Thirteen Blackbirds Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Mon, 9 Dec 2019 20:44:00 -0800

Notes From an Ill-Kept Journal

12.9.19 Winter Depression

It doesn’t take long to get grumpy when the days shorten, and the dark skies gather early in the afternoon, like crowds of unwanted guests. Trust me, I have raised “Getting Grumpy” to the top of my playlist for all-time memorable rock ballads. The nearest exit sign is three months away, and you’re wondering if you can make it through the next week. About two years ago I bought a small army of Runner Ducks to calm my soul, but it turns out they’re high maintenance in the best of times, and in the cold, damp Seattle Winter months, (the worst of times) it’s like work release on steroids. Sometimes small skirmishes expand into major wars, and letting this one slip, can be bewildering, if not perilous. Bur perhaps there’s one thing we can all agree on, that there’s got to be more to Winter, than winter depression. There is snow. There is home and hearth. Snowmen. The poetry of Robert Frost (and even others). But if poetry doesn’t work for you, try this: a little quiet observation, a little contemplation, a little gratitude. Observe the gentle fall of flakes or the torrents that restore the earth. Take some time to consider what it would be like to live on the equator. And be thankful you don’t. Getting more serious, perhaps this way of thinking can possibly lead one out from a frame of negativity into a world that mimics, if not actuates, the tension between surviving and surrendering. If you’re like me, you’ll admit to needing both: a will to surmount difficulty, and the willingness to accept what doesn’t meet your narrow standard of tranquility. A starting place is to go into that room of despair, enter into that place you dread. See the shadowed silhouette of a leafless tree in the cold air, softened by moonlit and kindled in an unspoken beauty. See your squandering of time for what it might have been, not mourning its loss so much as providing you perspective and understanding. Then, go out into the dark evening, renew it with light. See what happens.

Backyard in April

Praise for kingdoms in a spoonful of stagnant water,

universes hidden in the super-saturated air.

For this flooded grass, once a green cathedral

of clover and bee, now flattened and brown.

For drowned slugs, beech leaves

floating over them, like unused life preservers.

Praise for the duck pool, brimming

with brownish goo, I dip both hands into,

cupping palmfuls of water-bear and larvae,

unsung heroes, vacuuming the smothering algae.

Praise for disarray and transition, this familiar place

run amuck, that doesn’t need me to succeed,

for ripples of hesitation waving through me,

as I embrace uncertainty and impermanence—

that my seasons in this place are limited,

accepting that struggles are sure to come.

Praise the gray hues, the granite and silica,

the unfiltered raw essence of newness,

and this dripping garden shed, gently slumping

toward ruin, framed by a hemlock’s green lace.

-In "Thin Places," forthcoming from Salmon Poetry

My Next Collection to be Published by Salmon Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 19:00:00 -0800

I wanted to say a few words about Salmon Poetry, who will be publishing my next collection, entitled, "Thin Places." This is a wonderful publisher, based in Ennistymon, on the West Coast of Ireland, a cozy town steeped in poetry, thanks to its founder and managing editor, Jessie Lendennie. A fabulous poet, and gifted administrator/producer of fine poetry books, Jessie has published over 600 books of poetry and prose, and has changed the landscape of poetry culture in Ireland.

For those of you who would like to be put on a mailing list to stay informed of recent developments in the production and distribution of "Thin Places," email me at: edward.nudelman@yahoo.com and I will keep you informed.

Sincerely,

Edward Nudelman
November 29, 2019

Finalist in The Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 18:44:00 -0800

I am humbled and honored to have two poems chosen as finalists in Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest, with the winner, and 22 other finalists. The poems are: "Thin Places," and "Thought Experiment," both of which appear in my next full-length poetry book, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. It’s a competitive contest, with over a thousand entrants, and the shortlist judged by the esteemed Dan Vera. The poems will all be published in their wonderful biannual Print Journal, appearing this Fall. Please help me congratulate the winner, Kurt Luchs, and the other finalists, shown below in their press release:
—-
Atlanta Review 2019 International Poetry Contest Winner Announced!
—-
We are so excited to share that this year’s winner our annual International Poetry Contest is Kurt Luchs, for his poem “Suzie.”
This year’s judge was Dan Vera.
Kurt wins the $1000 prize, and his poem, along with the wonderful poems by the other Finalists, will appear in the fall issue. Congratulations to Kurt and to all of the Finalists! You make Atlanta Review awesome!
—-
The Finalists:
• “Mexican Tongue,” JD Amick
• “[Letter of Love] to Ojīchan,” Aozora Brockman
• “Self Portrait with Rubble,” Sylvia Foley
• “A pledge to the dead requires no proof,” Jennifer Hollis
• “Corpse,” Dana Jaye
• “Meditation on a Trash Fire in My Backyard,” Robert J. Keeler
• “Quantum Heart,” Kathleen Kirk
• “Waiting for Mother’s Geraniums,” Pingmei Lan
• “One Intimate Morning,” Belle Ling
• “Nighttime in Jericho,” Jo-Ann Mort
• “Stones without People and the Art of the Mulberry,” Adele Ne Jame
• “Consumption of a Black Hole and Sweat Bees,” John Nieves
• “Thin Places,” Edward Nudelman
• “Thought Experiment,” Edward Nudelman
• “Apples, Crabapples,” David Rock
• “Sometimes, Briefly,” Kelly Rowe
• “Unscrolling,” Joan Roberta Ryan
• “Spring Freeze,” Joan Roberta Ryan
• “Dead Woman’s Hollow Road,” Nicole Santalucia
• “What White Lies Beneath,” Heidi Seaborn
• “Prelude to a Resurrection,” d.r. shipp
• “She Zuo Bin’s Rite of Spring,” Mary Spalding
• “Where We Call to Nest,” Felicia Zamora
• “Turbulence: Night Flight to Cairo,” Kristin Zime

My Poem Shortlisted by Passager in Their Annual Poetry Contest

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 7 Jun 2019 07:15:00 -0700

I'm delighted to be notified that a poem of mine, "A Farmer and His Wife," has been selected by Passager Books and Journal for Honorable Mention in their annual Poetry Contest. The poem will be published along with the winning poem, and other selected shortlisted poems, in their September contest issue.

Poem Featured on Apple News

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 7 Jun 2019 07:09:00 -0700

A recent poem of mine, "A Fleck of Golden Hair," was accepted by Poets and Artists, and featured on Apple News. The link is found here: https://apple.news/A8TuKjy9wTUCkao_WAfXVug

Review of "Out of Time, Running"

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 10:55:00 -0800

“Out of Time, Running,” A Review,
By Dale Cottingham

Out of Time, Running

By Edward Nudelman

2014, Harbor Mountain Press

I’ll begin consideration of Out of Time, Running, Edward Nudelman’s second full-length poetry collection, with the title, because it’s emblematic of so much: time’s compression as it passes – or runs down to loss, and finally to death, which to the poet means solace, and much more. Nudelman confronts us with the inexorable, with all its boilings and its burnings, caused by time’s unspooling. Yet he does not, in poem after poem, linger on grief or loss, a ready-made subject. Rather, as we see from his first poem, which was nominated for a Pushcart award, “Melody of Complaint,” the failing clock leads not to chaos, but to the burning bush:

Here is where I leave my wants

and wills. A stack of papers,

a desk riddled with sheets

and letters and numbers.

Above the bookcase leaded

with broken glass, tulips

in a glass jar begging for light.

Everything, as it were,

begging for light.

Keats articulated what we still feel, that we hate poetry which has a palpable design upon us – poetry which would enforces a design, its restrictive pattern and the decorative detail, at the expense of the poem’s project, which is evermore about to be. We envy the poet who can see things in the design, rather than the poet who can see the design in things. So, surely, we must envy Nudelman for having endured the burning, and emerged less burdened, simpler, freer. And having so loosed himself, promptly lifts his eyes to his enterprise, to locate himself in his surround, gladdened that I’m here, as we find throughout this book: “the same/ answer crystallizes, teasing out a gray/ moon to wash an unlit night“ (Biochemist in a Cold Room), “hearing the probability of sound” (Electron Spin), but also hearing “a lone voice/ crying in the wilderness, from a tiny ant straining under a load” (Greater Loss). But this is no chagrined tour of a struggle in dim light. We hear him buoyed by the pilgrimage, as he suggests in “Id-Ridden,” that he is unrecognizable to himself, “But perhaps it’s better that way,/ not knowing the real you.”

In one of the most piercing, yet ephemeral, poems in the book, “Western Dream,” the poet describes a dream where the scene elongates through a dry season. The speaker coaxes us to understand the need to observe in context, subsumed in unfiltered sunlight, so much so that “The sun rises boldly/ on your sunglasses/ ricocheting like a bullet.” Of course, the poet strives to see in whatever light is allowed, and Nudelman turns to face the poem itself, to see it for what it is, a physical expression, “balancing on its good leg” (Poem That Stands On One Leaf). For Nudelman this straight talk is a stay against the mechanical sublime, owing perhaps to his paying science career. For if Nudelman writes of his career, the keen attention to detail, the lab, the tests, the recordations of what’s happened, he has journeyed through it and returned, and so it becomes both what he escapes from, and escapes to, in precisely the withdrawal and recurrence his poems suffer into existence.

Nudelman offers a number of vignettes for the reader to enjoy: “Life of Riley,” “Kate’s Room,” and others, where he’s overwhelmed, listening, yet “Restless . . . in my fiftieth year of fasting and prayer” (Monk Inside). Fasting, is a discipline that purifies, expels toxins, so that the poet and the poem distill to an essence, to prayer, and image that speaks to bearing through lean times, rather than dwelling loss. The poet has found value in humbling, that translates into a readiness to surrender. Consider “Longevity:”

Take me then or take me now,

before shade blights the lawn,

before the old forest thins.

The poem is no longer merely the realm, but the means of self-encounter, plucking from the world the constituted terms of its being. His discourse is identical to his experience, in such a way as to become a delta of living into everything. Such is the case for even sub-atomic particles, where, in sleep, the speaker’s eyes “dance in C minor/ and my ears hear the oak tree grow” (Subatomic Ramblings). His notion is that the world not only already contains the poem, but is the poem, that in order to write it, he does not draw the world into himself, but extrudes himself into the world.

Encountering the self is the ultimate exploration, both a reconnaissance and an examination, including the hole that will be left when Nudelman dies. Witness “Reflecting Death:”

I don’t’ see my loved-ones . . .

Just my dog Sophie, asleep at the door . . .

Or am I being overly sentimental?

By employment of “sentimental” in just this position, at the end, the speaker signifies that he’s let go, can see his own dying, and has found a way to adjust his self, and the self-referring metaphor, to an image of the life he’s encountered. Additionally, narcissism is subsumed in the emblems: time, love, struggle, leading to an ironic acceptance, when he admits to stumbling on spelling simple words, and his openness to failures, found in “Wordless Refrain”:

…The theme repeats itself a full eighteen

times, a resplendent opportunity

for fixation, all wordless. Sublime.

The interior rhyme in these lines is not only brilliant and musical, but meta-thematic, considering time’s passage and the futility of words to fully understand it, whilst deftly addressing it after all, with language, his playfulness and good cheer in the rhyme coming through and simultaneously offering the sublime.

The closing poem, “Famous Numbers, and Then There’s Me,” perhaps represents in microcosm the book, a poem which is both a culmination and a deep sounding of the self’s dark fathoms. The poem begins by offering numbers, and their certainty, but the speaker remains in mystery as we drift toward sleep, a kind of practice for death, as he imagines:

. . . angel hairs splitting the wind and radiant seraphim

lightly touching the sky. I see unnumbered rays masking

the nascent darkness and portents of rain.

Richard Howard, referring to Valery, remarks that we call beautiful a work which makes us aware, first, that it might not have existed, and second that it would not have been sublime, unless we read it precisely as the author wrote it. We are not drawn into criticism, necessarily, but enjoy the quality of the experience. And it is in this sense that these poems are beautiful. They express an impulse, irrespective of how matter-of-fact the setting or scattered the phrases, which afford us the framing possibilities: the hand-to-mouth expression of a self-locating, often distilled to hopes and fears and unctions. This is a book that once read, demands rereading, which is my highest praise in a day where poetry comes and goes, and vanishes forgettable.

Featured on Rattle

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 08:46:00 -0700

My poem and audio version are now featured on Rattle Poetry (Rattle #49, Fall, 2015) found here: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/

"Out of Time, Running," Just Published by Harbor Mountain Press

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:30:00 -0700

My new collection, "Out of Time, Running," published by Harbor Mountain Press (Peter Money), was just released today and is available at SPD, found below. I'm deferring from posting a selfie of me holding the book in lieu (and appreciation) of your continued support. You can find a synopsis and some blurbs there also, and an easy ordering platform. Thank you, sincerely! http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780988275546/out-of-time-running.aspx

Another Book Review and Interview by Indie Awards

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:55:00 -0700

Indie Awards interviewed me as runnerup in Poetry Book of the Year contest. You can find it here: interview

Here's a link to the Indie Book review by Serena Augusto-Cox: Indie Review

New Book Review on "Elephants"

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:18:00 -0700

Found here: Review

Our Rare Book Catalog

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:58:00 -0700

Catalog: Rare and unusual children's books, fine bindings, English and America Literature, 1890s & Press Books, Autograph Letters, Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian Illustrators and much more. Here is the direct link at our website: click here

My Book Second Place in Indie Awards Book of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Mon, 2 Apr 2012 14:28:00 -0700

I'm elated to announce that my second book, "What Looks Like an Elephant," Lummox Press, 2011 was just voted runnerup in the Poetry Category for Book of the Year in 2011. Here's the link: Indie Lit Awards

My poem First Place in Goodreads Poetry Contest

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:34:00 -0800

I have just been notified that my poem, "Signs of Impermanence" has won the Goodreads Poetry Contest for February. It will appear in the next official Goodreads newsletter going out to 5 million subscribers. I will post the link when it is out.

Finalist for "Best Book Award"

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sat, 7 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0800

My book, "What Looks Like an Elephant" has been shortlisted for "Best Poetry Book of 2011" by the Independent Literary Awards: one of five finalists, with the winner chosen by a panel of judges in mid-March. Click here: Indie Awards

Finalist in Poetry Competition

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Thu, 3 Nov 2011 13:00:00 -0700

So happy to hear today that my poem was selected as a finalist in the Aesthetica Magazine Creative Works Competition. The poem will be anthologized and is still in the running for the competition with the winner to be announced upon publication in December, 2011. Aesthetica is a hip British/US Journal with over 60,000 readership. Click here: Aesthetica

Recent Poem Acceptances

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Tue, 4 Oct 2011 18:00:00 -0700

Chiron Review-- September, 2011
Valpareiso Review-- October, 2011
Cortland Review-- December, 2011
Evergreen Review-- Next Issue (early 2012)

Recent Reviews of "What Looks Like an Elephant"

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 06:41:00 -0700

Here are a few links to some recent reviews of my new book, "What Looks Like an Elephant," Lummox Press, 2011. I'm also reprinting the Pedestal Magazine review below. Please click on any of below:

Pedestal Magazine Review, August, 2011

Poets and Artists Review, July, 2011

Boston Area Small Press Review, May, 2011

Interview: Poetic Asides

To order:
From Lummox Press

From Barnes and Noble
From Small Press Distribution

******************************************

WHAT LOOKS LIKE AN ELEPHANT
by Edward Nudelman

Review by Grady Harp in Poets and Artists:

Edward Nudelman is a poet of importance. It is likely that at some point in his career he will be at least short listed for Poet Laureate, so able is he to find those fragments of imagination, question, fear, doubt, and need for definition that poke temporary holes in our lives, leaving us with a choice of persistent uncertainty or a good guffaw as camouflage. Reading Nudelman’s succinct poems is not unlike studying cells through a microscope, something Nudelman likely has spent time doing in his day job of cancer research – watching what appear to be normal cells metamorphose into altered forms, becoming villains to life as our bodies know it. Perceptions and explanations, cognitive transient thoughts piqued by momentary changes, looking at the expected and finding paradoxes, and in the end putting all of these experiences in the finely carved frame of humor and the time erosion of memory – all of these aspects are in this collection of erudite yet warmly recognizable Gileads of poetry.

An aspect of Edward Nudelman’s poems that this reader finds particularly appealing is his ability to communicate a thought in a one page poem that minutes to hours to days later calls the reader back to re-think the message first accepted:

ARRIVAL

A flood light decants through a side window.
Who can tell a gnat from a mosquito, unless
blood is spilled? Outside, a dog wants in.

A bus pulls up to its last stop, a boy gets off.
It’s a long walk home; but he wants to walk.
Nobody here remembers the Vietnam war
but they will not easily forget this one.

An astronaut is returning from another planet.
It’s late, but everybody’s ears are piqued.
Everything’s looming, everything’s on hold,
including Wednesday evening’s bridge club.

Halfway through the night, a worried
mother finishes her second book in two nights.
The dog is allowed to come in and checked
for ticks. The stove is left on for heat.

Moods of such ignored magnitude find their way into most all of Nudelman’s poems – that and humor and other conundrums. In the very elegant NOCTURNAL we can excerpt a few lines (space here does not allow full recreation): ‘I’ve written a poem on the death of my father/ and another on the birth of my granddaughter./ Both poems contain the same words in different order./ And both possess the capacity to shock me.’……’Have you ever considered walking backwards to work?/ Watching your house grow smaller and smaller/ until finally you can’t remember the color of shutters./ Have you ever thought about remodeling your mind?’ And in the midst of humor and challenges to look twice at first perceptions he is also able to step back and write simply a pure poem:

LAST REQUESTS

A hawk’s view of a field in the last hour of light.
To understand limitless reach, a concept
withheld from those who are not birds.
To differentiate ocean from water, space
from enclosure, to stretch out over expanding
coldness and remain insulated, cradled.
To ride a tornado without feeling dizzy.
Slide down an elephant’s back.
Go to the dentist just for a thrill.
Disavow self-preservation and envy.
Denounce consumption, apathy, rancor.
To see both the end and the beginning
simultaneously, and embrace both.
To rest in hope, my own diminishing.

Edward Nudelman slyly takes a cupful of science and a dollop of humor and a soupçon of philosophy and stirs that and more into some of the finest poetry being written today. Science. Art. There really is no division.

Pedestal Review, August, 2011

The Pedestal Magazine > Current Issue > Reviews >Edward Nudelman's what looks like an elephant

what looks like an elephant
Edward Nudelman
Lummox Press
ISBN: 978-1-929878-91-8

Reviewer: Bob Grumman

Poets, like painters, thus unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of Art.
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.

So what if I'm the ten thousandth writer to quote the above passage from Pope's "An Essay on Criticism." So what if he, the epitome of a formal poet, would not seem, on the surface, to have much in common with Edward Nudelman, whose poems in what looks like an elephant don't even rhyme. I happen very much to admire the Pope passage. I also believe Nudelman has more in common with Pope than he doesn't, in spite of his not being the technician Pope (brilliantly) was.

Not that I'm saying Nudelman, or any other free-verse practitioner (as I occasionally am myself), just tosses words together. I love what he achieves with his conjs in the first stanza of his "Shape of Sorrow":

Conjunction of stars
and cards
conjured from far-flung
worlds of chance

And all those r-consonances, and the "ar"-rhymes, how the poem then integrates the sound of the s in "measured" and the c in "oceans”! While I feel that Pope always brings his poems' content up to the level of their technique, I feel that Nudelman, on the other hand, manages to elevate his technique to match his content.

I think what the two poets mainly have in common is a sharp, highly rational understanding of human beings as well as a precise ability to communicate that to their readers, with only the subtlest of ornamentation, albeit Pope is a lot less sympathetic to the people he depicts than is Nudelman. I can't think where, for example, Pope ever directly empathized with anyone as desolated by life as the subject in "Shape of Sorrow," who has:

…measured
the distance and found
oceans between you
and relief

You've argued away
all good in a last threshing
of meaning, settled
for a darker hope
and a deeper pit

and every reason
to crawl into.

Okay, maybe I've overdone the Pope/Nudelman comparison. Perhaps it's just the fact that the preceding poem, for example, seems to so exactly exemplify "What oft was…felt rather than thought, but ne'er so well express'd; Something whose truth convinced at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind" that I couldn’t resist mining the comparison. But Nudelman, like Pope, is uniquely able to milk commonplace subject matter, as when treating the domestic relationship in "Privileges," which begins, "She meant to tell me yesterday that I would be losing/ some privileges. I am not being told on the way out/ the door, so I can brood on the consequences as I walk…to my workplace."

Perhaps I’m stretching again: Pope turned the quotidian into something epic in The Rape of a Lock, if only comically; In “Privileges,” Nudelman practices a contemporary matter-of-factness. Pope's wit is at the expense of others, Nudelman's at his own. I like the Pope passage too much to drop my comparison completely. Plus: contrasts are as revealing as comparisons!

But I'm going to dismiss Pope now in order to focus entirely on Nudelman. It's no accident that the title of his collection concerns the elephant of the blind men unable to coherently make a whole of it, for a major theme of the collection is the difficulty—sometimes laughable, sometimes deplorable, but sometimes wonderful—of pinning down existence or consummately defining it. Nudelman's background as a biologist widely published in his field (cancer research) informs and strongly affects his poetry, distinguishing it from the work of most of his contemporaries. "Linear Equations,” his book's introductory piece, may be as good as any of his poems, universally integrating the notions of fusion and fission, as well as what might be called a certain Macbethianism:

Graph the sun's fall as a function of a gnat's perception
of time. Are there only a hundred suns in a gnat's life?

. . .

Graph all the molecules in the universe
as a function of size: its integral is somewhere between
one and infinity, but not the middle number.

And there's the final line: "You should be dead, but you aren't. Graph that." Variations on this outlook are present in several other poems, including the book's final piece, "Last Requests," which ends, "To rest in hope, my own diminishing” (i.e., the diminishing of both his hope and himself), and an earlier piece, "Turtle Soup," which concludes:

Sometimes at night I see shell-less turtles
massing on the edge of my bed;
shriveled heads and wrinkled bodies
reminding me of what's to come.

(Note: this sort of (highly effective) lunge into surrealism/dream-vividness is common in Nudelman's work.)

Nudelman can be happy, too, as in "Streaming," when he depicts himself splicing a gene: "…going on momentum/ and the lure of giddy surprise./ I'm in a biochemical sweep/ across an unchartered cosmos." And later in the same poem:

I'm air, water, fire and spirit.
I can't hear the pump whine.
I can't feel my tired feet.
I can't even imagine failure.

(Note: that's just how I felt at one point as a critic while writing this!)

Nudelman can lyrically transcend any laboratory, too, as is evidenced in "Gorilla Flower":

A breach reveals a purplish bud
as pristine as the snow surrounding it.
Maybe it landed in August, or fell off
an iris gliding across four backyards.
It might have dropped from a bird's
feather or it could have been there all
along, beating its pretty regal chest
in the vast white jungle, just as you do
when only the impossible matters
and only the impossible happens.

In his "Ephemeral," he probably reaches the peak of his lyrical concern with mortality and whatever it is for which we search in this life:

The garden's lamp-lit outline
beckons. Air chills as flowers
conspire against inevitability.
Is it June or winter beginning?
What is wind but a carrier?
Whether lavender or icy flecks,
ten years, twenty years, a hundred
life-times crammed onto a leaf's back.
Just as these roses brighten,
trillium bend over and drop off.
Aren't the bees after just one thing?
So too, we're here nosing
for something sweet, a heavy
remnant, a single drop of nectar
as volatile, as permanent.

I could easily quote ten or twenty more specimens of this poet's work, but I think I've quoted enough. For more of Nudelman, you'll have to buy his book. It won't disappoint you.

.

New Appearances/Poetry Journals

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Tue, 2 Aug 2011 04:56:00 -0700

Poems accepted this last month into three poetry journals comprising first appearances for me:

Chiron Poetry Review
Criterion Poetry Review
Valparaiso Poetry Review

Review of My Book in "Poets and Artists"

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:21:00 -0700

Review appears in July issue of Poets and Artists (online). Click HERE for direct link.

'Reasonable Doubt: Now bring on the ghosts.' The world of Edward Nudelman, July 22, 2011
By Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)

Edward Nudelman
Publisher: Lummox Press (To order: click here
PubDate: 6/27/2011
ISBN: 9781929878918
Binding: PAPERBACK, perfect-bound, glossy color covers
Price: $15.00
Pages: 114

Edward Nudelman is a poet of importance. It is likely that at some point in his career he will be at least short listed for Poet Laureate, so able is he to find those fragments of imagination, question, fear, doubt, and need for definition that poke temporary holes in our lives, leaving us with a choice of persistent uncertainty or a good guffaw as camouflage. Reading Nudelman's succinct poems is not unlike studying cells through a microscope, something Nudelman likely has spent time doing in his day job of cancer research - watching what appear to be normal cells metamorphose into altered forms, becoming villains to life as our bodies know it. Perceptions and explanations, cognitive transient thoughts piqued by momentary changes, looking at the expected and finding paradoxes, and in the end putting all of these experiences in the finely carved frame of humor and the time erosion of memory - all of these aspects are in this collection of erudite yet warmly recognizable Gileads of poetry.

An aspect of Edward Nudelman's poems that this reader finds particularly appealing is his ability to communicate a thought in a one page poem that minutes to hours to days later calls the reader back to re-think the message first accepted:

ARRIVAL

A flood light decants through a side window.
Who can tell a gnat from a mosquito, unless
blood is spilled? Outside, a dog wants in.

A bus pulls up to its last stop, a boy gets off.
It's a long walk home; but he wants to walk.
Nobody here remembers the Vietnam war
but they will not easily forget this one.

An astronaut is returning from another planet.
It's late, but everybody's ears are piqued.
Everything's looming, everything's on hold,
including Wednesday evening's bridge club.

Halfway through the night, a worried
mother finishes her second book in two nights.
The dog is allowed to come in and checked
for ticks. The stove is left on for heat.

Moods of such ignored magnitude find their way into most all of Nudelman's poems - that and humor and other conundrums. In the very elegant NOCTURNAL we can excerpt a few lines (space here does not allow full recreation): 'I've written a poem on the death of my father/ and another on the birth of my granddaughter./ Both poems contain the same words in different order./ And both possess the capacity to shock me.'......'Have you ever considered walking backwards to work?/ Watching your house grow smaller and smaller/ until finally you can't remember the color of shutters./ Have you ever thought about remodeling your mind?' And in the midst of humor and challenges to look twice at first perceptions he is also able to step back and write simply a pure poem:

LAST REQUESTS

A hawk's view of a field in the last hour of light.
To understand limitless reach, a concept
withheld from those who are not birds.
To differentiate ocean from water, space
from enclosure, to stretch out over expanding
coldness and remain insulated, cradled.
To ride a tornado without feeling dizzy.
Slide down an elephant's back.
Go to the dentist just for a thrill.
Disavow self-preservation and envy.
Denounce consumption, apathy, rancor.
To see both the end and the beginning
simultaneously, and embrace both.
To rest in hope, my own diminishing.

Edward Nudelman slyly takes a cupful of science and a dollop of humor and a soupçon of philosophy and stirs that and more into some of the finest poetry being written today. Science. Art. There really is no division. Grady Harp, July 11

Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project Summer Poetry Institute for Educators 2011

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:18:00 -0700

Here is the schedule for the best five days you'll ever spend in the poetry world:

LINK FOR CONTACT INFO: click here

Favorite Poem Project Summer Poetry Institute for Educators 2011

IMPORTANT NOTE: the readings and seminars by the stellar poets in the project are open to the public (Robert Pinsky,Louise Glück, Heather McHugh, Carl Phillips and Maggie Dietz) -- but not the discussions, lesson developments, all the stuff the teacher-participants do, so if you're not involved formally, you can still drop by for these amazing readings!

S C H E D U L E O F E V E N T S

All events will take place in either Boston University’s Sargent College (SAR), 635 Commonwealth Avenue, or in the School of Education (SED), around the corner at 2 Silber Way. Optional continental breakfast will be offered each morning in the lobby of the SED beginning at 8:15 a.m.

Room Assignments for Discussion Groups:

Lisa Llorente’s group (elementary), SED 259  Lee Indrisano’s group (middle school), SED 250
Karen Harris’s group (high school), SAR 101  Susan Moran’s group (high school), SED 709

MONDAY, JULY 11

8:15 a.m – 9:00 a.m. SED Lobby
Continental Breakfast & Coffee

9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. SAR 101
Welcome and Introduction:
Robert Pinsky

10:00 – 10:20 a.m. Facilities Tour

10:20 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
Morning Break

10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. SAR 101
Favorite Poem Video Screening
and Discussion with Maggie Dietz

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Introductory Discussion Groups

2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. SAR 101
Seminar with Carl Phillips

3:20 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break

3:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. SAR 101
Poetry Reading: Carl Phillips

4:30 – 6:00 p.m. SED Lobby
Welcome wine & cheese

TUESDAY, JULY 12

8:15 a.m – 9:00 a.m. SED Lobby
Continental Breakfast & Coffee

9:00 a.m. – 10:20 a.m.
Discussion/Lesson Development

10:20 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
Morning Break

10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. SAR 101
Seminar with Maggie Dietz

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Discussion/Lesson Development

2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. SAR 101
Seminar with Heather McHugh

3:20 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break

3:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. SAR 101
Poetry Reading: Heather McHugh & Maggie Dietz

WEDNESDAY, JULY 13

8:15 a.m – 9:00 a.m. SED Lobby
Continental Breakfast & Coffee

9:00 a.m. – 10:20 a.m.
Discussion/Lesson Development

10:20 a.m. – 10:40 a.m.
Morning Break

10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. SAR 101
Seminar with Robert Pinsky

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break

1:00 – 2:00
Discussion/Lesson Development

2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. SAR 101
Seminar with Louise Glück

3:20 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Afternoon Break

3:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading: Louise Glück
& Robert Pinsky
THURSDAY, JULY 14

8:15 a.m – 9:00 a.m. SED Lobby
Continental Breakfast & Coffee

9:00 – 10:00
Wrap-up Q&A/Discussion

10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Discussion/Lesson Development

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Lunch Break
**Box Lunch Provided**

1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Discussion/Lesson Development

FRIDAY, JULY 15

8:15 a.m – 9:00 a.m. SED Lobby
Continental Breakfast & Coffee

9:00 – 10:30 SAR 101
Lesson Plan Presentations

10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
Morning Break

10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. SAR 101
Teachers’ Favorite Poem Reading/
Evaluations

Review of My Book in Boston Small Press

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:41:00 -0700

Here's a link to a review of my book in Boston Area Small Press, a great site for New England poets (Ibbetson Street Press, Doug Holder). Find it here by scrolling down about halfway: click here>

"Whose Cries Are Not Music," A Review and Interview with Linda Benninghoff

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sun, 15 May 2011 12:15:00 -0700

“Whose Cries Are Not Music” by Linda Benninghoff , Trade Paper, 6X9 . Lummox Press (PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733-5301)  108 pages; ISBN: 978-1-929878-95-6 Publishing Date: Feb. 2011 TO ORDER: SEE VERY END OF THIS ARTICLE

In Linda Benninghgoff’s first major collection, “Whose Cries Are Not Music,” we find a collection of poems cohesively assembled from her experience, spanning rivers of varying topics and ideas with facile dexterity. I found myself reading each section and not wanting to stop, to be led into her rooms of picturesque silence, cries of warning and fear, and finally, to be unhinged by poetry that relates on many levels.

If I had to typify these poems, I’d say they try to elevate the mystery of our finitude through shared events in both nature and human experience, a kind of confrontation that only poetry does best, and well-aided by her unadorned speech which carries enough heat to power through this tough territory. There is little doubt Benninghoff’s poems aim to bring the abstract into focus, as though a human eye were trying to understand what only a bird can see.

In the book’s opening section there are poems about her mother, going for chemo, deer, rest vs. unrest, rain , sickness, the sea, and so on. And throughout these early poems, we find a palpable sorrow that comes from the speaker’s awareness of mortality. This is culminated in the poem ‘Do The Dead?” which is really a cleverly-constructed series of open-ended questions. “Do the dead stop and rest, or do they continue?” the speaker asks, as figuratively posed as it is honest and blunt. And I find this to be a general theme in the book, one that seems to progress throughout the book: from sorrow and pain through acceptance, and then finally hope. This is typified in the spare poem, “Rain” which begins:

Count rain on my fingers?
It is too fine,
like each column of pain-

and ends with a superb image of a swan on a lake, coming up after a dunk, ‘her neck arched/orange bill shining,’ as if to say, how effortless and beautiful is this overcoming.

Benninghoff draws on a rich, yet otherwise ‘ordinary’ vocabulary in her descriptions (read this as compliment!). She doesn’t overwrite, and she doesn’t over-describe. Yet she places the reader in the midst of a scene and then allows the logistics and parameters of the images to speak further into her developing themes of sorrow and isolation. There is considerable coverage in this collection given to past episodes, impressions and life-stories which are no doubt told in autobiographical form. Nowhere is this more evident than in the poems devoted to her father, and one entitled “Evening With My Father" especially impressed me with its dichotomy presented: the quest for love and belonging, alongside the stark reality of separation. The poem begins:

Last Tuesday I played tennis with him.
We slapped balls easily.
His voice sounded friendly,
As if we had done more
than face each other
strangers across newspapers...

Here is a familiar theme which Benninghoff develops not as an argument for advancing communication or sensitivity-training, but as a catalyst for yearning and remembrance. Thus, the ambiguity of the situation is supplanted by the stark images contrasting through time, and the poem succeeds in providing an underpinning for love and regard in the midst of bewilderment, typified in this taught stanza:

We were not quite friends that night,
but I thought of the blue room,
where I was six or seven
and my father told me stories
of salmon caught in California rivers
and bear fur left on trees...

For Benninghoff, loss is seen as something not to be ignored. Not stoicism, but an opportunity to observe and remember. To take in what has transpired for what it is, and to take on the difficult task of sorting out the collateral damage.

But alongside grappling with conflict comes insight and understanding, a finer focus which these poems seem to provide. In the title-poem, “Whose Cries Are Not Music,” we find the speaker giving ear to the sounds of geese,

the cry of wild birds
who can make only one sound
and put into that sound
wing-beat, empty marshes
clouds and their quest
for home.

But the poem develops and slightly turns, as the speaker remarks on these evocative sounds which remind her of a child who has no words, just an inconsolable cry, ‘as if everything must begin in pain.” And the poem then becomes confessional in an unpretentious way, and we are led into a solemn recognition of the value of pain, insofar as it can enlighten:

I can spend my whole life
healing it,
but find in the end
that love itself contains pain
though I do not give up feeling it…

The poems in this collection, though varied and presenting a wide spectrum of impressions and images, nevertheless point the reader toward a common theme. Thus Benninghoff, in a book which contains some poems written many years ago and herewith reworked, makes her case for the solemnity of life, the value in living well and the beauty, if not triumph, of dying well.

From “In Dying” referring to the ‘piebald hills’ where only birds sing praise, we find this made plain:

“Don’t I always turn back
To you when I am ill
Or alone,
Like a dancer remembering
The dance?
The Husk comes away from the seeed.
Don’t we in dying
Reveal who we are.

Linda Benninghoff’’s “Whose Cries Are Not Music” is not only a collection of poems that will offer comfort to the bereaved and a connection to anyone who has suffered through a great loss, but perhaps also raise up the spirit of the most inured amongst us to look beyond darkness into flickering light.

A FEW QUESTIONS FOR LINDA:

1. What do you like to do when you’re not writing poems? What interests you? What delights you?

I live in back of a state park and I like walking through there, noticing the wildlife, the chipmunks, rabbits, deer and birds. I like to feed the birds in winter, and learned the names for the different birds that came to the feeder: the junco, the tufted titmouse, the chickadee, the cardinal, the jay. We also have hummingbirds. I love rabbits, and when they start coming to my yard in spring, I feel in the presence of something wonderful, something spiritual.

I walk, I swim. I used to go windsurfing before I had a hernia operation and I used to go sailing. Being part of the ocean is important for me. Currently I live near the Long Island Sound. When I lived in Baltimore I sought out the Chesapeake to go swimming in. I delight in nature. I like to do nature photography, though I haven’t gotten that many great photos. I have photos of deer and photos of a chipmunk—but the chipmunk is too small to see.

2. When did you start writing poetry? When did you feel it was something you wanted to do seriously, and what went into that equation?

I started writing poetry at about age 17 or 18 when I was introduced to free verse. At this time I took a course with Jean Valentine, who introduced me to Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, and poets in the anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us. I had written rhyme before but now began writing free verse prolifically. I didn’t try to get published. I was really interested in writing fiction. I spent many years writing novels and short stories. I didn’t feel they were good enough to publish. I didn’t get good feedback on the fiction from teachers and professors and friends, as I did on the poetry. I began publishing some poetry and fiction in a small magazine in Philadelphia when I was close to 40 years old. Then I began attending the Long Island Poetry Collective and sending my poems out.

The feedback I was getting on my poetry turned me around—it was so much better than what I got on my fiction. I sent to The Missouri Review and the online editor there told me they were talking of nothing but my poetry. I didn’t have a problem publishing poetry, not like with the fiction. It was then, with the encouragement of some friends, that I went into poetry seriously, although I’d been writing it most of my life.

3. What kind of poetry do you read? Which poets set you on fire?

My favorite poet is Theodore Roethke, a teacher introduced me to him when I was 14. At that age I was too young to appreciate him, but when I grew older I appreciated the language, the imagination and feeling. My favorite poem was “The Lost Son.” I also, for a period, read Emily Dickinson regularly every night. I review contemporary poets and have come across some I really love: Penelope Schott, whose skill with language is amazing. I also love Julie L. Moore, for her appreciation of nature and her insight into the human spirit. I also like Karynna McGlynn—I think I spelled her name properly. Her language is something I strive to reach but can’t.

4. How do you write a poem?

I write my poetry mostly haphazardly. I will sit down and begin to write without knowing what I am going to write about. A word or a phrase comes into my mind. Often the words are about the reverence I have for nature. Sometimes they are about my close friend Mary. I don’t know really know where I’m going with the poems, but, almost magically, they come out well. Sometimes my family and the people closest to me don’t understand them, but sometimes they do. The hardest ones get published, despite my family’s criticisms. I want to emphasize that this not a deliberate, planned, conscious method of creation. It is totally unconscious.

5. What do you want your poetry to accomplish?

I didn't plan to accomplish anything with my book; I was just
writing poetry to express my feelings. Maybe I wanted to immortalize
some moments, some places in nature and some people. I think I wanted to provide some understanding of what it is to feel lonely or to suffer a loss. Poets have done this before. Thomas Hardy did it, in a great way. Yet every poet is different. Hardy is melancholy. I am not--nor self-pitying. In the last section of the book I look at death as a sort of crossing over. This is the "dream" we are living, and death is the "dream" to come.

6. Tell us a little about the effort that went into this book? How long did it take to put the manuscript together? What were areas of difficulty for you in the process? Areas of fulfillment?

My initial manuscript was not clear and got rejected. A poet I knew read the manuscript and pointed out the sections of the manuscript that were not clear and suggested adding poems and changing section headings. Now it is so clear that even a person who does not read a lot of poetry can understand it. I think making it clear so even the average reader could understand it was the most fulfilling part of the venture for me.

7. This is a collection of poems full of feeling, and many of the poems riff off of elements of the senses and derivative impulses from nature, perceptions of cold, the sea, the snow, birds, and of course, death. Tell us a little about what you’re trying to do here, how allusion to the physical points toward and elicits feelings of pain, loss, loneliness, suffering.

I have always felt my thoughts echoed in nature, when I am walking or sitting by a window looking at the trees and the yard. I think this is a notion common to Romantic poetry—the idea that nature reflects our feelings—but I, a modern poet, have carried it on. The poem “Canada Geese” has been characterized by some of my friends as a poem about depression. Other of my poems about the physical world offer hope: “Whose Cries Are Not Music” offers hope. Many of my early poems were very hopeful, but as I grew older the poems began to voice loss. The physical world is still there accompanying, beside me. Rabbits seem to be emissaries from a better world, bearing good tidings. The deer bring beauty, but as I grow older and begin to write about them, it is endangered beauty.

8. The book opens with a magnificent poem entitled, “Snowy Winter,” where the speaker talks with an unidentified person wherein a confidence and trust has obviously been sewn. The poem deals with the longing for underpinnings, rest, and I suppose, a way to identify with one’s own struggles as well as enter in to the difficulties of those we love. In the poem we find the following lovely closing stanza:

The creamy snow extends even to the water,
Where there are wrinkles and marks
-frozen over
from Lloyd to Cold Spring Harbor.
The curving gulls
keep saying the words you spoke,
yet there is no food for them here.
They rest in the empty air
hungry like me,
as I search
for the prints of winter birds.

What interests me in this poem is the playing out of personal pathos in the context of a dialog, or at least, the poem deliberately wants to include the un-named party as a participant or witness in the speaker’s travail. Please tell us what you mean by, ‘The curving gulls keep saying the words you spoke, yet there is no food for them here.” Do the ‘words’ refer back to an early statement in the poem about ‘worrying about the future,’ and how much of the poem and the book turns on this notion of trying to sort out and prepare for what is to come?

Yes, the words about my friend taking care of me, both in a physical and emotional sense, that gave me such a sense of security so that I didn’t have to worry about the future, are spoken by the curving gulls when I am separated from her. I keep trying to return to that moment of trust, but life has carried us away from each other. It is portrayed in the poem as neither of our fault, just something that happened. The gulls are hungry for food, I am hungry for the closeness I had with that person, my friend. This is a poem about loss and also loneliness. I think I made the speaker’s loneliness palpable with the snow that extends even to the water—the coldness of nature in this case, which reflects the speaker’s own inner emptiness. And the gulls rest in “empty air.”

9. Are you working on another collection of poems? Do you have a theme for your next manuscript?

I started working on a chapbook with poems that I did from Molly Fisk’s poem a day class. A lot of these are poems about the seasons, winter going into spring, and spring actually happening. People have told me the new poems are lighter, and I think they end with more hope than Whose Cries Are Not Music. That is one of the reasons that I want to put them out, because they provide some hope that answers some of the questions raised by the longer book. They do not go into as much depth, however, and are mainly nature poems.

10. If you could give any advice to young, aspiring poets, what would it be?

Write for yourself and read. A lot of my friends who want to write don’t read, and that is the most important thing. If you don’t like the poetry you are reading, find poems that help you find yourself. If you write to express your feelings: that’s okay, that’s like me; if you write to paint a situation, an injustice, or a history, that’s okay too. Write as often as you can and don’t lose the habit. Write a lot before you try to publish.

HOW TO ORDER LINDA'S BOOK:

Just click on this direct link to her order page at Lummox Press:

LUMMOX PRESS ORDER PAGE

IMPORTANT LINKS

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:27:00 -0700

.

My Youtube Channel with promo videos for my new book: click here While there, please subscribe, more videos to follow

To order, "What Looks Like an Elephant" ($15) go to my Ordering Page at Lummox Press: click here

Please find links to my recorded poems on right hand panel of this blog. Let me know what you think! I'm always interested in your responses!

.

What looks like an elephant

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Thu, 3 Mar 2011 15:24:00 -0800

...not a question, but the title of my first full-length poetry book, which I'm excited to announce is in production at Lummox Press, with a scheduled released date in late March. The book contains over 80 poems dealing with ambiguities and paradoxes in experience, especially how impressions of certainty and doubt affect everyday life. I've tried to call on influences in my vocation (I am a cancer research scientist in my other life) as well as child and adolescent memories, and hopefully mixed in some humor and poetic metaphor.

Great Pre-Order Offer:
Lummox Press has graciously provided for a pre-sale discount of 20% off the list price, which is $15. Not bad for over 110 pages, including a nice, tight, 'perfect-bound' binding, glossy color covers and an introduction by April Ossmann, former director of Alice James Books. And for a limited time, we're offering author-inscribed copies at no additional cost (publisher will follow-up advance orders by email). You can easily order by going to the Lummox Press website, where my ordering page may be found:

To order: click here

Thank you sincerely for considering my work. Edward Nudelman, Beverly, MA. And here are a few examples from the book:

Turtle Soup

I. Anecdotal/apocryphal

Turtles, like madmen and walnuts,
have hard shells that hide soft heads.
Have you ever seen a turtle smile?
Turtles hum under a chitinous shroud.
Baby turtles assemble in lines on logs.
Adult turtles rarely move, except to eat.
Our friend’s twenty-year old turtle
has spent two decades floating
in a metal pan, sleeping every other year.

II. Experiential/metaphorical

I was walking my dog along a pond
when she bolted in for a swim. An alarmed
passerby scolded me with the story
of a snapping turtle that pulled her miniature
poodle under. My dog weighed over sixty
pounds, but the thought of her in turtle jaws
so unnerved me, I could barely respond.
Sometimes at night I see shell-less turtles
massing on the edge of my bed;
shriveled heads and wrinkled bodies
reminding me of what’s to come.

Fizzle

Leave the grand hall, arms
at your side, head down and to one side,
knowing all was said that needed to be said.
Let the rain glide down your back.
Let people move aside and spirits step forward,
vanity and praise devour themselves.
All striving and hustle, let fizzle to dust.
You might have wanted more, or felt
you earned more; but now you lay it all down
in one small, unadorned stanza, without glitter.
Let poets howl. Let them roar. The car is cold
and the windshield weeps from the inside,
your writing hand’s stuck on the shift.

******************

Praise for "What Looks Like an Elephant":

BLURBS (4)

1
Edward Nudelman’s delicious use of math and science language and metaphors combined with his sense of humor and seemingly limitless curiosity; his capacity to surprise the reader with juxtapositions and acute observations: “His face leans into the cold window,/nostrils pressed against glass leaving/transient marks with every expiration”(from On the T, Near Park Street); and the sheer loveliness of so many lines: “fish released deep into gray sea with krill,/blind and anaerobic, nothing to breathe/but sheer grace through green gills” (from The Quitter), make this a book to re-read, to share with friends and family, and to return to for inspiration, discovery, comfort, and fun.
−April Ossmann
Poet, independent editor, and former director of Alice James Books.

2
Few poets can steer between generosity and insight or aphorism and wonder with ease, but Edward Nuddleman's book is one of those rare books. He makes the intangible tangible. He turns afterthought into deep thought. Above all, he unpacks certainties into reasonable doubts. This is a keen book and a special one.
−David Bespiel, Poet, The Book of Men and Women, 2009 (Named 'Best Poetry of the Year' by The Poetry Foundation), past poetry reviewer Washington Post, NY Times.

3
Edward Nudelman’s poetry revitalizes life. Time passes quickly but reading these poems is to be awakened alive in the moment.
−Grace Cavalieri
Water on the Sun, Bordighera Poetry Award, Pen Center Best Book List

4
Edward Nudelman’s poems remind me of electrical outlets. You put your finger in one, it gives off a jolt; you move onto the next one. They’re about machines, shadows, visions, calculations, nuts, babies, fingernails, ghosts, ‘buzzing warnings’ and the surprisingly subtle difference between being on and off. In short, they’re philosophical but enjoyable. I recommend the book.”
-Aaron Belz, PhD
Poet, professor (English); Lovely, Raspberry. Persea Books. 2010. The Bird Hoverer. BlazeVOX books. 2007. Plausible worlds. Observable Books. 2005.

BIO

Edward Nudelman’s first book of poetry, "Night Fires," was a semifinalist for the Journal Award ("The Wheeler Prize) given by OSU Press in 2009. "Night Fires" was published by Pudding House Publications in 2009. "Casting the Nines," an anthology of nine poets with nine poems (PHP, 2009) honored Nudelman as one of nine selected poets contributing poems. He received a Pushcart Nomination in 2009. Some of his poems have been recently published in Poets and Artists (Oranges and Sardines), Ampersand, Syntax, The Atlanta Review, OCHO, Mipoesias, Plainsongs, Tears in the Fence, fourW, Floating Bridge Press, The Orange Room Review, The Penwood Review, The White Leaf Review, Adagio Verse Quarterly, and others. Nudelman is a noted cancer research biologist with over 60 published papers in top-tier journals. He has published two widely read books on an American illustrator, Jessie Willcox Smith (Pelican Publishing, 1989, 1990). A native of Seattle, Nudelman is currently working and living just north of Boston with his wife, Susan, and their Golden Retriever, Sofie

Two New Poems in Chiron Review

noreply@blogger.com (enudelman) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:18:00 -0800

I'm really excited to receive word that two of my poems have been accepted into Chiron Review, a great print journal which has published many, many poets greater than myself (including Charles Bukowski). They happened to choose the poem which has the line taken for my title in my upcoming book, "What Looks Like an Elephant." Poems accepted: "Linear Equations" and "Another List of Intangibles." Just sent first set of proofs for book back to Lummox Press. We're nearing the finish line!