Archive • In Solitude, For Company • Buttondown

Issue #21 - The Poet, the Place, & Regional Empowerment

The Poet and Place There's an easily quotable line in Wallace Stegner's essay "A Sense of Place" -- no place is a place until it has had a poet. He quickly...

Issue #20 - An Audience of One

To Whom It May Concern Writing is something that is famously done alone. Only one set of hands fits on the keyboard. For me it used to happen late at night....

Issue #19 - The Poet's Wife, Part 2, and the Novelists' Widow

Tanya Berry A while back, I had the thought to write about some famous writers’ spouses because my marriage has had such a large influence on my writing....

Issue #18 - Wasps, Words, Weeds, and Feasts for Free

Red, White, and Bee - Felt Pen and Digital Color I hear a lot, sometimes from my own mouth, that poetry is the highest form of writing. But it isn’t always....

Issue #17 - Stories Will Feed the People

February 20, 2021

Twenty-two years ago, I picked up a Bic ballpoint pen and began drawing thousands of leaves growing on a trellis. I became obsessed with it. It also allowed...

Issue #16 - A Rant and a Comfort for Writers

February 2, 2021

My Complaints about Publishing First, no one asked. Second, let me clear the table and invite you to conversation I've been having with a lot of writers and...

Issue #15 - Modes of Perception (Happy New Year)

January 1, 2021

View of Southwest Amarillo with Subdivision by Me, Sharpie on copy paper. Modes of Perception My sketch is not good, but I made certain choices in the...

Issue #14 - Cutting Room Floor

November 13, 2020

Poetry Reading If you weren’t able to attend my poetry reading on Zoom, then you can watch a recording of it by clicking the link above. It’s over an hour,...

Dorothy Patterson Poetry Series

October 27, 2020

My alma mater, West Texas A&M University and the Department of English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages, has invited me to be the inaugural poet for The...

Issue #12 - The Poet's Wife, Pt. 1

September 13, 2020

The Poet’s Wife, Pt. 1 My wife negotiating with contractors at a commercial building site. In 2019, my wife and I visited New York City with a couple of...

Issue #11 - The Critic's Dream of Eden

August 14, 2020

News Maybe you've noticed, but summer broke my streak of producing a bi-weekly newsletter. In June I found myself upside down at the bottom of a wild spring...

Issue #10 - I Wanna Be Bob Dylan

Things Have Changed Bob Dylan was supposed to play in Amarillo this week. I was going to take my mom for her birthday. He was almost 18 when she was born,...

Issue #9 - Chaos or Community?

There's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure I have the credibility or resources to address any of it directly. But Martin Luther King tells us, from...

Issue #8 - Jenny Stalter's Dirty Joke

Jenny Stalter's Dirty Joke …People are accustomed to regard anything as vulgar that overreaches their own attempts at self-justification. - Robert Penn...

Issue #7 - A Prison Psalter

A Prison Psalter For Prisons and Correctional Institutions Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them...

Issue #6 - Sunrise, Moonset

Ground Rules… I apologize. I’m six issues in, and I’ve already broken my own rules for this newsletter. Originally, I said I’d review writers/artists local...

Issue #5 - Portrait of the Artist as a Newsletter

Artist’s Statement On the last page of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his narrator proclaims, “I go to encounter for the millionth...

Issue #4 - Question Beauty

Migrating Murder of Crows on Texas RM 1061. Book Recommendation Augustine's Sermons St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth,...

Special Issue #2.5 - In Defense of the Writer in Residence

Writer in Residence Chera Hammons, the subject of Issue #2, currently occupies the position of Writer-In-Residence at WTAMU (my alma mater). The Writer-In-...

Issue #2 - Chera Hammons Walks Into a Bar

In Solitude, For Company A Review: A Poem by Chera Hammons - They Call This Weather a Land Hurricane Chera Hammons is unofficially Amarillo's poet laureate....

Issue #1 - In Solitude, For Company

The title of this newsletter comes from W.H. Auden's Horae Canonicae ...Among the leaves the small birds sing; The crow of the cock commands awaking: In...