Works In
Print | Free Downloadables
a
graphic novella about the remarkable career
of Daniele Finley (1984-2009)
"A
beautiful vision of what becomes of us all." -- J.L
.
I was charging $4.99
for the book, but no one has bought one for over four months, so I am
releasing it into the wild, same as I have let Daniele go.
Download it
here
.
I would ask, when you read this tale, that you
write me
and tell
me what you think
of my little one.
You could still buy the book, and
support Daniele's
foundation,
Robots
& Pirates
.
Two Big Fat Free Books of Finley
I am also releasing two
weighty tomes, my life's work in verse and prose. Both downloads are
free.
YUKON
GOLD (POEMES de TERRE
)
... the big fat book of poems. I undertook this fatuous project over
the winter of 2009 to keep from going crazy. It contains every
poem I have written that I don't hate.
A
CELLARFUL OF NOSE
...
the big fat book of esssays. All the nonfiction pieces that I wrote and
still like.
I also call your attention to my
81
poem-videos
,
also free. My videos have given me a measure of joy in what has been a
very difficult year.
Older Items - 04/12/2007
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.
VIDEO
* 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 VIDEO
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) VIDEO
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.
Looking
for China
... Selected Poems. This book contains my two "greatest hits,"
The
Clarinet Is a Difficult Instrument
and Browsers.
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. VIDEO
The Whole While
... I went through a very
hazy phase around 1972
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. VIDEO
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. VIDEO
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. VIDEO
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. PDF
University Avenue
and Other Poems ...
A
love poem to my self. Takes on a
certain resonance since my brain tumor diagnosis. VIDEO
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.
... A long poem about finding my second book remaindered. In the end I
melt into Homer.
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. VIDEO
Something
about the Buddha ...
Short items from a long time ago VIDEO
.
KRAKEN PRESS COMPILATIONS
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.
Work
Songs
It
struck me that there aren't enough poems that are about what we do most
of the time -- work.
Young,
Gifted, and Obnoxious, Poems 1965-1978
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 Dreams
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)
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