I'm not dead...yet

Has it really been almost a year since last I posted here? 

Remarkable.

I am still alive, just busy, distracted, off licking my wounds, etc etc etc...

All the standard excuses.

Yesterday was my father's 90th birthday.  My latest book of greatest hits

Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004

has been out for a couple of months.

Oh, yeah, I am doing a signing at the Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, West Virginia, tomorrow.

And, yes, I have been writing...more of that in my next entry.

final sunday

I am cast out.
orphaned.
left for dead by the side of a wide road
so that others can swerve
to miss my fading form.
nothing warm
comes from this.
another legacy of ashes
left on my tongue
the taste of dung
and vinegar
from an apple orchard
I had once considered
a sanctuary.

the colding feat.
I am incomplete
and competing for sustenance
is not in my nature.
I will drag myself
into the dark
that I may not offend
those for whom
pain
is too intimate.
and I will find
myself.  unbroken
once I fit 
all the pieces.

drinking stagnation.
the hunger unabated.
but I will bind my wounds.
plant fists to earth and roar.
sore in a thousand places.
it is good you do not 
have to see me like this,
the tattered, battered man,
the orphan of Aphrodite.
but I will not change
my coat of arms.
I will still be a priest to your divinity.
and I will love you
every time I feel my hollow soul.


William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

the edits are done

and "Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004" is slotted for release sometime next month...either August 16th (my birthday) or August 12th (the first day of the apple harvest, consistent with my poem "matrimony" from "The Sacraments" within the White Sunday poems).

it all gets so complicated.

some poems got cut by my editor, M.K., as did the use of the faux pen-and-ink drawings I have included in a few of my past books.  Her position...was disappointing, but I accept her taste and judgement.  she even made a few minor structural changes to a few pieces that needed them.

she solved the issue of the line-wraps for "aureate" in an elegant manner that I would not have accepted had it not been so well executed, so she out smarted me.  I may have to re-evaluate my generic loathing of all editors.  Dammit.

The MonArts Reading...and some news

First off, let me thank Ro Brooks of the Monongalia Arts Center and Scott Emerson of the Morgantown Poets for hosting me last Friday.  Also, to WBOY-TV Channel 12 for sending someone down to interview me.  I had fun.  Made a few bucks for the Morgantown Poets.  Saw a few familiar faces, and many new ones.

If you weren't there, or were there and not paying attention, you missed a few news items:

First off, my book "Orphan" will keep its name when it comes out next year. I had pushed for a title change, but my all-powerful and all-wise editor vetoed the change to "Orpheus' Orphans".  I will have my revenge.

Secondly, the great Larry Jaffe, founder of Poets for Human Rights, is writing the foreword to "Selected Poems and Passions:  1996-2004".  It is due out August 16th of this year.

Finally, I enjoyed getting back out on the road so much that I am now looking to finally put together my comeback tour.  More news in the next few days.