All About Bukowski
Sean Murphyi. I welcome any chance, at any time, to talk about The Buk. For a few reasons: his work seems to become more relevant and prescient the further we descend…
Jazz Won’t Save Your Life
Some Thoughts on International Jazz Day i. A drowning man can be pulled from the water, and who wouldn’t celebrate that act of compassion, that gesture, that gift of life?…
On Poetry & Myth
(Author’s note: Huge appreciation to Holly Smith and the team at WIRB, where I last appeared to discuss This Kind of Man, for providing this forum to explore American myth via red, white, and blues.) In…
Introducing ‘red, white, and blues’
red, white, and blues is the fourth installment of a large, ongoing project acclaimed artist Matthew Shipp describes as “a kaleidoscopic, deep, and opulent journey.” Once more, I’m exploring America and its mythology through a…
Why We Keep Returning to Stories: A Conversation with The Atlantic’s Emma Sarappo
If you’re a writer, editor, teacher, critic — or just a serious reader — you know the conversation around what counts as “great literature” is always evolving. And it should…
George Floyd, Five Years Later
I wasn’t naive or historically ignorant enough to think, when Obama won the presidency in convincing fashion in 2008, that America had finally transcended racial matters. But I’ll admit being…
Original Poem: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, 1967: MUHAMMAD ALI REFUSES ARMY INDUCTION*
*From 2023: My thanks to Words & Sports Quarterly for publishing my poem about how America handled Muhammad Ali and his (spiritually & politically astute, prescient) conscientious objection to the Vietnam war.…
Original Poem: Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse
On Art Monsters & Immortality i. It continues to be a joy and honor to have my work appear –alongside so many excellent writers– in Exterminating Angel Press. The theme of…
2/26/12: A Poem for Trayvon Martin
On this day in History: On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, an African American teen walking home from a trip to a convenience store, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a…
Countervailing Forces
Since there are no coincidences (but maybe Fate, Irony, & Karma high-five at times) this poem, written a while back (during—without putting too fine a point on it—a time when…