Thanks to Main Street Rag for bringing out “A Veteran’s Nebraska” and “Tipsy Bozo Before the After Party,” two poems I really like and which found their final form with you in the current Winter 2022 issue.

Based in North Carolina, I remember Main Street Rag, the press and magazine, as a friend to the small press community for years and at least over a decade. Right now, I also am happily reading Yehoshua November’s book of poems, God’s Optimism, from Main Street Rag books.

While I am in the middle of God’s Optimism and cannot sum it up, November’s book is as strong as the individual poems of his I’ve seen in journals from time to time. When November mixes his emotionally resonate philosophical explorations with a well-wrought picture of how it’s interwoven into his daily life, these longer poems so far are my favorites.

A religious Jewish author, it also is refreshing to see poetry depicting everyday life where spirituality does not occur on some specific day or at some specific turn of events, but as part of the atmosphere of life.

You can find God’s Optimism here at this small press book store (link).

Main Street Rag, the mag, is linked here.

G. H. Mosson

www.ghmosson.com

Thank you El Portal of New Mexico for publishing “Chess Match in Brooklyn,” over twenty years in the works as it was written around the latter part of 2000.

While I cannot exactly remember when it was drafted, I can glimpse back to a day in NYC, soon to be on route to Washington D.C., sitting on a black couch where some of the attitude of this and a few other poems from that time developed – and which remain with me after the moves, visions and revisions, and evolution.

The below links to what’s out and about, which I just found! I never did see the Fall 2021 hard copy of El Portal – don’t need to – but people in New Mexico did, as they invited me to a launch party – a delicious and mysterious bi-continental twist.

Thanks Connections, a literary journal out of Southern Maryland, for publishing my 2021 poem, Parenting During the Pandemic, in the Fall 2021 issue.

www.ghmosson.com

Editor Dan Cuddy of the Loch Raven Review provides hearty praise and a detailed review of Simultaneous Revolutions, my co-written chapbook with Marcus Colasurdo, which is out through PM Press (Oakland, CA; Frostburg, MD).

Mr. Cuddy concludes: “This book is more a living entity than most books of poetry. The words not only perform but they also engage the reader’s own reality and teach the reader to see, feel. The stanzas and excerpts of the poetry presented in this review are only teasers to the wealth found within its covers.”

The Loch Raven Review is a fine journal, and we both appreciate the insightful discussion. Scary to think my poetry has come out on occasion there for more than a decade! Review linked here.

Warrior With Shield, a poem of mine based on a Henry Moore sculpture, has been nominated for “Best of the Net” by Wrath Bearing Tree, a literary journal edited and published by veterans.

The poem, Warrior With Shield, is based on a Henry Moore sculpture originally, and can be found online still by clicking here.

D. Donovan of the Midwest Book Review calls my last solo collection, “Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time,” “a poetry collection the entire family can enjoy.”

Ms. Donovan writes: “It’s unusual to see a poetry collection that can appeal across generations, but Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time is such a production. It thus is recommended not just for the usual poetry collection and reader, but for anyone who would absorb reflections on self, family, and the interconnectedness of life, at any age.“

The chapbook, out from Finishing Line Press in 2019, offers contemporary adult poems followed by a section of children’s poems. It also received praise from the Loch Raven Review and Kirkus Review. This Nov. 2021 review can be found below. Grateful for insightful readers.

Direct Link: http://donovansliteraryservices.com/november-2021-issue.html#fsa

Midwest Book Review: http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/nov_21.htm#dianedonovan

Sometimes a publisher and author together create a beautiful book, a keepsake as well as a joy to read, and Amber Books (London, UK 2021) has done just that in publishing a selection from the ancient Chinese Book of Songs (“Shi-Jing“). Highly recommended.

Set in a bright yellow, cloth-like-covered book the size and firmness of a wooden paddle, these poems are filled with refrains of loving and longing, and subtle music of the seasons at home and of travel, and of life at court. The wonderful dressing making them feel as real as water flowing over stone as you bend down and retrieve a bright pebble from a normally shallow, now gushing summer stream bed.

While I myself enjoy the ancient Chinese poets in translation, especially those books translated by Red Pine gifted to us through Copper Canyon, I have not beforehand dipped into the Book of Songs.

This selection is not overwhelming and refreshing. The care of the binding, the rich smooth interior paper, makes it feel like someone has brought precious music and knowledge from far away, and left it at your doorstep.

Big thanks to the Kirkus Review for their thoughtful review of my somewhat experimental poem of parenting and parenthood in the context of becoming.

“A profound and heartfelt meditation on the meaning of parenthood.”

Kirkus Review, Online (linked here), on Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time by G. H. Mosson (FLP 2019). Thank you for the kind review!

“Simultaneous Revolutions reaches into the heart, mind, and literary worlds with images that resonate long after the reading is over. It’s highly recommended.” D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review (Aug. 2021).

Simultaneous Revolutions (Poems) – Reviewed by D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

G.H. Mosson and Marcus Colasurdo

PM Press

www.pmpress.org

ISBN: 9781629638676

$5.95 Pamphlet / $2.99 ebook

Donovan’s Bookshelf, http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/aug_21.htm#dianedonovan

Direct Link: http://donovansliteraryservices.com/august-2021-issue.html#srp

“Warrior With Shield,” a poem of mine that I began around fifteen years ago or so, and based on a Henry Moore sculpture, is out with Wrath Bearing Tree, linked below.

It is amazing to work on something for this long, and maybe change in one’s life (without doubt) while trying to hone in on the original impression and insight. It is great to see how the poem has evolved, hopefully into greater expression of the essence of the instinct.

I certainly am grateful for the editors of Wrath Bearing Tree for seeing what I saw and still see!

WARRIOR WITH SHIELD: https://www.wrath-bearingtree.com/…/new-poetry-from-g…/

Moore’s Sculpture, Image Link: https://collections.artsmia.org/…/warrior-with-shield…