Another poetic companion for a time of social isolation: Sappho
Of all the poets of the Greco-Roman world, Sappho is the only woman whose name we know and whose words (at least a few of them) have come down through the centuries to us. Even this well known image of...
View ArticleGetting the news from poetry: William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams in their early years It is difficultto get the news from poems...
View ArticleEzra Pound: the Best and the Worst
Lady Wang, found in Mogao Caves, Tang DynastyEzra Pound was a truly great poet - and he wasn't. Leaving the United States in the early 1900s, he settled in London and later in Italy and immersed...
View ArticleEaster 2020: The yellow birds that fill the trees
No River Where We PartedAfter Eugenio Montale’s “Dora Markus”There was no wooden bridge, no river where we parted:a stream of taxis yellow as daffodils, the air tasting of smoke. With a wave of your...
View ArticleWe must risk delight: The poetry of Jack Gilbert
I thought I knew American writers of his generation well but I had never heard of Jack Gilbert until a friend recommended him to me a couple weeks ago. Born in 1925, he is often associated with the...
View ArticleThe generous poetry of Ellen Bass
(Cross published at Daily Kos)Ellen Bass is appearing with Aracelis Girmay tonight at a Brooklyn Public Library virtual event entitled "Holding Space for Grief." In these terribly difficult times,...
View ArticleThe Witch Girl and The Wobbly published by Running Wild Press
My novella set among the isolated people of the Taconic Hills a century ago has been published in Kindle and paperback editions: Running Wild Novella Anthology, Volume 4 Book 1: Wright, Peter:...
View Article"The Colonel Takes Command" published in Sundial Magazine
My story, inspired by the Mike Masco murder case in Little Falls a century ago, is now on line in Sundial Magazine, a new site for short historical fiction. The details of the homicide and the method...
View ArticleFlash Fiction: "Good Odds"
In our era of rapid clicks and short attention spans, flash fiction seems like the way to go. This was published last week in 101 words: GOOD ODDSI have some questions.Yes?About my treatment.I will be...
View ArticleHill Cumorah, the Sacred Grove, the Smith and Whitmer Farms: Historical Fact...
Seven years ago I wrote an historical novel in which I imagine the sister of Joseph Smith telling the story of the Mormon prophet. Almost nothing is known of Sophronia Smith, but enough evidence...
View ArticleRecent publications
Wilderness House Literary Review # 16/2The flash fiction, "A Perfect Babysitter," was published in June, 2021 by Wilderness House Review and was originally written in an online workshop of the New...
View ArticleStories and poetry published in the Summer of 2021
The short story “Under the Lake” appears in the UK-based Cerasus Magazine and can be purchased as a summer special paperback at Amazon. The story is loosely inspired by legends surrounding Beardslee...
View ArticleTwo stories of the Mohawk Valley published this week: World War I at home and...
"Battle at Indian Cave" was published on October 24 by Sundial Magazine. This is a story set in 1918 when anti-foreign feelings were running very high in the midst of the pro-war frenzy encouraged by...
View ArticleThat, you tell me, is true poetry
Published in Sledgehammer Lit The Edge of the Bed At first, we are waiting on a large terrace. A clatter of plates.Distant footsteps. All the languages are foreign. Everyone has a dog. Twice as many...
View ArticleA new view of the 1884 Roxy Druse murder case
Roxy in her cell at the Herkimer JailThe Raven Review has been kind enough to publish my short fiction based on the notorious Roxy Druse murder case of 1884, entitled:My Mother Killed My FatherAn...
View ArticlePoetry from Spring 2022 In Alba, Big Windows Review and Shot Glass Journal
Several poems which will be collected in the upcoming chapbook have been published in recent months. Last Week When It Rained appearsin the Winter 2022 of Alba Journal of Poetry. This journal also...
View ArticleThe still unsolved murder of Carlo Tresca
On January 11, 1943 the anarchist Carlo Tresca was shot to death on the northwest corner of 15th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. There was no doubt that the shooter was 33 year old Carmine...
View ArticleThe Disappearance of Juliet Poyntz in 1937
Today we return to the streets of New York in search of answers to another long unsolved political assassination, that of Juliet Poyntz, a leading member of the US Communist Party who turned against...
View ArticleCo-authoring with ChatGPT
You’ve probably been hearing the alarm bells ringing in academia since the arrival of ChatGPT a couple months ago. This latest free “gift” to the public from OpenAI has been seized upon by unethical...
View ArticleThe People Who Live in the Feeney Flats:
Don't miss The People Who Live in the Feeney Flats in the latest edition of Bandit Fiction - a story of three boys, a missing rabbit, and a murder.
View ArticleCantico, inspired by San Juan de la Cruz, is published by The Decadent Review
Juan de Yepes was born in 1542 in Spain into a family of “conversos,” Catholics who had been forced to convert from Judaism. As a monk, Juan took the name Juan de la Cruz and was persecuted by fellow...
View Article"Good Catholic Girl" published by ELJ Editions, Ltd.
Kathleen Mazzetti has transferred to a small Catholic high school in the North Bronx to escape years of harassment from an older boy at Teddy Roosevelt High. It is the 1970s and neither the courts nor...
View Article"353 West 57" is published in Drunk Monkeys magazine
an excerpt from the 2022 story of a radical woman who disappeared in 1937..... Now online in Drunk Monkeys latest issueI was standing there taking pictures with my iPhone when I heard a kind of...
View ArticleSimone Weil and the Primacy of Attention
Since my poem “Psalm for Simone Weil” was accepted for the July '23 issue of Amethyst Magazine, I’ve been thinking about the French philosopher. And I managed to find the following essay which I...
View ArticleFive poems published recently in Literary Magazines
Three poems are appearing in the current issue of HeartWood Literary Magazine from West Virginia Wesleyan CollegeTHE NEW APARTMENTWe had no trouble finding it.The door was unlocked so we walked right...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....