Author, Writer, Poet
Thank you to Club Plum Literary Journal for including my story “Greyhound” in their current issue.
Like the character in the story, I logged many miles on buses, assuming I could afford the ticket, especially when it was too cold or wet to hitchhike. As much as I love Jack Kerouac, I always seemed to have less money than Sal Paradise.
The link below includes a soundtrack from Calpurnia, also entitled “Greyhound.” Very cool.
Sharing some recent research on award opportunities for published books. If you published a book in the past year, this might be helpful. Most do not allow self-published books, and some require your publisher to nominate. In any case, be sure to check the eligibility requirements because they vary according to location, publication dates, and submission details.
When I started my search, I found most awards request manuscripts, and the award is publication, which is wonderful. But what if your book is already published? My list is not exhaustive, of course, and I tended to focus on awards that consider books from small presses.
Honored to see a very well-written review of The Poet’s Garage. Thank you David Mark Williams and The Lake
Grateful to the Remington Review for publishing my poem and including me with the fine authors in the current issue.
This poem links Hemingway’s influence on my writing and his polydactyl cats. And it recalls the polydactyl cats my sister raised in upstate New York. I often wonder if she unknowingly adopted one of Hemingway’s family.
https://www.flipsnack.com/Remingtonreview/remington-review-fall-2020.html
Willie Stark rises to governor by igniting the fears of under-served working people and taking money from oil companies, utilities, and other large donors. He wields the threat of his populist support and his money to bend rules, strong arm opponents, and further augment his power and his coffers.
Does this sound familiar? Much of the 1949 Academy Award winning film follows a script that could be taken from current events.
Anyone who stands in Stark’s way risks his ire and worse, and this includes close supporters and family members who grow weary of his tactics. He has no inhibitions when it comes to destroying people. His vision is greater, his alone.
Author Robert Penn Warren based the character of Willie Stark on Huey Long, a controversial Depression-era Governor and Senator from Louisiana. The theme of Stark’s (and Long’s) rise and fall is whether or not his good works justify his means.
As governor, Stark’s investments in infrastructure and education presaged the New Deal, but he bears more resemblance to Mussolini than FDR. Warren said of Long, “Dictators, always give something for what they get.”
On a more personal level, Warren examines whether Stark pushed his programs because he cared for the people or because he cared only for his own power and cult of personality. Like all great literature, the answer is mixed, but throughout the arc of the story Stark moves from one pole to the other.
Given our current dialogue on social justice and race, Robert Penn Warren is a noteworthy social commentator in addition to his literary achievements. Warren wrote nine novels including his Pulitzer Prize winner All the King’s Men. But he is best known for his poetry, which won him another Pulitzer Prize. As one of the founders of New Criticism and its literary analysis techniques, Warren has taught generations of poets and scholars how to read poetry.
Born in 1905 and educated at Vanderbilt, Warren’s early writing echoes the racist attitudes he was born into. However, in later years he renounced those views. Former US Poet Laureate Natasha Treadway lauds Warren’s social evolution as a blueprint for change: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2014/05/15/natasha-trethewey-delivers-final-lecture-as-u-s-poet-laureate/
“All the King’s Men” is a movie worth watching and a great excuse to revisit Robert Penn Warren’s poetry.
Here is one of my favorite poems from the Poetry Foundation website (originally published by Poetry Magazine in May 1932). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=19660
The Owl Here was the sound of water falling only, Which is not sound but silence musical Tumbling forever down the gorge's wall. Like late milkweed that blooms beside the lonely And sunlit stone, peace bloomed all afternoon. Where time is not is peace; and here the shadow, That crept to him across the western meadow And climbed the hill to mark the dropping sun, Seemed held a space, washed downward by the water Whose music flowed against the flow of time. It could not be. Dark fell along the stream, And like a child grown suddenly afraid, With shaking knees, hands bloody on the stone, Toward the upland gleaming fields he fled.