Alpine Strangers debut "Surrender" a poem from All My Rowdy Friends from #PunksWritePoemsPress

Back when I was an undergrad at Emerson College in Boston, writers, artists, freaks, hipsters, and the like would gather regularly for writing circles, impromptu readings, and workshops. Collaborations would happen, or not, and generally plenty of wine and wassail was had by all. Books were discussed, and lit theories were spouted, sprouted, and planted.

It was blast collaborating with like minded folks. Clinton had won the White House, and grunge was our music. It was most excellent to relive some of those glory days again, some decades (yeah, decades...) later.

Cody and Nate, back when they were getting their podcast started, recorded one of my World War II poems for their station, "Dinner at Henri's" They did a much more capable job than I could, as long time radio and production wizards, and it was cool to bring them (old and) new work to put to sound.

Alpine Strangers will be posting new readings of All My Rowdy Friends. The first one is "Surrender" and you can hear it here.

The book, produced over at PunksWritePoems Press, is available here for purchase.

All My Rowdy Friends is composed of poems about addicts, alcoholics, criminals, and derelicts. Friends also explores gender dysphoria through the Tiresias stories. The poems are both personal and personal myth all at once, and Friends is as much about telling stories as it is anything else.

"All My Rowdy Friends is sex appeal met with man’s uncertainty; dark with an edgy bite to it. Love painted stark, pain written thick; a beautiful photograph. There’s a grit to the sex that makes it squirm. Poetry that includes visits to childhood, to mind altering states and beyond, and a cast of characters that will slice your fingers if you press the page too hard."---Jax Miller, best selling author of Freedom's Child

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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