The Poetry of Biology

The good news is that I've had a poem accepted for publication in a Canadian literary journal called Phylum. The magazine's mission is to "embrace the natural world around us and the community within it. Each year, the magazine chooses four different species from a phylum within the natural world. These four species will be the names and inspiration for each issue we publish during that year." 

My poem "Arugula," which I read at the Thirsty Word readings last April will be included in Phylum's next issue, which considers the phylum magnoliophyta, which "includes all forms (flowering plants without a woody stem, grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of broad-leaved trees, shrubs and vines, and most aquatic plants." Phylum's response time for my submission was about three months. We'll see how long till publication.

Speaking of the natural world, the plan was to get out and camp this fall with my wife, hanging out in our little sixteen-foot Airstream Bambi, riding our bikes, and I reading and writing while my wife used Starlink to work her online business. We did this some last spring, but family commitments have become too much for us to just take off. Therefore, I'll be putting our travel trailer in storage for the winter, and we'll be riding our bikes locally on day trips. Not ideal, but we will find comfort in service and local beauty.

I've been reading poet Carolyn Forché's new book of selected and new poems, Otherworld, and I am enjoying reading about four poems a day, taking my time with the book. It is organized with new poems first, then jumps to her earliest book of poems and progresses chronologically. I like that I could start reading with "this is where she is now," in her 70s, and then to see her development with the selected poems. I wrote the poem below this morning about reading Forché.

Reading Otherwhere

I reside in Otherwhere with Carolyn Forché

in a flat that rents for two-to-four poems a day,

stairs no extra charge. The medicine of her poems

goes down hard sometimes, yet even so

with a taste of bitter betterment—poem-powders

that settle the stomach even as they unsettle,

that balance the imbalance, that dazzle my dizzy.

Good ol’ Doc Forché, diagnostician, apothecary,

dispenser of powders and tinctures, writer

of the materia medica. Anytime any crick or crack,

any stitch or vapor, and there you find me at your door.

It's been a year now since I started writing poetry again, after stepping away from poetry for twenty years. I'm finding great contentment is the writing and in being a part of the literary community here in southeast Iowa. Next Thursday I will read a poem during the Thirsty Word readings at Cafe Paradiso, October 15. I'm looking forward to that, and those of you who are local, I hope you attend. I'll be reading a cat poem, "At Least Three Cats"!

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Patience and Publishing

Publishing in literary journals takes time, but possibly that is okay because it forces me to put more attention of writing, which is what I should be doing.

Here is an example. 

Writing on the Edge is a writing and teaching journal edited and published by the University Writing Program, University of California, Davis. I submitted two poems to the journal in late December, 2025. 

I received an email on January 19, stating that the poems were under consideration for inclusion in the next issue. (This is quite a fast response, based on my experience.) I interacted with editors several times over the next few months regarding adding some comments, a name change for one poem, and various printing issue requests. I finally received my two "contributor issues" in late July--a process of seven months.

The editor notes in his introductory remarks for the Spring 2026 issue, regarding writing, "The poems, 'Traveler, Path, and Destination,' and 'The Northern Lights Danced in Iowa While I Read Poetry,' explore reading, writing, cartography, self-discovery, and the irreconcilability of artistic and natural beauty. Kepler's poems push on the limits of perception, particularly through the acts of reading and writing."

Writing poems and publishing poems are certainly different tasks. I suppose I'm talking about the art of writing and the business of writing. I'm continuing to learn and function in both areas.

From what I've read from interaction and research, most literary magazines publish around three percent of submissions. In addition to competitive numbers, there is also the great diversity of taste and opinion in what constitutes a good poem. Therefore, I'm finding myself enjoying learning the "modern" process of submitting poetry online through various platforms, such a Submittable, yet still keeping that as a secondary process, the main process being maintaining a regular writing schedule.

My quickest reinforcement from a writing community has been local with my continued interaction with local writers and performers. I've contributed to local poetry readings a few times over the last year and plan to continue doing so. 

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Regarding Family Math

Dad, Mom, and Me, 2014

Regarding Family Math:

My father’s math is easy—1920 and it’s eighty years to 2,000. Add twenty-six and you’ve got 106, his age he would have been on his birthday two days from now.

My mother’s is a bit more tricky—1924. Take the eighty, just in as dad’s, add the twenty-six, but then subtract the four from the eighty, equaling 102. Also, consider the fact that her birthday is in December, not August, so the math will be accurate in five months.

I’ll say right here that the math keeps me sharp, as if doing this one example of math will neutralize time. I know a couple of calculations will not placate time’s hunger, but we feed the dog whatever scraps we have handy.

It’s not the birthdays but the days of their deaths that I have trouble with. I just can’t seem to be able to memorize them. I have no inclination. The death days elude me. It’s like creeping charley slowly encroaching the stones that mark their graves, blurring the edges, greening the clean lines, last year’s dried detritus muffling and cloaking the sharp etched letters.

It’s not that I’m a bad son (or uncaring brother to my younger brother and older sister, both gone), and I’m not forgetful. Perhaps I’m the rebellious one in the family, refusing to remember, refusing to die. Perhaps I’m having a hard time calculating eternity.

I think it’s best to stick with beginning numbers like birthdays and just add as we go along. The math is kinder. We can all age in grace together, a day and a year at a time. My brother would have been two years younger, my sister would have just turned four years older a week ago. My first wife coming up five years older in October if cancer had not chewed through the lifeline of her chronology.

My great-uncle Charley lived to be almost a hundred. My mother told me he walked everywhere, always active, and even walked for no good reason—he just liked to be out and about. In his brown leather boots he’d step off down the road, no feeble creeping along. Then he was struck down by a car on one of his ambles. I vaguely remember the man, sitting on a wooden porch on an old kitchen chair, the first two fingers of his right hand deeply browned by cigarette smoke. 

“You’re in trouble when you stop moving,” my mother always said.

I remember her in her hospice bed, panting out her last breaths, unmoving other than the labor of her lungs. I imagine Uncle Charley chugging down the road, his leather boots sending up poofs of dust, small explosions of effort until the big bang of his ending life. My dad begged for me to break him out of the rest home. “Let’s just take off!” he said. “There’s the door, wheel me outta here. They won’t even notice!” His hands gripped the wheelchair, ready for the big push to outdistance his dementia.

My heart pumps faster when I remember, when I do the math. The open road beckons, out and gone, the hell and gone down the road, rolling free. I stick to the math of birthdays. I find that reassuring. Every year is just a “plus one,” a simple calculation. It’s reassuring, knowing that the way math works, you can “plus one” forever. Just imagining it, maybe that’s as close as we get to eternity here on earth.

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Selected Early Poems: A Garret Room at Hotel Tao

Available at Amazon

Question: Now that I've been writing poetry again for ten months after twenty years of writing prose instead of poetry, what do I do with the thirty years of poetry--my early poems?

Answer: Publish a book of selected early poems.

The last time I published a book was five years ago when I put together a little book about my camping adventures, RTTC Bears in the Wild: Rustic Trail Teardrop Camper Adventures. For twenty years, I'd published prose books--novels, short stories, essays, memoirs. 

I'm looking forward now to writing poetry again, and my new book, A Garret Room at Hotel Tao, provides closure for those early years of poetry writing. Along with my first book published, Bare Ruined Choirs, I have now published my complete early poems. If you want to buy and read, then the poems are available. I almost lost them, lost on an old external data drive in a file marked "Backup."

I'm excited to be looking forward to writing new poems and sending some out to literary journals. There has been a lot of change in twenty years; online submissions are now the norm, for instance. It's an exciting time, and I'm glad that I have places where I can share. An easy way to ensure that you received updates is to follow by email. I'll send announcements and links to blog posts. Thanks!

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Exciting Update News: Writing, Poetry Reading, Publishing

I've been writing every day for three months and have written about twenty poems that are finished or close to that status. Of course, what "finished" means is that the poems look pretty good for now, but if I have an insight anytime, I'll revise! I've been busy in three areas: writing, poetry readings, and publishing. 

• Writing: Besides writing new poetry almost every day, I'm busy revising, which I find just as satisfying as original inspiration, perhaps because revision also provides satisfaction from analysis and application of prosody techniques.
• Poetry Readings: On January 15, I read four poems at Cafe Paradiso's Thirsty Word readings. Thanks to Meredith Siemsen for her support. We're now exploring possibilities for choral readings for the future. Whether or not those work out, I find it exciting and supportive to be able to be a part of the local writers' scene. Also, the sound aspect of speech is emphasized when I give poetry readings, which enhances the creative process.
• Publishing: I am learning how to submit my work online to various literary journals and websites. I have a couple of poems that are "finalists" for a University of California, Davis, publication. I've learned how to use "Submittable," a website used by many journals for submitting work. 

Two specific writing projects that have come as a surprise to me are 1) an emulation poem of Allen Ginsberg's "America" and 2) a poem titled "The Redemption of Tantalus," which is about 1,900 words of verse that utilizes accentual verse and is in the style of Homeric verse. That is an interesting project that combines the styles of the Odyssey translations and Greek plays, including a chorus. I've made myself a promise to keep all creative doors open, so I've been "traveling" to quite interesting landscapes . . . or should I say mindscapes?

Every week is an experience of inspiration and new writing, of research and consideration of various avenues of performance and publication, and of revising and polishing. Oh, yes! And I'm also putting together a book of selected poems from 1970-2005. I'm busy, happy, healthy, and will keep you updated.

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