Poetry In Print
a graphic novella about Daniele Finley (1984-2009)
"A beautiful vision of what becomes of us all." -- J.L.
Click here and here for sample pages. Donation:
$4.99
Money for this
booklet goes to fighting suicide in the Twin Cities. All other downloads
on this page are free.
Two Big Fat Books of Finley
I undertook this winter to create something like a "complete works" ...
a volume of poems and a volume of essays. Both downloads are
free.
A CELLARFUL OF NOSE ... the big fat
book of esssays. All the nonfiction pieces that I wrote and still like.
POEMES de TERRE ... the big fat book of
poems. I undertook this silly project winter to keep from going crazy. It
contains every poem I ever wrote that I don't hate.
Statement
Poetry used to be the most important thing in my life. For more than a decade I wrote every day, sometimes all day long. These were the manic years of trying to leave my thumbprint on the world -- and also trying to meet women.
Then, for two decades, poetry became an unhappy argument in my head. I loved its power, but I feared its delusionary power. I did not want to be the things writing poetry made me -- grandiose, standoffish, solipsistic.
Here's what a respected editor wrote about my work, thirty years ago:
"In no one else's poems, except Vallejo's, do I feel such overwhelming desire straining at the limits of words," wrote Michael Cuddihy, editor of Ironwood, one of the best magazines of the 1970s.
Pretty auspicious, right? Only recently did I get the full message Michael intended: that desire, while thrilling, obstructs inner peace. I was too hot to be cool.
Michael Cuddihy, from the grave you stab at me.
It's true, he sobbed piteously. Writing poems is a form of
sollipcism. A place where the Mighty Finley is always in charge and he
can't be abandoned by his dad again and everyone who disagrees can go suck
duck eggs.
I tried to get around it by "reporting," by taking the
Finley out of the work. I tried to "serve" the material. But, in
truth, I was less interesting, and less funny, without me along for
the ride. I had to try again, this time to find a balance between me and
not-me.
Today I find I am writing again. But not so much, and I hope not so confusedly. I figure I have as much right to my point of view as anybody. If you don't like it, how sad, and how not-sad ...
Here are some free chapbooks that I wrote over the years. Over the past 15 years some 140,000 have been downloaded. Which is amazing to me, but mysterious, because for all I know they were all downloaded by spiders and robots (search engines).
Download all you like. And don't be a
spider, tell me what you
enjoy.
PRINT BOOKS AND
CHAPBOOKS
The Movie under the Blindfold (Vanilla Press, 1978)
I tried to stretch with poems like "Triangles Prisms Cones" -- surrealism with a broken heart. I submitted it to VP at a time when they were a conventional press. It was accepted by its panel of editors, but its publisher was going through the first big blaze of feminist reorientation, and she bridled at the idea of publishing yet another chapbook of patriarchal verse. Aw come on, I said, just one more? It was never quite distributed. She was so chagrined by me that she had the books boxed up in her garage. It rained, the books were ruined, and that was the end of that.
Home
Trees (Minnesota Writers Publishing House, 1978)
A breakthrough in terms of discipline and focus. I was starting to mean something. Check out "This Gun Shoots Black Holes." Of all black hole poems, I am told, this is the one most uninformed about astrophysics.
Lucky
You (Litmus, Inc., 1976)
Look at me hugging myself on the hell-red back cover -- and dig the hair. My friend Charles Potts published this first book and it remains, astonishingly, in print to this day. "Letter from Como" is especially wack.
Water Hills (Salthouse Press, 1985)
My buddy D. Clinton published this as a favor to me when I lived in Milwaukee. It was my last book published by someone besides me.* Includes the Pushcart Prize-winning "Gise Pedersen Sets Me Straight on a Matter of Natural History," and "A Drive in the Country," which appeared in Paris Review.* Until a short but gorgeous artbook, The Orchard, to be published when Richard Stephens of Richard Stephens Press gets around to it.
The
Beagles of Arkansas (Mudborn Press, 1976)
Everything there wants to leave. A little booklet from a car trip Red and I made through Missouri and Arkansas. I always have had a warm spot in my heart for "At the Ball Park," mentioning Rod Carew and Lyman Bostock.
KRAKEN PRESS ORIGINALS
The following chaplets I published myself, on my Kraken
Press imprint, mostly since 1985.
FRIPPERIES ... short things,
1973-2009
DESALINIZATION... items
written since Daniele's death, not so much about her
THE
ORCHARD (2009) ... A book-length memoir of growing up in the
Firelands, created by Minneapolis book artist Richard Stephens
THINGS (2009) poems and notes about Daniele
PIECES (2009) essays about Daniele
SEVENTY YEARS BEHIND THE PLOUGH (2008) Greatest Hits
CRAZY GRACES (2009) essays
LE CAHIER (2008) poems
Hit the pause button and page through slowly. Or change the
timing from 3 to, like, 7
DOG as a METAPHOR for the SOUL (2008)
poems
Hit the pause button and page through slowly.
Or change the timing from 3 to, like, 7
HORSES WORK HARD (2006) poems
YOU (2007) poems
MIDNIGHT at the MOUNDS (2005)
MOAB (2004)
Curtis Hotel Farewell ... I had
the strangest feeling when I first visited the Curtis Hotel, on Halloween,
1969. It turns out I was conceived there, and against heavy
odds.
The Tooth Fairy Naked at Last ... Less a poem than a wacky essay. I wrote this for my daughter, who was afraid of dentists. It is very popular -- over 100,000 people have downloaded it.
The Good King ... Six
children's stories, including the much-loved "A Frankenstein
Christmas."
University
Avenue ... Contains the harrowing tale
of how I was hit in the head -- right where my brain tumor was diagnosed
25 years later -- by a falling 12-ft tailpipe combo.
The Whole While ... I went through a very hazy phase around 1977.
Midnight at the Mounds ... A very short selection of things I wrote mostly while hiking in British Columbia with Rachel.
Bing Cherries ... A collection of essays.
The New Yorker ... Holiday poems from a Minnesotan in Manhattan. Written in a hotel room overlooking Lincoln Center, one grand wintry evening. There's a good one about a woman in a brown coat begging on the Avenue of the Americas.
Borrowing from Minneapolis (To Pay St. Paul) ... This was my Smile, the great never-published opus. It's a dialogue about city/country living, written when I worked as news editor of the Worthington Daily Globe, 1978-80. It takes the "reportorial" poetic style of Home Trees and pushes it farther. Dig The Iliad." It applies the classic style of Homer to a four-hour cornfield fight between a raccoon and a German shepherd.
New Friend ... Sometimes, when we say no, we mean yes. A tribute to the woman I love.
Old Stone Enters Into Heaven ... The story of a man and the dog who feared him. Oral history first told me by Joe Paddock, which I ran with. .
The Brood ... I wrote this as a Xmas present to my family members. Something special for each of them. Includes the title poem, which sets a new benchmark for paternal self-pity.Great Blue ... Poems from around 1991. My stepdad Dick died from a brain tumor -- foreshadowings of my own problems. Suggestion: "Sleeping on My Hands."
When You Are Pope ... It ain't all it's cracked up to be at Castelgandolfo ...
The Lord God Has Words with the Choir ... Death to poets! A poem for those who love poetry, and also hate it. Charlie Potts included this in his great anthology SPIRITUAL POETRY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST anthology.University Avenue and Other Poems ... A love poem to my self. Takes on a certain resonance since my brain tumor diagnosis.
That Old Saw ... A tree collapses in its best friend's arms.
Rather than downloading the 43 books listed below the fold, I have created three mini-collections (in PDF format) that contain poems I still like.
 |
Mike's Early
Poems 1971-1977 "Like driving by a flaming wreck
..." |
 |
Mike's Middle
Stuff 1987-1995 "Getting there, |
 |
Recent
Poems 1996-2006 "Stop! Go back!" |
Dead Cat ... A poem for my boyhood friend, El Rayo X.
Sunset Lake Poems ... Two summer weeks, sitting with my laptop in the sand.
The House of Murk ... Weird stuff from a period of languor and depression. But do check out "What We Want" -- a more ambitious poem was never wrote.
Roads ... A trip to the Juan de Fuca Straits.
Something about the Buddha ... Short items from a long time ago
.
Rather than downloading the 43 books listed below the fold, I have created three mini-collections (in PDF format) that contain poems I still like.
|
Mike's Early
Poems 1971-1977 "Like driving by a flaming wreck
..." |
|
Mike's Middle
Stuff 1987-1995 "Getting there, |
|
Recent
Poems 1996-2006 "Stop! Go back!" |
Work Songs
Young, Gifted, and Obnoxious, Poems 1965-1978It struck me that there aren't enough poems that are about what we do most of the time -- work.
Long in the Tooth and Stating to Trail Off a Lot, Poems 1980-2000
These two collections were published the same day, for a reading at the Black Dog Cafe in Saint Paul. The first book is a brief compendium of my flaming young period; the second are the high points of my inevitable decline.
The Thing that Had Its Way with Duluth
The Thing that Had Its Way with Duluth II
Thalidomide DreamsTwo compilations assembled for readings in Duluth.
Poems for my old school friend Peter Meister, to let him know how I'd spent my life.
And for the truly adventurous ... my unpublished memoir Fixing the Christians
The tribute that
keeps on hurting.
I got this in the mail October 2,
2003
(and responded here)
KRAKEN PRESS
1841 Dayton Avenue
Saint Paul MN 55104