Author Archives: Jeff Schwaner

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About Jeff Schwaner

Poet: three published books of verse and two novels. Studied poetry at Cornell University, where I was awarded the Dorothy Sugarman Poetry Prize and George Harmon Coxe Award for Contributions to Creative Writing. Entrepreneur: Co-founder in 2000 of Booksurge, an author-initiated self publishing and Print On Demand (POD) site purchased by Amazon in 2005. Working guy: manager at LexisNexis. Family man: husband and father of three. New England native and current Virginia resident. Big fan of Blue Ridge mountains and hills and trees in general.

Still

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Still

Waiting on this cold night for the moon to rise over the roof
of the house next to mine. So cold if the stars shiver the sky

will crack. So still that a moon cannot rise.
Still enough that I get tired of waiting on the world’s motions,

crawl in bed and shoulder under the blanket
and when I raise my head stars and  moon have sped their arc

into tomorrow, the spears of dawn are rattling in the street,
and nothing has stayed still about the world

except my place in it, beside you, still spooning me
in your sleep, your breath soft on my neck as a bird

shadow skims the winter wind outside the window
and a shaking branch stands by, slurs, stills, and you stir.

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for my wife Mary, on her birthday.

New Film of Tomas Transtromer’s “Baltics”

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As you can tell from the quotation on the banner of this site, I’m a huge fan of Tomas Transtromer, and have been ever since I stumbled across a selection of his poems in the Cambridge Public Library back in 1989, while looking for a volume of Fernando Pessoa’s poems.

I have written about Transtromer and his work here, and I guess this was just enough of an online presence to be luckily found by James Wine, who has created a beautiful film of Transtromer’s poem “Baltics,” in which the poet reads his own poem in his native tongue and which can be viewed with English subtitles. The link to the film is below—hopefully this method of sharing works; if it does not, I have also linked to it on my Twitter account @jeffschwaner.

Magically enough, the filmmakers once lived very much in this part of the world, outside Front Royal for a few decades before moving to Sweden. So at a time when poets are preparing to gather at Bridgewater for the poetry festival next week, here comes a film of a most moving poem by a Nobel Prize winning writer who, long before he’d won any prizes had already won the hearts of so many readers, in a film created by folks with roots right around the corner. Please check it out, and enjoy.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Joshua Gray

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Joshua Gray will be reading his poetry on  Friday, January 16th, at 11:00am.

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Joshua Gray was born in the mountains rural Northern Virginia, outside Washington DC. He grew up in Alexandria VA, two miles from the nation’s capital and spent most of his adult life in the suburbs of the city. From 2012 to 2014 Joshua Gray lived in southern India, and has recently moved back to the DC area.

He has been published in many journals, including Poets and Artists, Mipoesias, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Front Range Review, Iconoclast, Zouch Magazine and many others. For two years he was the DC Poetry Examiner for Examiner.com where he wrote reviews of poetry collections by local poets as well as articles on the local poetry scene. He is active on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and many other social media sites.

WHY KRISHNA AND RADHA LOVE THE MONSOON

–Originally published in RaedLeaf-India

In the eternal hemorrhaging of the present,
the monsoon is a man pursuing, a god preserving.
His sperm penetrates
the shores of India’s hips, satiates her dry, rough skin.

But here, high in the mountains, dark clouds
finger across the distant sky.
Beneath the blazing sun, I lap
the sweat from between your breasts.

The monkeys are in heat around us;
They leap from tree to tree,
their mouths shut, as they prepare for the tornado
of our love. India bares her breasts, atop her waterbed, seduced.

As the fog rolls in and chills us,
I notice the cool liquid
vanishing from your august temple
as the humor of the present continues its steady flow.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Sara Robinson

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Sara Robinson will be reading her poetry on Sunday, January 18th, at 10:00am.

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Greetings, I am Sara Robinson, reading on Sunday. I am the poetry columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and instructor of contemporary American poetry for UVA/OLLI. I founded the Lonesome Mountain Pros(e) Writers Workshop three years ago and was the poetry editor for the inaugural issue of Virginia Literary Journal. I have published three poetry books and a memoir. I love rye and Scotch whiskies.

What We Seek

Asymmetry is
a plump wren perched
on a thin branch
contemplating
a ripe strawberry
stilled on a table

In its serene
pose does
the wren feel
ripeness or see
the redness or
is the setting
just a “pas de deux”
for one

Readings: Bridgewater Poet Christopher T. George

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Christopher T. George will be speaking “On Using History in Poetry” on  Sunday, January 18th, at 1:00pm.

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Christopher T. George is one of the editors of Loch Raven Review published in Maryland. He was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and first emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1955. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University with his wife Donna and two cats. His poetry has been published in Poet Lore, Lite, Maryland Poetry Review, Smoke, and Bogg, and online at Crescent Moon Journal, Electric Acorn, Melic Review, Painted Moon Review, Pierian Springs, the poetry (WORM), Triplopia, and Web Del Sol Review. He is the editor of the Desert Moon Review poetry workshop at http://www.thedesertmoonreview.com and has his own personal poetry site at http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net.

 

Eating a Bruised Bosc Pear on Armistice Day

My short, serrated wood-handled knife slices
into pear-flesh soft as Camembert: the skin

of the fruit scarred like a map of the Somme
– shell craters, churned, disinterred No Man’s Land;

peeling away puttees, sodden khaki trousers,
a surgeon’s knife dissects a private’s leg.

To ghost machine gun fire, I savor sweet
overripe fruit: care-package from home.

(Second prize winner, Interboard Poetry Contest, December 2012, judged by Polina Barskova, who wrote: “This poem is exciting due it’s being so specific, so precise, so dry – one really can see, sense that moment of pleasure, moment of the Earth’s kindness.”)

Shot at Dawn

We shot him because it was only right,
the lad who had deserted his post at first light.

We followed orders, did our duty by him,
abided by the regulations—every line.

The private never denied his cowardice
—a lack of moral fiber is what it is.

The chaplain gave the lad his last rites.
We’ll have a bayonet less, next fight.

The boy accepted the offer of a blindfold
and faced his death like a man, all told:

the sergeant gave the kid a Woodbine,
lit it for him with a match, most kind.

The private coughed at the drag,
must have been his very first fag.

Our squad obeyed the command from the Sarge.
The boy dropped at the single barrage.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Suzanne Rodenbaugh

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Suzanne Rhodenbaugh will be reading her poetry Saturday, January 17th, at 1:30pm.

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Suzanne Rhodenbaugh is the author of the poetry books The Whole Shebang (WordTech
Communications, 2010) and Lick of Sense (Helicon Nine Editions, 2001), which won the
Marianne Moore Poetry Prize, and 4 chapbooks; and is the editor of a diary, Sarah’s Civil
War. Her poems, essays, articles and reviews have been widely published in journals, anthologies, newspapers and general interest publications. She lives in St. Louis. Previously she lived in Virginia, other states and one foreign country, hailing originally from Florida and
Georgia. Her favorite contemporary poet is Ted Kooser. Her favorite of all poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her favorite word is “gone.”

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Nicole Yurcaba

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Nicole Yurcaba will be reading her poetry Friday, January 16th, at 10:00am.

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Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian-American writer and internationally-recognized poet currently living and working as an English professor in West Virginia. Her love and dedication to words has propelled her into the arms of such publications as The Atlanta Review, The Bluestone Review, Philomathean, Outrageous Fortune, VoxPoetica, City Lit Rag, Hobo Camp Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Lake, and many others. Yurcaba’s first poetry and photography collection Backwoods and Back Words is available through Unbound Content on Amazon. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Award, and recently received 2nd Place in the Hemingway Contest hosted by Poetry Sans Frontieres for her poem “September’s Onslaught.”

 

The Twenty-First of March

“And we’ll believe yet more in liberty…”-Taras Shevchenko

A scene reminiscent of Kruty:
vigorous, stately soldiers
bundled in their bulky overcoats
and tryzub-adorned ushankas,
armed not with rifles this time,
but steeled with their rich bass-roaring voices
sparring the Russki hegemony’s raising
of the imperialistic flag.
Those Ukrainian boys sang “Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina,
ni slava, ni volya”–“Ukraine’s freedom
has not yet perished, nor has her glory”
in defiance of the bear’s unmarked
Kalashnikov-armed thugs.
Yes, March twenty-first:
Spring. Life. Impending war.
Invasion camouflaged as “annexation.”
A deliberate violation of international law.
The slow premeditated disembowelment
of a nation’s sovereignty.
The history texts, the scholars, won’t be permitted to remember.
The bear will sink its claws into those
who recall the truth,
and the bear will ensure
that those young men who sang at the gates
are booked as “Nazis” and “Fascists.”
What will the bear do to those of us
who, six thousand miles away,
watched via television
as those young Ukrainian men–simulacrums
of our fathers, cousins,
brothers, grandfathers
and great-grandfathers bellowed
for freedom in the face of Russian aggression,
because we stood
and we sang with our bratiya, late into the night:
“Z-hynut nashi vorozhen’ky,
yak rosa na sontsi”–“Our enemies will vanish
like dew in the sun.”

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Matthew Hamilton

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Matthew Hamilton will be reading his poetry Thursday, January 15th, at 4:30pm.

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Matthew Hamilton is a former Soldier, Congressional Aide, US Peace Corps, and Benedictine Monk. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Fairfield University and is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in a variety of national and international journals, including Atticus Review, Coe Magazine, Noctua Review, Burnt Bridge, Boston Literary Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Muddy River Poetry Review. His chapbook, The Land of the Four Rivers, published by Cervena Barva Press, won the 2013 Best Poetry Book from Peace Corps Writers. Currently, he is the Librarian at Benedictine College Preparatory, an all-male, Catholic Military high school in Richmond, VA.

 

Snakes Belong in the Wild

As a child,
she kept purple-tailed lizards
in a doll house. The girls at school
called her queen of the reptiles.
A boy pulled a frog from his pocket
and told her to kiss it. She spit
in his face and disappeared
up a tree a maggot, wrapped herself
in bark-colored leaves
and waited for the bell to ring.
Years later, after college,
she disappeared again,
this time into the desert.
Her trailer was a rainforest.
She collected rattlers and corals,
mambas, and a gaboon viper
she allowed to curl around her wrist
like a diamond bracelet.
She never invited guests,
the boys and girls from school
an unbroken reminder of provocation.
She was never reported missing
and her ears and nose thrashed red
for days like exotic butterflies in flight.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Angela Carter

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Angela Carter will be reading her poetry Saturday, January 17th, at 11:30am.

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Angela M. Carter was born, and raised, in a Virginia farming town of less than 280 country-folk. As an adult, Angela moved abroad, to England, for nearly five years and returned to Virginia with a new-found confidence, and voice. Her first full-length memoir poetry collection, Memory Chose a Woman’s Body (unbound CONTENT) is a poetic journey that spotlights the effects of the silences endured after abuse, neglect and depression. Angela is a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee, poetry editor of City Lit Rag, a coordinator of arts-related events, Vice President of Spitzer Art Center (Harrisonburg, VA) , a motivational speaker, arts advocate, a painter and photographer. Her publications include Whurk, Vox Poetica, Premiere Generation Ink, City Lit Rag, The Word Ocean, Worst Week Ever, Our Stories Untold, Gutsy Living, and several anthology publications. Angela is an activist that speaks out against the silences that follow abuse, and dedicates all of her spare time to being the voice for many that are unable to speak up. In addition, she is an advocate of the healing ability of the arts, and believes each and every individual is an artist.

Hotel Song

Friday afternoon
we’d wait, noses to hot window pane
for the clicks and dust of mama’s car
to disturb the driveway.
Hurry up before it overheats.
Hurry up because if I turn it off
I can’t turn it back on.
Our weekend homes
had bibles in the drawer;
some I read, and many that I
used as ashtrays.
Sometimes we’d buy a pool for the night
the blue water was our summer beach trip–
we’d dance underwater like we belonged;
like we more alive when nearly drowning.
One night as I left a pool
bathing suit still on,
a man offered me $250 to go back to his room.
I ran away like the hunted, and screamed all the way back to safety.
When I arrived back to the room it dawned on me that
it didn’t matter how many monsters I ran from:
When I’m breathing, I carry the scent of prey.

Readings: Bridgewater International Poetry Festival (1/15, 1:30 pm)

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January 15th-18th I’ll be one of a group of several dozen poets reading at Bridgewater College, just up the road from me in Bridgewater, Virginia, as part of the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival.

The festival pairs poets, who each read for 20 minutes, and then answer questions from the festival attendees for another 20 minutes. The poetry festival is the brainchild of fellow Virginia poet Stan Galloway, a professor of English at the college. My slot comes on the first day of the festival at 1:30 pm. The most up-to-date version of the schedule can be found at the link above.

The writing of poetry is a solitary type of thing, as we all know, and I’m looking forward to meeting with so many poets from different backgrounds and different parts of the world.

My plan is to split my 20 minutes between a selection of poems from the Mei Yao-ch’en sequence and a group of poems from the non-Mei output of the last year or so, all of which is on this blog. So here’s your chance to use your social media savvy to become an “influencer” and let me know if there’s a poem you want me to read on the 15th. I might even record a few as a way of practicing, and try to create some audio files to share. A few poets I know have done something similar, and I have always enjoyed hearing a poem read by its author. So go ahead, be a disruptive influencer of poetry, and let me know what you want to hear.

Attendees to the festival can buy one-day or full festival passes. So, fellow WP writers, if you happen to be driving down Route 81 sometime in the middle of January, feel free to swing on by and say hello. Leonard, I know you can make it for this, right–isn’t there a Greyhound from Turkey to Bridgewater? Dana? Robert? Esther? Come on, now. Being on the other side of the world is no excuse! O C, I do not consider attendance optional. This is one of the issues with WordPress–being merely a digital poem’s throw from a bunch of writers doesn’t mean they can meet you for coffee.  What about you, Ann? Anthony? Ron? Gunmetal Geisha, you on my side of the continent this month? Ah, well.

Besides my regular reading gig at the local writers’ open reading here in Staunton on the second Wednesday of every month, I also have a reading scheduled for National Poetry Month in April–I think that’s at the Massanutten Library, in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains, and will have more information on that soon as well.

In other news: Over the next few weeks I’ll begin to design and format the collection of Mei Yao-ch’en poems, as well as a collection of other poems written in the past year, tentatively entitled The Drift.  I may post new poems in this time, and may post some work from my previous books, which have not been posted on this site yet. I hope everyone’s new year is off to a good start!

 

/Jeff