David McAleavey's first national (U.S.) publication was in EPOCH in 1967. In 1968-69 he did (most of) a year of grad school in English at UC Berkeley, where he was poetry editor of OCCIDENT and became friends with Ron Silliman, among other people. When he returned to grad school, this time at Cornell, he served as poetry editor of EPOCH and was an editor and printer at Ithaca House Press, which published first books by Silliman, Bob Perelman, and other "Language School" writers. Since 1974 he has taught literature and creative writing at George Washington University in DC, where he has also done quite a lot of academic administration. His fifth book is HUGE HAIKU (315 pp., Chax Press, 2005), and in the past year alone he has had well over 50 poems accepted (and by now, many of them published) in a wide range of journals, including DENVER QUARTERLY, POETRY NORTHWEST, and STAND (U.K.).
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Including the story about the Lake District drunk
When you wonder why those flaring flecks those medullary rays in quartersawn oak move us it’s this you’re wanting, you’re wanting the soft marrow between the hard ridges marking winter’s slowed growth to return and give its account of summer, of summer and the softness of the good times, the good times we bury at the end, the end of a life or a night on the town, the town now well below us since we’ve sweated and spat our way up, up the pass with the bench on our back which we took from the pub because we liked it, liked it because we liked it and drunk as we were still wanted to carry something forward with us to our own hut for tomorrow, tomorrow when the softness of this moment will otherwise be lost, lost unless these ribby arcs flaming across the desk sway into ghostly patterns, patterns like nebulae or fossil ripples from a long-gone sea or rings of refracted light around the moon, the moon full, full on the bench now high above Ullswater and full on the skeleton rays of the desk, the desk where we try not to lose the soft goodness where the sways from softness make patterns, patterns we see and try to keep. |
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