all at once

go soft at the stems, and the leaves

separate and blanket the ground.

Say I was a good composter,

that I raked that yellow shining

into armfuls for the black bin

in whose moist, wormy dirt

the future lies, and dropped it in.

Free State Review: a fresh new magazine

I've been reviewing literary magazines for New Pages for a while now, including some old standbys and some newcomers. I've never been as excited about a new one as I am about Free State Review, out of Annapolis, MD. See what I've said about the second issue here.

The Sweet Spot

The summer 2013 issue of Colorado Review has found the sweet spot, with material accessible enough to be enjoyed and edgy enough to shake you up. See my New Pages review at

http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazine-reviews/2013-09-16/#Colorado-Review-V40-N2-Summer-2013

I've Got a Fish Story to Tell You

My short story about trout fishing in the Ozarks, "Opening Day," is on-line at *82 Review, http://star82review.com
In case you're wondering, *82 is what you punch in to unblock your cellphone. The California-based on-line magazine is chock full of interesting writing. Enjoy.

It's Been a Good Spring

Haven't posted much here lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing and publishing.
Off the Coast picked up two poems for the Spring 2013 issue, and Upstreet, which is sold at Barnes & Noble, published this one:

PRAIRIE WORK DAY

This eighty acres has enough creek

for one beaver family to scrape by,

pasture for three or four bison,

were they allowed in town.

Redwings do well here. Whitetail,

who live anywhere. There’s a hawk.

Four states away a monster storm

takes aim at a third of the country,

while we volunteer in chest-high 

messiness that grabs the wind

and quiets it. We run our fingers

up the rough stems of graminoids

to gather seed: Indian Grass, 

Turkey Foot, Canadian Wild Rye

we’ll scatter in March on the poor 

soil they seem to like, abandoned 

dumps and vacant city lots, 

or those awkward jogs you find

along rural roads, where true 

north and the grid don’t fit.

In addition, poems are forthcoming in Chaffin Journal, C4, Elder Mountain and Storm Cellar; and short memoirs in Clare, and Sugar Mule.

Tomorrow (July 13) I'll have the pleasure of reading with colleagues from the Red Herring Writers Group at a house concert in Urbana. They are a great group of writers and friends, and I've learned a ton from them.

Keep writing.

Latest Creative Nonfiction review

My review of the latest Creative Nonfiction is at New Pages: “Don’t write like a girl. Don’t write like a boy. Write like a mother#^@%*&,” the Rumpus columnist "Sugar” advised young writer Elissa Bassist in 2010. Bassist took the advice to heart, making it into an “anthem and a lifestyle” that is about “quitting your bitching, getting out of your own ego, and getting to work.” Three years later, she and “Sugar”—now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, extend the discussion in an email conversation that appropriately kicks off this powerful collection of work by women writers."

Canadian magazines trade coasts

From my review of the latest Malahat, up today at New Pages.“Two outstanding Canadian literary journals have collaborated on separate issues consisting of work from each other’s patch. This issue of Malahat, based in British Columbia (B.C.), features “Essential East Coast Writing” in collaboration with Fiddlehead, published in New Brunswick. Alternately, Fiddlehead published a West Coast issue. . . .The result, at least by reading the Mahalat half, is a celebration of artistic vibrancy.”

I've reviewed latest Carolina Quarterly

Families in various stages of self-destruction or survival are a connecting thread for most of the prose in this issue of Carolina Quarterly. Read my New Pages review of the magazine at http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazine-reviews/2012-12-17/#Carolina-Quarterly-V62-N2-Fall-2012

Cameo role for Harry Truman

A clothing store owner in small-town Missouri discovers a robbery and turns to his former boss Harry Truman for help. Set in the early 1930s, my short story "The Shady Side" appears in today's on-line issue of Every Day Fiction. Read it at http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-shady-side-by-john-palen/

BioStories publishes my flash memoir

'Artisanal Journalism,' my memoir-essay about running an alternative newspaper, went online Wednesday at BioStories, http://www.biostories.com/Essays.php

Carol Sanford has a new poem on-line

Michigan writer Carol Sanford has a fine poem, "Roadside Shrines," at the top of the New Verse News blog today (Oct. 28).