Hot On the Presses

Sheet Music, my chapbook of six poems is being published by Three Bee Press in early 2016. The Editor, Greg Wahl, has been busy with paper selection and layout, and lately has been spending time at Signal Return in Easter Market, Detroit, setting the text and printing the first three pages (pictured.) When all the pages are …

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cummings: A Poet’s Advice

A poet is somebody who feels and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn't. A lot of other people think or believe or know they feel—but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling—not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or …

Sheet Music

I'm thrilled to announce that Sheet Music, a new chapbook of my poems, will be published by Three Bee Press, a brand-spanking-new startup press in Detroit this fall. Sheet Music will be the first book published and printed by Three Bee. Stay tuned for more information and a link to the press's website when it is …

Our Sudden Flight

After a few years on and off of deep revision and submissions, and some very close calls with some great publishers of late, I am pleased to announce that the manuscript for my third full-length collection, Our Sudden Museum, featuring a decade's worth of poems, old and new, was accepted for publication today by Salmon …

A Prayer to Disappear

Is it wind or weathervane I want from words, from words arranged in what I might call a poem? Is it that ornate, classic, squeaky copper arrow atop the roof I want? Or the invisible sensation, the current—to know its direction and speed from how it reaches, how it caresses my flesh. And then is it even wind …

To the Hours

It is impossible to get my eyes around early Autumn. Try as I may, I can't sink the beauty of it in me. It remains buoyant and bobbing and gold. Blatant. But the trees are undressing. I am voyeur. October is busy at prayer and wants me to know it. I can't afford its light. I …

House Under Construction

You step out your door for a moment to go to the mailbox, and boom. Your sturdy house that one moment ago was right there, is gone in a poof, as if zapped by a miles-high, space invader somewhere above the clouds. So it feels sometimes for the poet whose manuscript has been rejected by a …

The Light Beyond the Body

Last night I mulled with friends the question of psychic abilities, specifically if it might be possible for one to either transmit or receive, either consciously or accidentally, the thoughts of others. I loved the idea, but, as usual, leaned toward the Big No. We also discussed the experiment--that the molecular structure of water could be …

Winter Mind

Often in winter, the first stanza of Wallace Stevens's terrific poem, "The Snow Man" pops into my head. "One must have a mind of winter / To regard the frost and the boughs / Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..." So today I revisited the poem and it was wonderful to hold this perfectly packed …

Pints and Poems (and Vinyl!)

Thanks to the packed house at Harmony Brewing Co. last evening in Grand Rapids who came out to hear the reading by Diane Wakoski, Patricia Clark and me. The beer was decent, but the poetry was better. It felt great to resurrect the Prophet, and to unleash his doomsaying over the crowd. Raucous and rollicking …

Mellow Fruitfulness

Here in mid-Michigan, it's been the Autumn of Keats's Ode: o'erladen, oozing, mellow-misted. On several occasions, running through Island Park, I've stopped because I've had to, just to take it in, the blaze of reds and golds, the swirling-down leaves, the leaves riding the back of the Chippewa River, so much deep blue sky, and …

Another Michigan Town Sprouting Poetry

Thanks to the great audience who came out for the first annual north45east reading last night, held at Art in the Loft, a beautiful wide-open gallery space in Downtown Alpena, with huge windows and a view of the lake. I was honored to read with such a lineup of poets, and lucky it was a …

(Poetry in) Michigan (in Poetry)

Poetry lovers, Michigan lovers, and Poetry in Michigan lovers: you're bound to love this book. New Issues Press will be publishing a Michigan poetry anthology this October called Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry, and I'm thrilled to be included in its pages. Edited by celebrated Michigan Poets Bill Olsen and Jack Ridl, the selection …

I’m After a Long Silence

Into a body unfamiliar. Into a poem as into a flesh stepped out of. Now I know I don't want to know what I know but what the poem wants me to know. I've been long gone from the voice of making poems and long gone from the light that's there—as in a dream we're …

Poem of the Day: 5/22/23

OK, I know there's a practical template for the poet vs. editor poem, or the poet-writing-in-the -form of a rejection letter poem. It can be a bit tiresome. This could be it's own sub-genre, or could certainly warrant an anthology. However, every once in a while I come across one of these vindictive little revenge …

The Sanity of Rain and Poetry

Linda Pastan's reading this evening was, like her work, clearly dazzling. Especially this evening I felt lucky to walk under an umbrella in this small town to her reading and thankful to hear the sanity, grace and power of poetry in a small, quiet church. Poetry like Linda's is truly louder than bombs--and reminds me …

The Fingering Air

In my most recent manuscript, Our Sudden Museum, there is a poem entitled "What is Written on the Leaves." I wrote that poem in Deerfield Park, here in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, in October a few years ago, on a bench under a maple, surrounded by a blanket of leaves, in a place so quiet I …

Arranging the Manuscript

How does a poet assemble their manuscript? By going to a yoga studio and doing the Downward Facing Poet. Here is Robert Fanning immersed in arranging one of his new manuscripts, entitled OUR SUDDEN MUSEUM.

Is All We Need

I don't like most holidays--days that line us up like children and make us have the same answer, the same expression, that make us color with the same crayons the same shape the same emotion, and worse: that pressure us to express ourselves with the contents of our wallets. Fucking Scrooge, I know. But yeah, …

Poem of the Day: 2/4/13

Because we've seen this before: this thug season loosens its grip on our throat. Let's us go. Here's one for the changing light. And one for what's encoded in those ice encrusted twigs. The buds to be. And soon more of those mishap warm days. I love how Susan Blackwell Ramsey's poem captures all of this--that …