Announcing My New Poetry Book!

 I'm very proud to announce the release of my first full-length collection of poetry, entitled The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, from Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books. I've previously published seven chapbooks, but this is my first full-length volume, 80 pages long, containing 54 poems on a wide range of subjects, most of them written in the past ten years or so. Here are the front and back covers:

I was fortunate to get blurb recommendations from the renowned poet and author Marge Piercy (whose workshops I've taken a couple of times), Writers Digest Poetry Editor Robert Lee Brewer (who's known me and my work for a good 15 years or more, mostly due to my activity on his poetry-writing blog Poetic Asides), and a newer poet friend, Vince Gotera, a professor at University of Northen Iowa and former editor of the North American Review. I've got a lot of positive reaction to the cover art and title as well, and I hope the contents are entertaining and inspiring to those who read it. It was a labor of love to be sure.

The book is $16.50, and is available on Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher at kelsaybooks.com. I also have a limited number of author's copies that I will gladly autograph and send to you for the cover price plus $2.25 shipping and handling. Contact me at jackbugs@comcast.net if you are interested.

Here's a sample poem:

The Photo from M87

for Dr. Katie Bouman

When everything lined up—

your algorithm, the telescope signals—

when you displayed your array of hard drives,

dozens of them, all housing the bits and bytes

and years needed to accomplish this historic task—

when the photo went viral, a fiery iris

around an utterly black pupil, and people

called it many things, like “The Eye of Sauron”—

when we all realized we were staring at

a black hole, 55 million light-years away,

that we were looking into the darkest, densest

power of the universe, where everything

may go in the end, and we realized that you,

a woman not quite thirty (young enough

to be my daughter), were able to bring it to us

from those mind-blowing reaches of space,

and the camera caught you watching a monitor

as the image finally assembled,

and you held your hands to your mouth,

trying in vain to contain your unbridled joy—

that’s the kind of joy I want.