bipolar camping fathers Gods of Water and Air memoir essay poetry about the ocean rocket rocket scientist San Pedro

The Land of Totuaba

I’m excited that my memoir essay of camping in Baja California with my bipolar rocket scientist father and family is now published online at Halfway Down the Stairs. This issue of the journal has a rich selection of poetry and prose, and I’m honored to have had my story selected. “The Land of Totuaba” is an excerpt from my memoir of an unusual childhood with a father who blew up rockets for a living and…

Continue reading

fathers Italy memoir essay rocket

Telecommunications and my dad

Digging back into the old memoir, Rocket Lessons (forthcoming from who-knows-where, who-knows-when) to rehab some of the chapters as short essays to submit here and there, I discovered one about my father’s biggest project, the launch of the world’s first telecommunications satellite, Relay I. As it turned out, it was by five months the world’s second telecommunications satellite, but as my father always liked to point out, “It’s still up there and Telstar died in…

Continue reading

book promotion book trailer ekphrastic poetry fathers memoir essay ocean poetry poetry about Alzheimer's poetry about ballet poetry about fathers poetry about the ocean visual art

New video trailer for Gods of Water and Air!

Aldrich Press has created a beautiful new trailer for my book! It’s my reading of “Flight,” the first poem in my book. It’s on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KaXVkL8cac&feature=youtu.be I looked at an interesting array of poetry book trailers, and was most taken with Sandra Beasley’s single poem videos, so I decided on a single poem reading. It was fun to make, finding images and music from royalty-free sources. If I were trying to decide whether to buy…

Continue reading

camping Christmas poem fathers poetry about fathers poetry book San Pedro

Missing my dad at Christmas (which he hated)

Why do I think so much of my late father, our family Grinch, at this season? Because I always suspected his way of loving the holiday, as a Jew who celebrated it to please his family, was to grumble his way into the whole joyously chaotic event. This poems, from my first book, Earth Lessons, celebrates the frictions that ultimately became a gift. CHRISTMAS WEEK IN SAN FELIPE Up my nose, between my teeth, tiny…

Continue reading