Happy Memorial Day. Thanks to all who have been of service.

Military service is a grand tradition, one that honors the ideals this country was founded on: freedom, hard work, faith, and helping others. It is a tradition that many young men and women in today's world ignore for greater aspirations. Those that give their life to their country, for one year or twenty, metaphorically and literally, deserve our thanks, for they help keep these ideals alive.

Service to others is a principle not practiced by many, but is one that we should all practice. What better way to make the world a better place. Go out and help someone.

Poetically, Siegfried Sassoon's Dreamers, summed up the life of the military at war, when those that serve are in the greatest service.... I like the music, the mundane life they miss.

Dreamers

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train.

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Summer Poetry Reading in Rehoboth

If anyone's interested in a mid-summer run to Rehoboth's outlet malls, consider Tuesday, July 27th, and stop by the Rehoboth Beach Librar y for the summer poetry series. Besides moi, Denise Clemmons, poet and food critic for the Cape Gazette, and Sherry Chapplle, poet and professor. Excellent company. Books will be for sale afterwards. It's a quality series, and full of surprises. Garry Hanna has done a bang-up job organizing the summer series. Bring a few quarters to ward off the meter maid. Reading starts at 7:00 PM.

Out this week: Thirty Days: Best of the 30/30 Project. Featuring my poem "Love in Reverse"

Marie Gauthier of Tupelo Press selected one of my poems, "Love in Reverse" for Thirty Days : The best of the 30/30 Project Year One. It's one of a few anthologies to feature my work (cue haughty accent, spotlight, espresso, and French cigarettes). Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me over the next few months as projects near completion. Thanks for the support.

Vittorio Carli's work is punk rock #poetry

A Passion for Apathy: The Collected and Rejected Poems of Vittorio Carl i, a small press gem of punk rock poetry, carries poetic traditions in its teeth. Punk rock because of the in-your-face-anti-establishment irony and earnestness in Carli's presentation of his verse, traditional in the homage and muse tradition of poetry. He writes to and for those and that which enlarges his voice. Carli's work reads like a cross between cultural commentary/homage to persons as varied as Lawrence Welk to Woody Allen, to snapshots of socio-political unrest, which are flags of protest. My favorite is the “The Trouble with Librarians (for Andrea)” where Librarians are cast as the progenitors of closed information; they are “all closed books/with a couple of pages missing.” He's a poet, and I imagine him in some stacked room typing madly, or in transit, to and fro Chicago, scribbling on the back of brown paper bags. He works it. He's out there living poetry. Proof. My copy of t...

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