Interview with John Spaulding

. From the spring issue of West Magazine, my interview with poet John Spaulding. Your can read Spaulding’s poems in the issue here. John Spaulding holds degrees in English and psychology and earned a PhD in psychology from the University of Arizona, Tucson. He has worked as a psychologist for the Phoenix Indian Medical Center […]

“I’m Just a Bad Boy All Dressed Up in Fancy Clothes” (1957): West Poetry

. Another poem from John Spaulding, our featured poet in the spring issue of West. Read more here. “I’m Just a Bad Boy All Dressed Up in Fancy Clothes” (1957) by John Spaulding I’m just a bad bad boy all dressed up in fancy clothes a jive bomber a rocket 88 a war baby a […]

How We Lived On It (54) – “Scrabble with Matthews”

. The kind of poetic conceit etymologicon that delights in the service of deep feeling. Scrabble with Matthews BY DAVID WOJAHN (Poetry magazine October 2002) Jerboa on a triple: I was in for it, my zither on a double looking feeble as a “promising” first book. Oedipal & reckless, my scheme would fail: keep him a couple drinks ahead, […]

How We Lived On It (53) – “We are the knife people…”

. Maybe none of it, finally, is like bone – not solid and lasting enough – or muscle – not as strong – but cartilage: something in between, partaking of both, lesser, but also greater, because it is all about connections and making them. Some semi-random connections. Robert Hughes died this past week. What we […]

Eating Poetry (XL) – As from a Quiver of Arrows

. A poem about loss, or the end of things, if there is an end to things, or transformation, or it maybe being the nature in things to be lost, and remembered, so how remembered? Or maybe it is forgetting we want, and where is that, and if we do forget, what was it? To […]