David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 122
March 14, 2021
You can read my poem “Kharon” along with others written during this pandemic year in iō’s “Tales from Six Feet Apart, available for free
You can read my poem “Kharon” along with others written during this pandemic year in iō’s “Tales from Six Feet Apart, available for free HERE.
March 12, 2021
The Virginia Writers Club Journal will publish 3 of my poems in their Summer 2021 issue
The Virginia Writers Club Journal will publish 3 of my poems in their Summer 2021 issue. Thank you Editor Sofia M. Starnes.
Meat for Tea: The Valley Review will publish three of my poems in their March issue
Meat for Tea: The Valley Review will publish three of my poems (‘Dumpster Diving for Satori,’ ‘Legacy,’ and ‘Our Meager Buffet.’) in their March issue. This marks the third time they have featured some of my poetry.
Thank you Editor Elizabeth MacDuffie.
Six of my poems will be included in the April Issue of the VWC Journal
Six of my poems will be included in the April Issue of the VWC Journal published by the Virginia Writers Club.
February 28, 2021
Six of my poems will be included in the April Issue of the VWC Journal
Six of my poems will be included in the April Issue of the VWC Journal published by the Virginia Writers Club.
February 27, 2021
Meat for Tea: The Valley Review will publish three of my poems in their March issue
Meat for Tea: The Valley Review will publish three of my poems (‘Dumpster Diving for Satori,’ ‘Legacy,’ and ‘Our Meager Buffet.’) in their March issue. This marks the third time they have featured some of my poetry.
Thank you Editor Elizabeth MacDuffie.
There will be a virtual release for the issue on March 6 at 7:00 p.m: https://www.facebook.com/meatfortea
February 23, 2021
Farewell Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher and political iconoclast who inspired and nurtured generations of San Francisco artists and writers from City Lights, his famed bookstore, died on Monday at his home in San Francisco. He was 101.
The cause was interstitial lung disease, his daughter, Julie Sasser, said.
The spiritual godfather of the Beat movement, Mr. Ferlinghetti made his home base in the modest independent book haven now formally known as City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. A self-described “literary meeting place” founded in 1953 and located on the border of the city’s sometimes swank, sometimes seedy North Beach neighborhood, City Lights soon became as much a part of the San Francisco scene as the Golden Gate Bridge or Fisherman’s Wharf. (The city’s board of supervisors designated it a historic landmark in 2001.)
While older and not a practitioner of their freewheeling personal style, Mr. Ferlinghetti befriended, published and championed many of the major Beat poets, among them Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Michael McClure. His connection to their work was exemplified — and cemented — in 1956 with his publication of Ginsberg’s most famous poem, the ribald and revolutionary “Howl,” an act that later led to his arrest on charges of “willfully and lewdly” printing “indecent writings.”
In a significant First Amendment decision, Mr. Ferlinghetti was acquitted, and “Howl” became one of the 20th century’s best-known poems. (The trial was the centerpiece of the 2010 film “Howl,” in which James Franco played Ginsberg and Andrew Rogers played Mr. Ferlinghetti.)
In addition to being a champion of the Beats, Mr. Ferlinghetti was himself a prolific writer of wide talents and interests whose work evaded easy definition, mixing disarming simplicity, sharp humor and social consciousness.
“Every great poem fulfills a longing and puts life back together,” he wrote in a “non-lecture” after being awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal in 2003. A poem, he added, “should arise to ecstasy somewhere between speech and song.”
Critics and fellow poets were never in agreement about whether Mr. Ferlinghetti should be regarded as a Beat poet. He himself didn’t think so.
“In some ways what I really did was mind the store,” he told The Guardian in 2006. “When I arrived in San Francisco in 1951 I was wearing a beret. If anything I was the last of the bohemians rather than the first of the Beats.”
A complete obituary will be published shortly.
Richard Severo, Peter Keepnews and Alex Traub contributed reporting.
February 20, 2021
February 3, 2021
Thank you Editor-in-Chief Suzanna Anderson at Magnolia Review for reviewing my latest book of poetry, Dark Fathers from Kelsey Books.
Thank you Editor-in-Chief Suzanna Anderson at Magnolia Review for reviewing my latest book of poetry, Dark Fathers from Kelsey Books.
February 1, 2021
You can read two of my poems for free now published in Issue 84 of Voices on the Wind.
You can read two of my poems for free now published in Issue 84 of Voices on the Wind.


