The reason I haven’t posted much in recent months is that I’ve been quite busy working on two projects, one of which is the publication of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox, my collection of poetry based on my experiences in the Iraq War. But let me qualify that statement.

I don’t consider myself a war poet. I am a poet. It’s true that I’ve been lunged onto a battlefield. But I didn’t go there willingly and I refuse to glorify a war effort with which I disagree. It is my firm position that the Iraq War – its conception and initiation – is unjust. So Rumsfeld’s Sandbox could be aptly called “unjust war poetry”.

Why I Chose To Publish Online

When you’ve been living with a group of poems for as long as I have, you are ready to unleash them. There is as much power in the unleashing as in the writing.

It’s been four years since I’ve returned from Iraq, five years since writing my first poem related to it. Some of the poems in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox had first drafts composed in the desert. Others didn’t make it to life until my return. But I have spent the last five years of my life living with these poems – sleeping with them, eating them, regurgitating them, playing with them, fighting with them, loving them and hating them.

I seriously considered seeking an established publisher. I’m confident I would have found one. But I’d have spent a lot of time looking. Honestly, I’m ready to give up the ghost.

I am fully confident the poems in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox are excellent work. But, of course, one cannot judge one’s own literary value. That judgment must come from the marketplace – the readers, who often can be more honest critics than the reviewers. Nevertheless, I chose to self-publish for a few good reason.

1. No. 1, as noted, I was ready to get them out there. Expediency was a value that I held and still do. I didn’t want to spend an additional year looking for a publisher.
2. More than that, I wanted to take a calculated risk, but I didn’t want to give my work away. Much of the poetry that is published online is published as a blog, with each blog post entered as an individual poem. Much of it is also quite maudlin.
3. And finally, I am comfortable in certain formats and like to experiment in the age of the digital presentation. I thought I’d publish Rumsfeld’s Sandbox in a format that I have become familiar with but that would also afford me an opportunity to pave a new path for publishers. I found that in a blogging software I am familiar with called WordPress.

Once I decided to self publish, I thought I’d offer readers a chance to preview my poetry before committing a full $12-$15, which is the going price for a published book of poems these days. So Rumsfeld’s Sandbox is currently being offered as a paid subscription blog with the subscription price being attributed to the price of the print book when I make it available later this summer.

How Much Does Rumsfeld’s Sandbox Cost?

I wanted to make the digital version of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox affordable. After all, why offer a preview if it is too costly? The point is to provide an affordable alternative so that readers who do not want to purchase the entire book upon publication do not invest more than they are willing to part with. So I’ve decided to place the price for the online version of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox at $1.99. Again, for readers who will go on and purchase the book in print later, that will be attributed to the price of the print version so the blog is efectively free for them.

More Than Just A Blog

I am proud of the work I’ve done on Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. But it is more than just a group of poems on the Internet. It is a multimedia presentation. Subscribers will receive:

• Downloadable PDF broadsides
• Audio versions of the poems on the same page as the written poem (and you can also download these to distribute to your friends for free).
• Videos of me reading the poems (not all of these have been uploaded yet, but this is a benefit you don’t typically get from a poetry blog)
• Essays on Just War doctrine (again, not uploaded yet but these will shed light on Just War theory for those not familiar with it)
• The ability to respond to the poems with comments as you would any other blog. You can even enter into discussions with other subscribers.

I have gone to great extent to include as much value in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox as I could. I want subscribers to get all the benefit with little of the expense and I am so confident that you will like the poems that you will be interested in the book when it appears in print.

Why Now?

The official launch of Rumsfeld’s Sandbox was Friday, March 19, 2010. That was the seventh anniversary of the bombing of the presidential palace in Iraq. The full invasion took place one day later. So this was the perfect time to launch a book as a stand against unjust war.

I hope you’ll accept my invitation to subscribe to Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. If not, at least do me a favor and pass the word to your friends. Join. Discuss. Meditate on them.

Go to http://www.rumsfeldssandbox.com now.

But what I’ve noticed when people use the word ‘free’ in most contexts is that they use it in a loaded way. You’ll often hear people say of government services – education would be a good example – that it’s ‘free’. Actually, it’s not. But it appears to be free so they think it is. That’s what might be called an optical illusion. It should more accurately be called a mental perception illusion.

The nature of free is such that there contains within it a duality that cannot be escaped. All freedom consists of freedom to and freedom from. It can be likened to Kierkegaard’s Either/Or dichotomy. We’ll call it the To/From dichotomy.

The To aspect of ‘free’ (re: freedom) is an expression of liberty within an individual’s range of choices. Being in a state of ‘free’ gives an individual a right to make decisions regarding X without restriction. In other words, all options are open.

The From aspect of ‘free’ is the expression of restraint upon an external force that has the power or authority to restrict an individual’s range of choices regarding X.

Let’s put these definitions into the context of the political realm. If an individual is free then he or she is said to be free to do something yet free from something else. The X factor in the To aspect of free as it relates to the context of politics is the right to perform actions that do not injure another party who is also free. The X factor in the From aspect of free as it relates to the context of politics refers to a legal restraint on the external force of government to restrict an individual’s choices. That is, From freedom stops government from restricting individuals from exercising their To freedom rights.

How about some examples:

• Religion – To: Choose one; From: Congress has no right to respect one religion over another or prohibit the free exercise of any religious practice.
• Press – To: Write what you will; From: Government cannot stop you from writing.
• Speech – To: Speak your mind; From: Government cannot stop you from speaking your mind.
• Sex – To: Pick a partner; From: Government cannot stop you from choosing a partner, even a partner of the same sex or a partner that someone else has not approved.
• Firearms – To: Maintain a posture of self defense through ownership of guns and weapons for that purpose; From: Government cannot stop you from protecting yourself and your family.
• Employment – To: Choose your occupation; From: Government cannot choose your occupation for you.

I hope I have made these distinctions clear with these illustrations. Now, I’d like to turn them over into the context of poetics.

The To/From Dichotomy In The Free Of Poetics

Whenever poets and literary critics discuss free in the context of poetics, as in ‘free verse’, it is usually in the aspect of From. They are most often making a comment that asserts that free verse is free from meter. And it is. To some extent. Not completely.

In actuality, the From aspect of free verse is not a complete break from meter. That is the common conception, but it denies the To aspect of free. What the From aspect of free verse is, and not just on the surface, is a freedom from the constraints of meter. That’s a far cry different than ‘free from meter’.

Meter, it’s raw character, that is, is a constraint. It restricts the freedom of a poet to do as he pleases. The poet may want to write a sonnet that ignores the metrical pattern of iambic pentameter, but if he does so then he won’t be writing a sonnet. The constraint of the form – the meter – restricts the poet from exercising his freedom to do otherwise.

The To nature of free verse, however, allows a poet a full range of choices. It does not close off the choice to employ meter when and if desired. It simply places a restriction upon the constraint of meter just as the From aspect of political freedom places restrictions upon government to place legal constraints upon citizens.

Seen this way, poets who write free verse can exercise more options.

How ‘To’ Freedom Can Make Poetry Better

I believe poets, particularly free verse poets, who consider the ‘free’ in free verse to be an expression of the From aspect of freedom are limiting themselves and their abilities to create. Of course, a poet who writes only in meter isn’t writing free verse. That’s obvious. But a poet that mixes it up, with a little meter here and there thrown in with free verse lines here and there, is exercising a full range of options.

Poets who see themselves as free from the constraints of meter will likely not pay much attention to the traditional modes of expression that made poetry what it was prior to the 20th century. But poets who see themselves as free to exercise all options do not have such a restriction. They have the latitude to be more creative.

This is the basic building block of Millennial Poetics. The ‘free’ in free verse is an expression of To as much as From. The free verse poet does not have to employ meter and may never do so, but he leaves that option on the table. Not just from poem to poem, but from sequence to sequence and from line to line. Free verse is a To/From proposition.

Consider the following lines, trite though they may be:

I dropped my dolly in the dirt
I asked my dolly if she hurt
And all my dolly would she say
Was, “How the hell would you feel asshole?
It feels pretty crappy!”

Silly as these lines are, you can see the obvious metrical pattern in the first three lines. Each consists of four metered feet consisting of iambs – iambic tetrameter. But the last two lines of this sequence do not fit the pattern. The reader is free to emphasize the words of choice. One reader may emphasize “How”, “hell” and “you” while another may emphasize “Was”, “the” and “feel” in the penultimate line.

This is effectively what Ezra Pound meant when he said, “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” The intent was not to break free of meter completely, though that has been the effect in free verse circles.

Poetry is best when it carries a melody. Music. Cadence. Even without the meter. Poetry that has no rhythm is failing to do its job. It’s like candy without sugar.

The poetry of the 21st century needs to move back toward the musical and away from the blandly philosophical. Poets should study meter, not to employ its constraints, but to engage in its possibilities. By re-engaging with the poetry of the past, the poetics of the future can invigorate itself with greater freedom, a higher level of creativity, and an expanded range of choices for the poet. Free will once again be free rather than relegated to the chains of Un.

Just for the record, I don’t consider this one of my best poems. It has its flaws. But I wrote it as an exercise in a workshop. The assignment was to write a poem in which coffee and potato chips were mentioned within the two minute time limit. Most people, in these kinds of exercises, meet the requirements of the exercise in the first couple of lines. I just started writing to see where I might go and sought the best place to slip potato chips and coffee in without making it look like that’s what I was doing. I managed to pull it off right at the two minute mark.

At any rate, here it is. “Potato Chips And Coffee”:

I cannot tell you how to write poetry – no one can do that. I honestly believe that all poets are self-trained – as are most other artists. Oh, someone can point out the essentials to you, but you must have the capacity in yourself to turn an inspiration into an art.

Do I believe in tabula rasa? Most certainly, genetics aside – and genetics seem to have little to do with art or poetry – human-kind is born a blank slate upon which we will write a message. We soon gain capacities within ourselves – for whatever – and by whatever prick of propinquity pains us. We are not all stirred by the same spoon, but we all stew in the same pot.

Pardon me while I get down from my exceedingly tall horse.

I don’t consider myself a poet – not in a professional sense. It is true, I have published a few poems, but to my way of thinking, poets are people who teach in universities and occupy a “chair” somewhere. They win prizes and get awards, grants and stipends. They are listened to at poetry societies and functions. They are invited to dine and somebody else pays for the meal.

I’m still waiting for that first grant. Or cash award. I’ll take either.

The only prize I’ve ever won was a door-prize necktie at a dance when I was a teenager. I was so shocked I was afraid to go up and claim it.

If I go to a gathering, I’m usually one of the people who buys the dinner. If anyone listens to me, I am pleased – and surprised. Even my wife and my dog won’t pay attention sometimes. I belong to no clubs and only one small poetry group. I have joined only one thing in my life and that was the U.S. Army – and didn’t God teach me a lesson. I pride myself on being ostracized by almost everyone.

In fact, I was turned down for even a general membership in the Poetry Society of America several years ago. I had made the error of stopping by their offices in New York and leaving a check to apply for membership. I also left a small booklet I had self-published – a terrible job, I must admit. Weeks later, at home, I received a nasty note from the PSA, signed by the director, informing me, “You are not the kind of poet the PSA wants.” Something to that effect anyway. He returned my check, but not the booklet.

This particular incident cost me several years of poetic silence. Criticism and personal slander is never easy to bear. Eventually, I got over it and went on – consider the source. I suppose that is what you must do.

I say this not to demean the PSA (they can do that for themselves) but to prepare the hopeful poet for what they can expect: Rejection. And more rejection.

The first question I’m asked by poets, young and old, is, “How do you get something published?”

I usually reply, “Well, I’ve been at this a long time – most of my life.”

Now, that may not seem like much of an answer, but what I mean by it is persistence. If publication is your goal, and I think it certainly should be, you must keep applying your best efforts.

If you have any talent at all – I’m assuming you do – listen carefully to what people tell you, but don’t stop poetizing because some dunderhead criticizes you. The libraries are full of books by poets who were taken to task by their “betters.”

As I’ve said before, Coleridge and Gray were damned by Wordsworth; Dr. Johnson considered Gray’s Elegy dull.

E.A. Robinson always had difficulty finding a publisher – as late as 1920, Macmillan Company turned down Lancelot. And, once, Robinson’s poems were left in a whorehouse by a publisher’s reader and saved only by the intervention of the madam, who had much better taste than said reader.

Harriet Monroe, at Poetry Magazine, despite what she said later, was not impressed by “The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock.” She kept it for nearly a year while Ezra Pound pleaded with her to get on with the publication – and meanwhile, poor T.S. Eliot was having a nervous breakdown.

A poet today has an advantage that poets and versifiers in previous generations could only dream of – I mean the Internet. I don’t think anyone has any idea how many poetry magazines and blogs really exist. But the number must be enormous.

Now, the first thing you need to do as a poet is to examine your writings carefully. There is a great deal of difference between the private poem and the professional one. Do your poems speak to a wider audience than you and your family and friends? Is the writing itself of a nature to make someone want to read it? Be honest.

Emily Dickinson may have been writing all alone, but her poems dealt with universal matters and belonged in the world at large.

If you decide that your work speaks to a wider audience, go for it.

How To Get Published

I shall attempt to be practical.

Study your markets. You can do this by purchasing one of the books that offer poetry markets – or by going to Duotrope’s Digest. This site is one of the most valuable you will ever come across for getting a lead into publishing your work.

Pay attention. Read the guidelines for all the different magazines and listen to what they want, what they’re asking for. If they say they don’t publish rhymed poetry or free verse, don’t send ‘em any of it. An editor – despite their diminished capacities in reasoning – can usually tell within a few words whether or not you’ve performed this bit of task work.

Be forewarned: It doesn’t pay to piss off editors. They read a lot of claptrap. If you want them to read yours, do as they ask. Despite the proliferation of Internet markets, the world of poetry is still very small. A word said somewhere can help or harm you.

Before you send anything out, go to the website or try to obtain a copy of the magazine and read their material. It may give you an insight into the editor’s mindset.

Forget about the “better” markets, the ones that “matter” – i.e. Poetry Magazine, Hudson Review, New Yorker, etc., and other paying venues. The money item should not even be considered here – you’re never going to make enough on your poetry to pay for your carfare, so put that out of your mind right away. Publication is what the poet wants, not financial remuneration.

You will be tempted to go for the creme de la creme – don’t waste your time. These are wonderful magazines, of course, but … let me put it this way, Poetry Magazine receives approximately 90,000 poems a year. Out of that number they accept about 300-350. A small percentage, eh? If, say, your poem comes across their desk – and a poem by a known poet enters the mail room that month – or even one by the editor’s 2nd cousin once removed (it’s been known to happen) – which one do you think they’re going to go for? And they’ve always got a huge backlog.

Be realistic or you’ll be at the bottom of the slush pile faster than you can say rejection slip.

Oh, I know, I know – you’re a good poet. But you’re not Homer or T.S. Eliot. You just need to get published.

Try the smaller magazines and unknowns. They may not have prestige, they come and they go, and they won’t pay you a kopeck, but there are people there who will appreciate your work. This is where the real effort in the poetry world is found. These little magazines operate on a shoestring most times and they are a business of love by editors and staff who do it so they can find that one gem out there crying to be published – your poem.

Your cover letter is the next most important item. Make it brief, a few lines: “I wonder if you might be interested in the enclosed poems–,” and include a bio of no more than three or four lines. Introduce yourself, your name and your e-mail. If you have been published anywhere, mention it – but don’t try to cover everything. Don’t tell them your Aunt Minnie loved your poem. Bastards that they are, they won’t care.

If the magazine or website says they don’t accept simultaneous submissions, you can only send your efforts to that one place for the time being. I try to avoid these markets because of the time involved in turn-around. If they don’t say anything about not accepting simultaneous submissions then you can send your work to several different places at once. But you must tell them in your cover letter that your poem is a simultaneous submission and if your work should be accepted elsewhere, you are obliged to notify them at once. Very important!

A word about the difference between the print word and the Internet. I myself am an acknowledged Internet poet – I find a greater and easier market here for my particular writings.

However, don’t write off the print media. I have been published in both places.

Here’s the thing – the Net has a worldwide reach. One poem at a site brought me a note of appreciation from someone in New Zealand.

Print media has a limited reach – most little magazines print two or three hundred copies at a time. That’s not a wide audience.

But when the electricity goes out at two in the morning, you can’t read your stuff on a blank computer screen.

Always, always include a SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) when going snail mail. Not to do so is the mark of a rank amateur, a no-goodnik, a sap who won’t be getting any.

Beware of self-publishing scams! Before you go sinking your money into printing your own works, you might want to see what the reaction to your poetry is elsewhere. Amazon and Lulu offer wonderful set ups, but the goal of poets – as I’ve indicated – is to find readers. If you don’t have distribution facilities, you may have a hard time getting your book reviewed or read anywhere – especially if this is your only publication of note.

If you get that dreaded rejection slip, okay, it hurts. But don’t take it personally. The editor probably doesn’t have it in for you. And Lord only knows why editors accept or reject manuscripts. I have sent poems to magazines and fulfilled every specification they had in their guidelines, the poem was perfect for them, still, the poem was rejected.

I did take it personal once. At one juncture, I sent a note back rejecting their rejection! This happened when a magazine said they wanted narrative poetry. I forwarded them a narrative poem and it came back to me. I went on to their website and reread the poems printed there. What I found was only “confessional” poetry, and not very good stuff at that.

I wrote them a note explaining the difference and suggesting they change their criteria. I do not advise this as a course of action.

I think, instead, you should reread the poem – if it still sounds good, continue to send it out.

And one more thing: If an editor accepts your work at a magazine or website, write and thank them. This also means they might be watching for more of your poetry. But don’t bombard them with submissions – string it out.

Sure, publishing credits are great for the ego. But I’d much rather have one great poem than 100 mediocre ones. I’d much rather publish one great book of poems than 100 mediocre books. I think that too many poets rush to publication without putting forth the necessary hours in revision. Revision is the essence of craft.

That’s not to say that there aren’t poems that can come to you in a flash and they are publication ready the moment you receive them. It could happen. But I always wince when I hear a poet say that he rarely revises a poem. A poet that doesn’t revise is like a mechanic that doesn’t tighten his screws. How many wheels will fall off before you realize that your poetry needs a few more tighter lug nuts?

I recently took another look at Rumsfeld’s Sandbox, which has been languishing in my desk drawer for over a year now. I ceased to put much work into it when my grandchildren came to live with me last year. I just haven’t had the time and my concentration has been lowered as a result of the (mostly) welcome distraction. Now that they have gone to live with their mother again I decided to take another look at the manuscript. I’ve felt all along that something was missing and allowing it to sit for a year has allowed me to put some distance on it. I was right. There are a few pockets of dead air.

I started thinking on this because a local poet just published her second book of poems in as many years. Her first book was published rather suddenly. She took a little more time with the second one, she said. And it shows. A part of the problem is she didn’t do much revision on the first book of poems. Again, it shows.

What Is Psychological Distance?

Psychological distance doesn’t come in just one form. There is the distance that you can put on your poetry, which is good for the crafting of poems in most cases. But that kind of psychological distance is secondary when it comes to covering topics that are difficult to write about, particularly topics of a personal nature.

In my friend’s case, the topic was the death of her husband. In my case, it’s the unjust war that is known as the Iraq War. The more distanced I become from the event itself, the more I find myself able to write about it in more nuanced terms and less from my emotional reaction to it. The emotion is important, but good writing rarely takes place from pure emotion. It is emotion filtered through the lens of intellect, or adjusted by reasonable critical controls.

After looking at the manuscript for the first time in over a year, I decided that some of the poems had to go. It’s not that they didn’t possess certain qualities that might prevent them from being published. It’s that they didn’t really belong. They were out of place.

A well-written poem that is out of place in a manuscript is just as bad as a poorly written poem that tries to fit in. When you are writing around a certain theme then you should go through every pain possible to ensure that all the pieces fit into the theme. Otherwise, don’t write around that theme.

I am nearly done with Rumsfeld’s Sandbox. I realize that you have to finish it up at some point. Just a few extractions, a couple of revisions, and maybe the addition of one or two more poems to fill in the dead air and that will be it. In all but a few rare cases, psychological distancing can strengthen a poem or an entire manuscript.

My piece is not a poem. Rather, it’s a memoiric short featuring myself and two other officers in my battalion and our nightly cherry-poppin’ convos during the Iraq War. Many of you know that I spent all of 2005 there.

When I first discovered The Smoking Poet I thought that “Cigar” was the perfect poem for it. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me I guess, it had already been published. So I wrote “Desert Smoke” instead and wrote it with The Smoking Poet in mind. I’m glad they liked it enough to publish it.

At any rate, I share it with you now. To read “Desert Smoke” you’ll have to scroll down the page a little, but I promise you it will be worth it. Visit The Smoking Poet’s Cigar Lounge now.

I will still be involved enough that I will not be completely rid of certain interactions. I’ll still be involved in baseball and Cub Scouts and baby sitting the little red head who thinks I hung the moon. But as for refereeing spats between the two school-age children, I’ll leave that for their mother and her juvenile live in.

My wife and I have looked forward to being grandparents again for about a year now, and when it finally happened I started getting a run of bad news, which only served to steal much of the associated joy. To begin with, this blog started suffering from severe technical issues a couple of weeks before the children left us. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working on fixing those, to little avail.

Then, on the weekend that we dropped the little ones off to live with their incubator, I learned that my last surviving grandparent – my mother’s aunt and adopted mother – died unexpectedly from an injury she sustained from bumping her head after a fall. She was 92.

Such events cause an overwhelming feeling of mortality – and fragility. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more human than I did on hearing that the only grandmother, out of three, that I ever really knew is no longer with us. But I’ve always seen the final curtain call as just another event in this stage play we call life.

One day I was sleeping in a tent with my wife enjoying the rain pelting us from above and the next I was a few thousand feet in the air on my way to spend critical moments with family members I hadn’t seen in more than 10 years. In some cases it was more than 20. Thinking on it now reminds me of The Big Chill.

The juxtaposition of these two events in my life – the grandchildren, who have been more like children to us, leaving us and the passing of Aunt Bab, as we all called her – sufficiently distracted me from my day-to-day routine that I’ve found it difficult to focus on the details of my business or spend the time necessary to fix the technical issues related to this blog. Finally, I was able, just last night, to see to it that the blog was restored and made live again. Although I am not completely sure it is 100%.

In restoring the blog I’ve had to take some drastic measures, one of which was deleting all WordPress subscriber accounts. If you registered as a user of World Class Poetry Blog so that you could leave comments then I’m afraid you’ll have to re-register. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it was a necessary action. Furthermore, if you want to comment on the blog in the future you’ll have to login to comment every time. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience this will cause but it is a necessary security measure.

There have been times in the past month when I wanted to write a post to inform you of new web pages or developments at World Class Poetry and have been unable to. I will let you in on some of those in just a few minutes.

For now, I’d like to thank you for your continued interest in this blog and for those of you who continue to come back and read, comment, and needle me when I’m wrong, I am eternally grateful for your presence. This blog, I’d like you to know, is not all about me even if it sometimes appears that I think it is. I would not have a platform were it not for readers and commentators so I appreciate all of you. Please keep coming back and interacting.

As I approach this blog’s second anniversary I can now (hopefully) begin integration of a new growth and development phase that I’ve been contemplating for a few months. You’ll begin to see gradual changes in the blog over time as I make the move to a larger, more diverse publishing enterprise. I’ll be discussing this in more detail in future posts.

Meanwhile, what’s new with World Class Poetry? A lot, actually. For starters, I’ve added a new member of my team, which to date has consisted solely of I (and you thought there was no I in team). Jack Peachum is a poet who has been published widely in print and I’m proud to say that he is now writing content for World Class Poetry. So far he has produced three new pages for me, namely:

• Imagism Poetry Movement
• Symbolism Poetry Movement
• Ezra Pound: Modernism’s Man Of Action

I think you’ll find Jack’s prose to be very readable and his knowledge of the subject matter unmatched. The information presented is still elementary. Many high school students use the site for research so we are trying to maintain a certain level of elementary knowledge to encourage more of this. However, plans are under way to include more in-depth material on the subject matter of poetry in all its manifestations.

In addition to Jack’s pages – and there will be many more soon – I’ve added some new book reviews:

• Poems For The Utopian Nihilist by Milo Martin
• Whispers of Madmen by Matt Fontana and R.G. Bell

And two new issues of Hyperbole have gone out as well:

• The Whispers Of Ezra Pound (And Other Madmen)
• Where The Poets Live

Plus, there are three new digital chapbooks available for download along with the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Their titles are:

• Irreverent Twits
• The Heart Of A Sailor by M. Kei
• Dinkle Dorkle And Other Nut Cases

Finally, I was hoping to have this out much sooner, but as the story goes, life has its own plans.

I’ve performed my poem “Cigar” in video for you. It’s not much, just a little play with lighting and a scruffly, ugly face. Something I’ve been looking forward to doing for a while, playing around with video. I hope to be able to do more of this in the coming year. Meanwhile, enjoy “Cigar”:

Just one more thing: If the site goes down again, I apologize. I half expect it to and half not. If it does it will mean I have a database dysfunction. I’ve tested everything else. But if it does then I will do what I need to do to re-emerge and continue producing commentary on 21st century poetry. Bear with me and I’ll do my best to fight through the pain. With your help, World Class Poetry Blog will rise again and live forever.

But this post isn’t about the military. I just wanted to announce a new page on the World Class Poetry website. But for the first time, it’s not a page that I had a hand in producing.

Two years ago I had students from a local high school write pages for the site for which they received extra credit from their teacher, the poet Dana Larkin Sauers. Many of those pages required heavy editing, though the information was stellar and I appreciate the effort those students put into the writing. It allowed me to add many new pages to the site in a much shorter time frame that I could have done alone.

Recently, however, I’ve had the assistance of another writer who has produced a page for World Class Poetry and I’m very excited to present that page to you now. Jack Peachum has written a good overview of The Imagists and that page is now live.

I’d like you to welcome Jack to World Class Poetry. You can consider him a staff writer. I have decided that I’ll never be able to reach my publishing goals without assistance from other lovers of poetry who can write informational content for all levels of skill and experience. If you think that you might like to join World Class Poetry and write informational content like the one Jack produced then get more information on how you can join us and contact me regarding opportunities.

I’m looking forward to more great work from Jack Peachum and I hope you are too.