Tag Archives: FootHills Publishing

Americans Who Write in the Spirit of Chinese Wilderness Poetry

At a recent poets’ retreat in the Finger Lakes region, Michael Czarnecki presented me with a long awaited gift, his latest FootHills Publishing release, an anthology of five contemporary poets who write, as the title states, In the Spirit of … Continue reading

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The FootHills Poets: Grant Clauser

Grant Clauser’s first book, The Trouble with Rivers, is a gem. “What My Wife Doesn’t Know About Bass Fishing” isn’t an untypical title, but within these natural settings the poems perform sly wonders with metaphors to avoid slipping into sentimental … Continue reading

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The FootHills Poets: Tom Jones

Tom Jones has been writing and translating poems for forty years. Now comes Nearing Palenque / Reflections on Native America: New and Selected Poems. He was a lawyer for Amnesty International in the 1970s; now he has been teaching for … Continue reading

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The FootHills Poets: Mary Strong Jackson

Here’s a poem from Mary Strong Jackson’s chapbook, Witness. She lives and blogs in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The Ordeal of Eating Fish I hold the dead fish feel the firmness of fin and tail touch the eye on a … Continue reading

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The FootHills Poets: W. Jed Berry

FootHills publisher Michael Czarnecki reveres Gary Snyder, our master poet of life in the western mountains lived and observed with simple directness. In Jed Berry, Michael has found a bearded young poet from Montana with a similar temperament. A little … Continue reading

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Two fun poems from “Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology”

Two poems that I especially enjoyed in Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology use form to generate great wit out of the tired language of slogans. A Villanelle for Hard Times The unending crisis—begun by the cronies of Shrub. While many … Continue reading

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“Read Local”: My Holiday Appeal

Among the nicest gifts I received this year were two heartfelt appraisals of my poetry books by Marc Schuster of Small Press Reviews. Many critics love to show off their smarts, but not so many share their real feelings as … Continue reading

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On Not Becoming a Chinese Poet

On an early October day, on the cusp of the autumn color invasion when the forest looks darkest green from a summer of soaking up sunlight, I helped lead a “Hike & Write” up to Giant Ledges as part of … Continue reading

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Michael Czarnecki, Chinese Poet

Where to begin? Perhaps with the publication of Robert Milby’s book, Ophelia’s Offspring, which set to page the declamatory poems inspired by Baudelaire, Shelley, Tom Waits, and doomed Romantics everywhere that Robert delivers night after night in the coffee houses … Continue reading

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“A Million Distant Glittering Catastrophes”

How easily we forget. Gathered on a porch on Wheeler Hill in western New York, we introduced ourselves as FootHills poets from near and far, with Danny Kerwick from New Orleans having come the farthest. After I mentioned my two … Continue reading

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