Thursday, August 09, 2007

Bits and Pieces

The title is both appropriate to this post and also the title of a poetry collection that I read recently by Greg Schwartz. I had not heard much about Schwartz previously to picking his chapbook up at Babel Con, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and will seek out more of his work. The chapbook is 15 poems and combines some dramatic ones with quite a few humorously twisted pieces. "The Monster in My Closet" is one of the latter, and was probably my favorite piece in the work. The last line makes it. Another poem, "The Dead have Ears," reminded me very much of a story I wrote a couple years back but have not yet sold called "A Curse the Dead Must Bear." There is some weird similarity between the two works. The best of the dramatic pieces was "Farmhouse," which was quite eerie and which I liked very much.

If you'd be interested in picking up Bits and Pieces or other poetical works check out Spec House of Poetry. Spec House is actually run by a good friend of mine, J. Bruce Fuller. I mentioned seeing him at Babel Con in a previous post. He's got a pamphlet available at his store that includes three poems of mine, as well as poems by J and Robin Mayhall, and I think it's actually free. If you want to check it out, go to his site, scroll down to his entry on "Babel Con," and you'll see the information. His storefront is accessed near the right side top of the screen there.

Other than that, I made good progress on writing today but I'm looking this evening toward getting started on my preparations for the upcoming school year. Drat it.

6 comments:

the walking man said...

I looked over your buddy's sight and was a bit disappointed that there was no samples of the work within the chaps for sale. Yours is for sale for a penny so it isn't being sold short.

I would like to see some examples of this genre because all of the horror poetry I have ever written was inspired by factual events.


Anyway glad you got some writing time in and if you need help grading papers' I am available, red pen right here and dreams of failing students roaming through my mind. FFFFFFFFFFFC-FFFFFFFFFFF. See there; your whole classes first papers graded before they are turned in, now you should have more time to write.

Peace

mark

Sidney said...

Interesting to know about. Yesterday, as you know, I wrote a short poem for the first time in ages.

Charles Gramlich said...

Mark, maybe I'll bring you in as my teaching assistant and let you do all the grading. Your method certainly seems efficient.

I'll mention to J about the samples. Good idea.

Sid, sometimes the poetry bug gets hold of you. I used to write quite a bit. Now it comes in spells. I'll go a long time without and then will write several poems at the same time.

Erik Donald France said...

Ack, thoughts of fall semester must be held at bay with a silver stake and cross. . .

The poetry sounds cool . . .

Donnetta said...

Hi, Charles: Well, my summer was shot to h**l with illness. No writing. I did put a little post up today. And, now I have to get ready to go back to the students, too.

Will look into this guy in a bit. Sounds interesting.

Hey, looks like Mark did all your work for you already! What a timesaver.

Donnetta

Charles Gramlich said...

Erik, I agree absolutely, but unfortunately it's evil power is stronger than good.

Donnetta, I hope you're feeling better. No fun being sick, but I've seen teachers do this. They work so intensely during school that when vacation comes they get ill from having bottled it all up.