An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres (Beacon Press)

tearsinthefence's avatarTears in the Fence

Michael Torres is one of the great writers coming out of the Pomona Valley area where notables such as Sam Shepard, Kem Nunn and more lately Matt Sedillo, David Romero, and George Hammons have written from and about. Torres’s debut poetry collection, An Incomplete List of Names from Beacon Press is very much about the experience of coming from this area and how a place can work itself into a person. It’s an exceptional work that is in part about how Pomona colors the way he sees and relates to the world, and the ways that the world relates to him.
Torres has moved out of Pomona and now lives in a college town in Minnesota where he teaches, but he describes the pain and awkwardness of carrying his past and his own expectations for himself with him. He writes:

I’m at a couch at
the professor’s house. And there…

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Poem in The Tide Rises

merrildsmith's avatarYesterday and today: Merril's historical musings

I’m pleased to have my poem “Sea Glass” published in The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls literary journal. It’s a journal devoted to ocean-themed poetry. My thanks to editor Wyeth Renwick. The timing is especially nice because today is the now-grown “little sprite’s” birthday, and her sister’s birthday was a few days ago. You can read the poem here.

Summers long ago. Ocean City, NJ

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Wednesday Writing Prompt — The Poetry Shed

The List Poem List poems can be a great way of approaching your writing, building up a bank of ideas and expanding on them to draw out the poem within. When tackling a list poem think about the relationship between the items on the list and the order in which they appear. Remember a poem […]

Wednesday Writing Prompt — The Poetry Shed

Stella Wulf: A Gascon Day

The High Window Review's avatarThe High Window

I’m very pleased to announce that Stella Wulf, who along with her skills as an artist is also a gifted poet will be The High Window‘s new resident artist for 2021. I am very much looking forward to see what Stella will come up with. Here is a preview of what you can expect  in the spring issue.

*****

A GASCON DAY

An upstart breeze puffs over Monsieur Dubois’ potager,
licks at trusses of tomatoes, ruffles heads of lettuce,
chicanes the rows to blow at raspberries.

Bored with the apathy of legumes it wafts off
to tug beards of barley, tickle whiskers of wheat,
until the heat takes its breath away.

Hay bales, round and robust as a bon Madiran,
settle their bulging girths on a grassy divan,
slump woozily on spreading bottoms.

Cows muse under an awning of oak to the croak
of basking frogs – whisk…

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