David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 148

Thank you december magazine for accepting two of my poems for publication in 2019.

Thank you december magazine for accepting two of my poems for publication in 2019. 

“Ghazal: Clarity of the Absolute” was written when I assigned the ghazal to my creative writing students last fall at Germanna Community College. “Fragments of Color” was originally written in 2004, immediately after experiencing first-hand the devastation of Hurricane Ivan. That poem has been revised significantly five times. 

December previously published my longer poem “Psalms in Pieces” in 2016. 

Thank you Artemis Journal for accepting my poem “Nejma – Last passage” for publication in the June 2019 issue.

Thank you Artemis Journal for accepting my poem “Nejma – Last passage” for publication in their June 2019 issue. This poem deals with visiting the grave of my father’s mother and is part of an unpublished collection. 

In 2018, 26 Publishers Accepted 80 of my Poems for Publication

Thank you to the editors of the below for accepting my poetry for publication in 2018. All told, 25 publications accepted 64 poems in addition to 1 chapbook for a total of 80 poems.

Prolific Press – Final Inventory (chapbook)

The Big Windows Review

Blue Unicorn

Burningword Literary Journal

Carbon Culture Review

Crosswinds Poetry Journal

Dime Show Review

Dual Coast Magazine

The Flexible Persona

Fredericksburg Literary and Arts Review

Half Mystic Review

Heron Tree

IO Literary Journal

The Magnolia Review

The Mystic Blue Review

The Pangolin Review

Parenthesis Journal

Peach Tree Tavern

Peeking Cat Poetry

Poetry Quarterly

Red Queen Literary Magazine

Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine

Two Cities Review

The Voices Project

Weary Blues Magazine

The Write Place at the Write Time

The Magnolia Review has accepted 6 of my poems for Publication in its July 2019 Issue

Thank you Magnolia Review for accepting 6 of my poems for Publication in Volume 5 Issue 2 (July 2019).

It is worth spending time with this well-written collection.

City of Rivers by Zubair Ahmed


My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Zubair Ahmed’s collection. “City of Rivers,” is a poetry of brutal realism mixed with the surreal nightmare, a gentleness of love amid the hard truths of living. Ahmed’s language is deceptively simple at times. Then he warps syntax and surprises. He writes of his family’s and Bangladesh’s history, of his own childhood there and his living in Texas now as he juxtaposes place and time, image and symbol to good and mournful effect because, in the end:

The moon lights the ocean on fire.
I watch the waves repeat themselves
Until they become a house
With soft lights and no furniture.
I begin to sleep.
My body is music.
I will never have a home.

It is worth spending time with this well-written collection.





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My Poem “Frost Music” is included in Half Mystic Journal Issue VI: Interlude

My Poem “Frost Music” is included in Half Mystic Journal Issue VI: Interlude available in both hard copy and PDF here.

Thank you Topaz Winters and the editorial team.

Nickole Brown asks that we hear a word “Mercy”

To Those Who Were Our First Gods by Nickole Brown


My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Nickole Brown’s “To Those Who Were Our First Gods” speaks through colloquial, even childlike voices desperately listening for the animal others to speak their pleas for “Mercy.” Even as she does so, we hear the fatalism of her deep humanity (animality?) in the examples she gives of our wasteful and callous misuse of our brothers and sisters in life. She still has enough faith (anger) to demand hope:

Hope, you know by now,
is not a thing you feel
but something you do…

She mourns the passing of each individual animal life as she “close[s] the extinguished/horizons of his eyes.” If only these fellow creatures could speak a word “mercy” we might hear and still our ravening hands. Read and care.





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Students from my Fall 2018 Creative Writing Class Perform Two 10-minute Plays

You can view videos of Students from my Fall 2018 Creative Writing Class as they perform 10-minute Plays written by 2 of their classmates:

The Doorbell Tolls for Thee

The Cold of Winter

Issue 4.1 of The Magnolia Review includes 3 of my poems

Purchase physical copies of The Magnolia Review, Volume 4, Issue 1, please click here to Purchase One, Two, Three, or Four Copies. Or send your payment to: The Magnolia Review Suzanna…

— Read on themagnoliareview.com/purchase-copies/

Another wonderful collection by Seamus Heaney

North by Seamus Heaney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another wonderful collection by Seamus Heaney. Part I uses the landscape of and in particular the bog as extended symbol and metonymy, as the past rises in corpses preserved by the peat to speak to and about the violence of the present. Part II questions the proper role of the poet when facing tyranny, political violence, or other moral outrages.

Heaney’s musicality and eloquence sing, his diction somehow rich with echoes of the past and yet modern enough. There is a universality to Heaney that assures he will continue to be read, like Yeats, even though the political events have faded into the past.

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