Had come across some poems online on old ex- using a 14 line sonnet format, which inspired me to write this poem now on Eyeshot, part of a collection titled The Mystic Writing Pad, with others in it soon showing up in Hobart, Gargoyle, New Orleans Review, Georgetown Review, etc…dig the pic of William T. Vollmann, for ref. to Fathers and Crows in the text…
Archive for the ‘American poetry’ category
Poem about Rosina Talamantes…
September 10, 2013Ourselves or Nothing
January 10, 20132010 In Reflect
December 31, 2010Ourselves or Nothing on Amazon
March 28, 2010My poetry collection can now be ordered on Amazon.
Ourselves or Nothing
March 25, 2010My Year of Collections
March 6, 20102010 has turned out to be my year of collections in book form:
The Other Eden (Dybbuk Press): Novellas.
Ourselves or Nothing (Traveller’s Companion): Poetry.
Pictures of Houses with Water Damage (Black Lawrence): short stories.
Auto-ethnographies: Toward a Systematic Sociological Introspection of Emotions (Cambridge Scholars): Socio-anthropological essays.
First Person Sociology (McFarland): Anthology of essays I have edited.
Poetry Collection Accepted
March 6, 2010The Olympia Press has agreed to take on my poetry collection, Ourselves or Nothing, as a New Traveller’s Companion, Vol. #149. See how it goes. The collection collects poetry from 20 years ago to 2 days ago, literally. It is 84 pages. Should be out in May/June.
I seldom write poetry, maybe one or two pieces a year. I started off in the small press with poetry, publishing my first poem when I was fifteen, and even got pai for it. By the time I was 17, I had published 300 poems (and a dozen stories) in the little mags, and had my own small press. By 18, I had three or four chapbooks of poems out.
Here is the back cover copy for the poetry book:
OURSELVES OR NOTHING
In keeping with Maurice Girodas’ tradition that the Olympia Press also published works of fine literary value, the New Traveller’s Companion Series presents the infamously iconoclastic Michael Hemmingson’s first full-length collection of poetry, bringing together twenty years of previously published and new works that span time and consciousness, moving across Europe, America, and the fifth dimension, dealing with sex, death, hope, despair, love, hate, imagination, reality, jumping from the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01, the 2010 quake in Haiti, to a racial lynching in the 1950s. The dead speak through the living and the living remember long drives into remote areas like Jacumba and Borrego Springs in California in this fascinating assembly of poems long and short.
Michael Hemmingson has carved a name for himself in contemporary literature with his novels, short stories, and essays, and now proves he can tackle the poetic from with significance and ardent necessity. To say these poems could save your life is not hyperbole.