ILLUMINATIONS

One of my poems just appeared in Illuminations 36, and another has recently been accepted for August 2021 in Better Than Starbucks. This year continues to be very sweet.  

Also in that Illuminations are two poems by Professor Emeritus Ron McFarland of the University of Idaho who is connected to my Eastern Washington University days. I've linked to his page. You'll find his publications and bio there. He was deeply involved in establishing University of Idaho's literary magazine, Fugue. We published one of his poems in the second issue of Willow Springs, the literary magazine I co-founded in 1977 with fellow students in the MFA program at Eastern. We were very happy to receive his poems in our early days. Those who have founded literary magazines knows how important early poems by established poets are to building a reputation.

Professor Emeritus McFarland

 

 

 

 
 

EVERY LITTLE BEAT GOES ON

I had a cold recently. As a result I suffered with loose stools and crapped my Depends twice within a three day period. Once at home and once at a Yumm! restaurant. Yummy, eh?

See photographer here...

Now for some healthier news. My Memoir Of A Nobody is back on track. Three haiku will appear in the May issue of an online magazine Better Than Starbucks. Google a look if you'd like in May. An "Afterword" I wrote for Geoff Peterson's poetry book Archipelago is now available in his book at Amazon, Authorhouse or in any bookstore. Most bookstores will be glad to order books for you. Archipelago is a collection of  Peterson's earliest poetry. He wrote most of it before he entered the creative writing program at Eastern Washington University or during his early years there. My "Afterword" in Archipelago covers those early days and my arrival in Cheney Washington in April 1975 and our first encounters. We eventually both lived at Sutton Hall, the veteran's dorm at Eastern. He also became the poetry editor of Willow Springs Magazine that I co-founded with four other lit. majors. When I quit after a dispute over a couple of poems, he took over and—by the happy way—included the two disputed poems.

BEAT BOOMERS HIS WAY THROUGH CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Just completed rewrite of Chapter Fourteen. Eight chapters of rewrite to go on Angie's Choice. If I set a pace of one chapter minimum per week, I'll be done in two months.

It's not all peaches and cream in Portland

For no reason at all that I could at first discover, I included this photo from downtown Portland on Labor Day two years past. As I uploaded it, I thought it ought to be titled: IT'S NOT ALL PEACHES AND CREAM IN PORTLAND, then I realized this photo actually refers to the previous post in which I mention the unmentioned reasons for the time lapse between my first novel under the tutelage of Britain's Kenneth Hopkins in 1965 and my appearance in the writing program at Eastern Washington University ten years later in 1975.

In my drinking years and in my struggle to imagine myself as a writer, that image of people sleeping in a doorway, and others like it, have always burned in my imagination. I literally felt I was one misstep from sleeping in doorways myself. The photo on the right is a picture of me in a Cheney, Washington alley not too long after my arrival in Washington to attend Eastern Washington University. I'm in full blue collar, drifter regalia except for the book bag slung over my shoulder—denim jacket, denim shirt, Levis and steel toed boots. I took several pictures of alleys that first summer and fall in Cheney.

This alley photo is aptly dark and mysterious, I thought at the time. You can see the snow on the ground and the winter light explains the murky quality of the photo...a technical detail I still don't know how to fix, but, hey, I was a murky sort of individual at the time, and I have managed to tone that up a bit. Everything an individual does always psychologically fits, if you think about it. I like to know the personal histories of the writers I enjoy. It makes sense that most of the writers I was drawn to were alcoholics, doesn't it? Oh yeah!

GROGGY BEAT BOOMER MISTAKES AND MIRROR LAKE

Always something else troubling my publication plan. Today, I woke groggy, tried to rewrite for three hours before I fully awakened, and I have a terrible pain in my right side under the rib cage distracting me. Doctor's appointment Wednesday. Every mysterious pain is always cancer in my imagination. 

Found myself so groggy I mixed up characters again. Called Larry, Curtis and Curtis, Larry. Silly slips, but serious enough to make me wonder about the first six chapters. I fear I'll have to work so meticulously slow, I'll be 105 before I finish the final rewrite of Angie's Choice. 

The video is from yesterday, Sunday, when wife and I hiked up to Mirror Lake. Watch it all the way through. A lovely surprise at the end. The still photo is of several members of the crew that founded Willow Springs at Eastern Washington University. We were gathered for our annual softball game on a wheat ranch near Oakesdale, Washington owned by Carole Mills's parents. She was an early supporter. 
Carole Mills, a wise and perceptive woman, and I once discussed why no sparks ever flew between us. For her part, she said she had "no desire to stick my hand into a meat grinder." Ouch! 

After we graduated, Bill "William" O'Daly took over as managing editor and brought the magazine along, out of the farm country feel of hippies into the glossy world of the university literary magazine.

CHRIS LUNA, COVER TO COVER BOOKS & RUSSELL MICKLER

Have been hard at work rewriting the novel which was my thesis for the Masters Degree in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University. I have a goal of publishing it as an ebook with Amazon. I've got so much to learn about that process, but I was much helped by that inexpensive and informative 9 hour course with Russel Mickler called Blogging and Self-publishing. Rewriting is stimulating and fills in when original creative inspiration is flagging so it's good to have lots of old work lying around. 

MY HERMITAGE

I'm looking forward to the next Ghost Town Poetry reading on the second Thursday in April, organized by Chris Luna at Cover To Cover books. He's a local powerhouse when it comes to generating and publicizing things of value to local poets. My interest in that next opportunity to read generated two new poems. Then I dug up some poetry that I wrote in the late 1980s while I was living like a hermit in a farmhouse outside of Cheney. I think I published one or two poems from that series, but I lost interest in them as being too narrative and not as metaphorical as I had come to think was the best kind of poetry I could produce. In looking them over again, my interest in them was rekindled and I spent all day today, working away at them and dusting them off. I can see a chapbook length production in them. I was genuinely happy working away at them. They inspirited me, and I believe it is one or two of them that I'll read next at Ghost Town Poetry.