Description
Poetry. "Where were these poems when I was growing up and being filled with enough fear to have us in hell at recess while believing every platitude about God's good will? In language as bracing as an astringent—'as [the sun] dripped from its last slip of cloud/like a tear from a bloody lid'—D. R. James has created a collection in which he sucks it up and walks unarmed into his past, knowing when he does it becomes 'now,' relentlessly battering him. Never considering turning away, or back, James' narrator trudges through one circle of [one] soul-destructive experience after another. If you want your poems to save you, that ain't gonna happen here. If you want lemonade out of lemons, you'll end up with the bitterest of bitters. If you want 'It was worth it in the end' you'll be left with a question. What you will discover here, however, is a strangely comforting form of optimism, assuring that you really can just keep going on."—Jack Ridl
Author Bio
Born in Ohio, raised in Illinois, and higher-ed-ed in Michigan, Iowa, and Oregon, D. R. James now lives in the woods east of Saugatuck, Michigan, with his wife, psychotherapist Suzy Doyle. Between them they have six adult children as well as seven grandchildren, and they enjoy cycling the backroads skirting Lake Michigan. During his 45 years as an educator, James spent 37 of them teaching writing, literature, and peace studies, and coaching students on "doing college," at small, liberal arts Hope College. He earned an MA in English at the University of Iowa and an MFA in Poetry at Pacific University (Oregon). His nine previous collections include the books Since Everything Is All I've Got (March Street Press, 2011) and If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017) and the chapbooks Why War and Split-Level (Finishing Line Press, 2014, 2017), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box, 2019) and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2020). His micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. Arriving relatively late on the poetry scene (just shy of 50), he has since published individual poems in many and a wide variety of print and online journals and anthologies.
Author City: SAUGATUCK, MI USA