For those who’ve travelled down any road of literary discovery, I don’t think it is surprising for me to say that I recently began following a path of study that led me to insights I was surprised to find. Not so much surprised at the findings, but surprised at myself for what I had missed. […]
Tag Archives: Albert DeGenova
“a fly in the soup,” on being a young writer in Chicago
For the uninitiated, the main entry hall of Oak Park River Forest High School (Oak Park, a suburb just adjacent to Chicago’s West Side) has a special andproud feature identified by students as the “wall of fame.” It consists of neat rows of framed pictures of notable graduates of the school. Some more recognizable than […]
Think Of It As Prayer
Considering our cozy 4 1/2 square miles, there are a lot of churches in Oak Park, the Chicago suburb where I’ve spent the last 17 years. No judgment intended, but there is quite a potpourri of paths to salvation right outside most of our doors. Though I was raised Catholic, I enjoy Unity Temple these […]
rhino magazine, “a good hammer”
Albert reads “A Good Hammer” from RHINO 2013. Editors picked the poem as a finalist in their Founder’s Prize competition and nominated the poem for an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. Click here for RHINO Audio Poetry.
Finding The Moveable Feast
It is time again for A Moveable Feast. This is my fourth time with Hemingway’s famous memoir about being a young and poor writer in Paris during the 1920s, but this time I am reading the new “restored” edition. There are subtle changes to the text and “new” chapters culled from Hemingway’s papers, but the […]
all roads will lead you home
read “Black Pearl” at the new online journal from Virtual Artists Collective
About Place Journal
Civil Rights Retrospective issue, “In Our Lifetime”
A Good Hammer
A Good Hammer, is now available from Timberline Press. Timberline produces beautiful hand-made, limited-edition, letterpress art books. Beyond the art and craft of the poetry, A Good Hammer is a limited edition, signed and numbered, collectible. Because there will be no “second print run,” and due to the financial limitations of small press enterprises, you […]
After the Teacher
for Norbert I built a crude altar old bricks and white stones for the sculpture that gently bubbles, the sound of water in my garden – like Basho’s frog jumping in, you’d like that. Yet with morning coffee in one hand and your book in the other I hear lawn mowers, airplanes, and car engines […]
Jensen’s Great Poem, an essay about The Clearing School and Norbert Blei
(My friend and mentor Norbert Blei had asked me to write an essay about my experience at The Clearing Folk School in Ellison Bay, Wisc., for a book he was working on about the school, Jens Jensen the founder of the school, and his 40-year tenure as writer-in-residence at The Clearing. Norb died this past […]
