David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 150

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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Giving thanks this Thanksgiving

Weary Blues Magazine will publish my poems “Apparition” and “Brilliant Victory” in their first issue this winter.

Weary Blues Magazine will publish my poems “Apparition” and “Brilliant Victory” in their first issue this winter.

Crosswinds Poetry Journal will publish my poem “An Old Chaos (Sunday Morning)” in its Spring 2019 issue.

Crosswinds Poetry Journal will publish my poem “An Old Chaos (Sunday Morning)” in its Spring 2019 issue.

My poem “Khamsin” was shortlisted for The Pangolin Review Poetry Prize

My poem “Khamsin” was shortlisted for The Pangolin Review Poetry Prize but did not win.

 

Thank you Orange County Library for making all of my poetry collections available to patrons, including my new chapbook, Final Inventory.

Thank you Orange County Library for making all of my poetry collections available to patrons, including my new chapbook, Final Inventory. You can check a copy out now.