Poet Michael Dennis Reviews my little books

Poet Michael Dennis has offered a generous review of both Ghost Music and Fancy Clapping.

Check out Michael’s poetry while exploring his reviews: http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2013/04/ghost-music-mark-d-dunn-fancy-clapping.html

 

 

Reading: April 5

 

 

 

Songs for Learnin': a fundraiser for scholarship

This year, until August, proceeds from downloads of my music will go to The Read More Books Scholarship at Sault College in Sault Ste Marie. The scholarship is designed to assist a student (perhaps students, if this goes well) who has a passion for reading and the arts. To qualify, students need only write a simple letter expressing their involvement in art and their love of books. Details, for any students wishing to apply next year, can be found through Financial Aid offices at the college.

    There are two ways to download: CD Baby and iTunes. CD Baby retains only 9% of the download fee while iTunes retains about 40%, so I suggest CD Baby if you’d like to participate. The download links are at the bottom of the SHOP page on my website. Here is the link: http://www.mddunn.com/#!shop/vstc9=music. A CD Baby page is available here: http://www.mddunn.com/#!cd-baby-market-page.

     In addition, $2 from every book sold through my website will go to Canopy, a Canadian organization that works to reforest sensitive regions. If you have questions or concerns, please contact me.

      A new CD is coming, I promise.

 

The CD Baby market page from my website: http://www.mddunn.com/#!cd-baby-market-page

The general shop page with iTune links at the bottom: http://www.mddunn.com/#!shop/vstc9=music

 

 

Always Unexpected

I'll just say it was a bad week, and share this draft of a poem:

Always Unexpected

This morning I wrote “too soon, too soon, too soon”
across the top of a grainy sheet of paper
and tried to remember her face, the student
who left us after planning for next September.
There are so many, year after year. 
You love them, many of them. 
Some, you’d like to forget. Some
you forget without trying. In all, you see
the babies they were, the motherly love
that brought them through their first prone days,
the struggles and entitlements that brought them to you.

Wishing for time. Wishing for time.

 

 

 

Happy New Year and a Review

Happy New Year!

 

If I were to make a New Year’s resolution, it would be to blog regularly.

Unfortunately, that is as far as it’s going, because I don’t make NY resolutions.

    Here is a review by poet Jim Zukowski of _Fancy Clapping_. Thanks, Rumpus. Thanks, Jim.

http://therumpus.net/2013/01/fancy-clapping-by-mark-d-dunn/

 

 

 

Poem found in the margins of a secondhand book

Poem found in the margins of a secondhand book

          (_Everything Arrives at the Light_)

 

“delightful”

sound & light

sound is full of hearing

because the throats are warm

 

-idea of sound and light

-something about something that people

arrive at

 

-drunk

 and

 unpleasant

 

Imagery

 

-more philisophical

- about deficiency of language

 

“soul of one newly dead”

-relation between life and death

-souls continuing to exist

 

-earthy religion

is bourgeois Christianity

 

-language sing of alienation

 

-allusion to Virginia Woolf

 

-time

-recapturing time

 

-animals spend time occupying W,

then move on to animals again

 

 

Eating Crow

I like crows. Almost every morning several crows call impatiently for the grub we’ve been feeding them since last winter.

They circle above the patio. They perch on the telephone pole, watching, waiting for us to go back indoors. I like crows, but I don’t like eating crow.

However, I am glad to “eat crow” on this day.

    Several posts back, I lamented that the two Coles bookstores in Sault Ste Marie weren’t carrying my books. I believe I expanded the complaint to say that the stores had no poetry section and carried little in the way of poetry. Well, things have changed. Both stores now have clearly marked shelves of poetry with some good stuff on them, new and old. And, yes, they’ve got Fancy Clapping (http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Fancy-Clapping-Mark-D-Dunn/9781896350486-item.html?ikwid=fancy+clapping&ikwsec=Home), several copies in fact. So, I take it back, whatever it was I said. They’re even carrying a new book by Gary Geddes that I might well spring for.  

     So, cheers to you Coles Books in Sault Ste Marie for opening the door to poetry. Thank you.  

     Now we’ve got to make it worth the effort and buy those books.