Verse Daily: Hear, Hear!

Ironically I didn't hear that Verse Daily republished "On Hearing of Your Hearing Loss" until today, though it happened on November 25, 2015. This poem originally appeared in Ninth Letter. Glad it's getting an online audience.

Report from the Rust Belt

Delighted that Mendeleev's Mandala is among Karen J. Weyant's favorite poetry books of 2015 (at her blog Fussings From A Rust Belt Writer). It's in good company, along with Maggie Smith's The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Christine Klocek-Lim's Dark Matter, and Jenifer Browne Lawrence's Grayling, among others.

The Altitude of Nashville

Somehow I missed the launch date of the most recent issue of The Nashville Review, which includes my poem 'Altitude.' This poem is from my manuscript WHITEOUT, now seeking a publisher.

Thanks to editor Mary Somerville and her staff for selecting my poem.

Jacar Press: Private Online Workshop

I just found this offer at Jacar Press for an online one-on-one workshop. I've copied and pasted details here. I think I may try this next time my work has reached a point that I need guidance.

Writing Workshops for 2015

Short Online Courses Designed for Your Needs

Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction

You may not have the time, interest, money, or need to enroll in a university writing class. But you may need something more in-depth than a community writing class or a one-time workshop. Need a flexible schedule? A class adaptable to your specific work? Your budget? The Jacar Press Short Online Courses give you the opportunity to work one-on-one with an experienced writer, teacher, and editor who can offer advice on how to move forward in a way that will give you the best chance at producing publishable writing.

Whether you’re working on a series of poems or short stories, trying to jump-start or revise a novel, or wading through a memoir, Jacar Press can co-design with you a 4-session online workshop that will suit your needs.  Often, direct meetings with your writing instructor can be included as part of the coursework.

How does this work? Contact us. Tell us what you’d like to work on. Send a sample, if you have one. We will match you with a writer best suited to address your needs, who will then contact you to set up a schedule. We have published a lot of experienced writer-teachers and are confident we can match you with someone who will help you.

It’s that simple.

All classes are 4 sessions long and cost $150.

Payment can be made by check or money order payable to Jacar Press.  Address and links on our Contact page.

Absurd

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. ~Wisława Szymborska

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"Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one."  ~Voltaire

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Like most children he prefers sameness, routine, consistency. This, too, I understand. Repetition is the essence of meaning. Without it we are lost. But taken to its extreme, a love of system becomes absurd.  

 ~Siri Hustvedt, from "Franklin Pangborn: An Apologia," an essay in A Plea for Eros

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Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand—that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us. 

~Annie Dillard, in Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

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53
They have a proverb: Absurdity
is marvelous, but you get hungry an hour later.

I reply But that is what it is for.

~from James Richardson's The Encyclopedia of the Stones: a Pastoral      

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Mendeleev on Coal Hill

Dakota Garilli at Coal Hill Review (from Autumn House Press) reviewed Mendeleev's Mandala, saying, "By adopting the mandala as a guide, Goodfellow is able to show how each moment can be a microcosm of the entire human experience and, in turn, how the macrocosms of science, religion, language, and logic can be applied to each moment."

Later he writes this illuminating bit: "As in Dmitri Mendeleev’s version of the periodic table, what is most interesting about this collection is what isn’t present. Like Mendeleev, who noted the absence of certain elements in his table and attempted to predict ways of filling those gaps, Goodfellow often meditates on absence and emptiness in an attempt to reunify the self."

Read more here!