Published Poems 1996

poem: [seven from Fact]

poem one first line: “You have finally come / to this poem after”

poem two first line: “This poem was made / to be seen and not”

poem three first line: “This poem is a rock / I am throwing at”

poem four first line: “This poem expresses / the unique personality”

poem five first line: “This poem was / genetically encoded”

poem six first line: “Why are you writing / me? asks the poem”

poem seven first line: “I am not the / poem, the poem”

written: TBD

publication: Exquisite Corpse, issue 57, 1996

Illinois State University

Campus Box 4241

Normal IL 61790

editors: Andrei Codrescu, Laura Rosenthal

some other contributors: Clive Matson, Anne Carson, Simon Pettet, Tom Clark

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1995

poem: “Not Just the Color of Your Cheeks”

first line: “I dug my teeth into the peel of the orange.”

written: TBD

publication: Berkeley Poetry Review, issue 28, 1994-95

700 Eshleman Hall

University of California 

Berkeley CA 94704

editors: Glenn Ingersoll & Patricia Johnson

editorial board: Sam Davis, Jay Dillemuth, Katherine Lederer, Jason Mitchell, Keith Mosier, Rufo Noriega, Braden Randall

some other contributors: Nin Andrews, Michael Chitwood, Alex Corey, Forrest Hamer

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1994

poem: “There Are: a found poem in the UC Berkeley library catalog”

first line: “There are alligators in our sewers”

written: TBD

publication: Berkeley Poetry Review, issue 27, 1993-94

700 Eshleman Hall

University of California 

Berkeley CA 94704

editors: Kristina Youso & Connie Vallejo

editorial board: Darren Franklin, Glenn Ingersoll, Katherine Lederer, Chelsea Mauldin, Rufo Noriega

some other contributors: Kim Addonizio, Gwendolyn Albert, Katy Lederer, Tim Donnelly

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1993

poem: “Fireplace”

first line: “pops / three sparks”

written: TBD

publication: Citi Voice: a free poetry magazine, vol. 5, winter 1993

PO Box 640552

San Francisco CA 94109

editor: Mel C. Thompson

some other contributors: Michael McClure, Frank’s Depression Poetry, Maura O’Connor, Catherine Lehane

poem: “A War”

first line: “How cold is the war these days, she’s asking.”

written: TBD

publication: The Sins of Poetry: CitiVoice Anthology Series, issue 1, winter 1993

PO Box 640552

San Francisco CA 94109

editor: Mel C. Thompson

some other contributors: Dale Jensen, Amy Kashiwabara, klipschutz, Eli Coppola

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1992

poem one: “These Notes Know: lines from Miller”

first line: “the seam that joined them”

written: TBD

poem two: “Stood in Places: lines from Harrach”

first line: “They chew gum”

written: TBD

poem three: “Mr. Miserable comes back”

first line: “The door keeps not wanting to return the key: it has it”

written: TBD

publication:Tight Magazine, vol. 3 no. 4, Aug 1992

PO Box 1591

Guerneville CA 95446

editor: Ann Erickson

some other contributors: Jerry Ratch, Alan Catlin, Jim Gove, Gloria Potter

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1991

poem: “He hears a ringing”

first line: “Bert likes the blind- / ness of the telephone”

written: TBD

publication: Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, vol. 5 no. 1, 1991

558 Joost Ave

San Francisco CA 94127

editors: Joanne Hotchkiss, Alice Rogoff, Will Walker

some other contributors: Geri Digiorno, Jay Griswold, lyn lifshin, A. D. Winans

poem one: “mr. miserable”

first line: “I love you, mr. miserable”

written: TBD

poem two: “singed whiskers”

first line: “in night dresses we play in the park”

written: TBD

poem three: “Apparition in an Off-white Angel’s Suit”

first line: “Mrs. Joe leaves her body”

written: TBD

poem four: “hot ears”

first line: “hot ears / welcome to the cinema”

written: TBD

publication: Tight, vol. 2 no. 4, Nov 1991

PO Box 1591

Guerneville CA 95446

editor: Ann Erickson

some other contributors: Ann Erickson, Leland Stoney, Robert T. Marcacci Jr., Jake Berry

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1990

poem: “35 mph”

first line: “I fed him one grape”

written: TBD

publication: Tight, (issue 1?), Jan 1990

PO Box 1591

Guerneville CA 95446

editor: A. Erickson

some other contributors: Mark Neville, Ralph Smith, Hunce Voelker, Michelena Wilson

poem: “You Choose the Most Inconvenient Times to Leave Me”

first line: “When I’m half-dressed on the”

written: TBD

publication: Sonoma Mandala: literary review, vol. 16, 1989/1990

Department of English

Sonoma State University

Rohnert Park CA 94928

senior editors: Jayne McPherson, Douglas A. Powell 

some other contributors: Mimi Albert, Jerry Ratch, Janine Canan, Amy Trussell

poem: “To the Away”

first line: “The walls, bookshelves still dim,”

written: TBD

contest winners: Glenn Ingersoll, first; Mimi Albert, second; Darin DeStefano, third

contest judges: Elizabeth Herron, Paul Mariah

publication: A Stone’s Throw: a literary review of Sonoma County’s Russian River Writers’ Guild, 1990

Russian River Writers’ Guild

PO Box 1123 

Sebastopol CA 95473

managing editor: D. Jayne McPherson; associate editors: Richard Benbrook, Carol Ciavonne, Glenn Ingersoll, Don McQueen, William R. Snow

some other contributors: Zara Altair, David Bromige, Geri Digiorno, Jim McCrary

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Published Poems 1989

poem: “Not Just the Color of Your Cheeks”

first line: “When I dug my teeth into the peel of the orange,”

written: TBD

publication: First Leaves: Santa Rosa Junior College’s Literary and Art Review, no. 49, 1989

Santa Rosa Junior College

1501 Mendocino Ave

Santa Rosa CA 95401

editors: D. Charlene Wilson, Richard Speakes, Andrea Neptune, Glenn Ingersoll, Andrew Haas, Chandra Bell, Susan Angolani

some other contributors: Maureen Hurley, D. Jayne McPherson, Gerrye Payne, Laurie Posner

[This post will be continuously updated until I have organized my archives and the list is complete. I will be creating a separate blog post for each year. Contact information for publications is for historical purposes only.]

Raise your fist, girl!

eight of nine

Since the post at the end of January I have received notification from all of ONE of the NINE magazines to which I sent work. That's just shy of eight weeks so far for eight of them. Huh. Based on the old days when I was sending work out regularly I expected to have heard from, oh, three or even five by now.

The single response was the sad but popular "these don't meet our needs."

One should not really count the days like this. The goal of the professional is to keep work circulating, to put poems out there without fretting over the fate of any particular batch. You hear when you hear, or you make up a cut-off date and figure any batch that's been out past that date is effectively rejected and you move on.

So I'm not a professional? Yeah, no.

Sending out work for me is emotionally fraught and it's not easy to face that kind of inner turmoil. The world is the world, of course, and goes on about its business without taking an individual's feelings into account. No editor should be worrying about my feelings; they should be doing what they do as best they can, putting in an interesting order work they think of value.

I won't make any money out of this. That's not what's going to happen, not even if I suddenly start getting a zillion acceptances. And the people who make magazines are barely getting by so they can't afford to pay contributors anything, except rarely. It's not about the money.

What is it about? Being part of the conversation? If current literature is a conversation, both with readers and with other writers, then, yes, I want my voice a thread in the weave. I read my contemporaries and it seems to me my work is not out of place. Even if it were, or when it is, I would still want to be noticed. That's ego, isn't it? Yes. But if you think what you say is worthless, you hold your tongue.

the envelope of love

I just walked nine batches of poems over to the post office. Last time I did a serious mailing only a handful of literary magazines were reading email submissions and they were snarky about it. Today I found in my research most have ceased reading work received in physical form. The old self-addressed stamped envelope is looking endangered.

Yay!

Online submissions are easier and cheaper for writers. I look forward to sending more work out that way.

I created a physical mailing because that’s the way you were taken seriously. Up to now. And because I wanted to take the process seriously. It’s been ages since I really committed to sending work out. Assembling the whole package — addressing the envelopes, the SASE, the stamps, the cover letter — it’s dispiriting. Especially, of course, when the hope and eagerness is bitten away at by the fat SASE of rejection. The times I have sent out work in the few last years I asked in my cover letter that the manuscript be recycled and NOT returned. The pages were often not something that could be sent out again anyway, what with editors’ pencilings or the puncture marks of staples or just the wear of handling. And if the submission came back pristine, that was its own kind of discouragement. Better the slim envelope of rejection than the fat.

Here’s hoping for the svelte envelope of love.

really, truly

My last post - May of this year - reproduced the last rejection I received. I had sent a batch of poems to the magazine 6 X 6, published by Ugly Ducking Presse in Brooklyn.

Yesterday that batch of poems got rejected again. This is what the editors said this time:

Thank you for your recent submission. We truly enjoyed reading your work. Unfortunately, we didn’t find it to be a good fit for 6 X 6. We wish you the best with your future writing.

I included a SASE, but asked them to recycle the manuscript rather than return it. I’m guessing whoever was in charge of throwing stuff out either forgot to or was reluctant to. When it came time to review poems for a new issue my poems were still lying around and got included in the considerations. Since there was no SASE the editors spent their own money on a stamp and envelope to send me the bad news. Nice of them, eh?

In the first rejection they “really enjoyed … some truly amazing moments.” This rejection they “truly enjoyed [the] reading.” Considering the silence that’s the usual response even to published work, I got a pretty good deal. Two letters claiming to have gotten pleasure from my poems.

“I think you’re a really great guy, but I’m just not that into you.”

A few months ago I sent poems to 6 X 6, a poetry magazine published by Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn. Today came this:

Thank you so much for your submission! We really enjoyed your work - it had some truly amazing moments; however, we did not find it a good fit for 6 X 6. We wish you all the best - happy writing!

Glenn Ingersoll - January 5 reading at Redwood Cafe, Cotati

Glenn Ingersoll will be reading poetry with Alan Bern in Cotati at the Redwood Cafe on January 5, 5-7pm.

musical guests: Steve Shain, bass; Nick Alvan; songs, bass/guitar

Redwood Cafe First Sundays Series
at Redwood Cafe
8240 Old Redwood Hwy, Cotati

Glenn Ingersoll has had work in magazines (Exquisite Corpse, Carolina Quarterly) and ezines (Cortland Review, Shampoo), and has published two chapbooks, "City Walks" (1999) and "Fact" (2013). He was one of the coordinators of Poetry & Pizza in San Francisco, a reading series benefiting nonprofits. He works for the Berkeley Public Library. erkeley Public Library.

Alan Bern has published two volumes of poetry with Fithian Press: No no the saddest (2004) and Waterwalking in Berkeley (2007). He is currently at work on two books: one based on the theme of Sacred Mountains and the other dedicated to his parents. Alan is a storyteller and performer working with the dancer, Lucinda Weaver, as PACES: dance & poetry fit to the space. PACES has performed stage-piece collaborations in Italy and Switzerland; and they have performed as well in local libraries, museums, and bookstores. Alan is also a printer and designer, and collaborates with the artist Robert Woods: they work together under the imprint of Lines & Faces, http://linesandfaces.com/. They produce illustrated broadsides and in 2014 will be printing and publishing the book dedicated to his parents, even greater distances. Alan has worked in public libraries in the East Bay Area for 20 years in a variety of jobs and is currently a Children’s Librarian at Berkeley Public’s Central Library.

Whitman-Stein Poetry Fest in San Francisco, Nov 24

Glenn Ingersoll will be reading as part of the Whitman-Stein Poetry Fest in San Francisco, Sunday, November 24, 2-4pm at the AWE Gallery, 678 Portola. No admission fee.

The Whitman-Stein Poetry Fest was founded by Ron Alexander and happens each spring in Santa Barbara. Sunday's Whitman-Stein is a reunion of Bay Area poets who have read down south.

Ron Alexander created the event to bring poetry to the contemporary LGBT community so named it after two famous American poets, one gay and one lesbian. We're here already, we've been queer a long time, get with it.

To help connect us to our history, poets & listeners alike, Ron asked the poets to read at least one poem by an older gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual poet before reading their own poems. When I read in Santa Barbara in the spring I read a poem by my mentor the pioneering gay publisher, Paul Mariah. I will be reading the same poem in San Francisco.

The other poets:

Nixson Borah (Atascadero) reads Robert Peters

Giovanna Capone (Oakland) reads Pamela Sneed

Marc Hofstadter (Walnut Creek) reads James Schuyler

Tobey Kaplan (Oakland) reads Djuna Barnes

Kit Kennedy (San Francisco) reads Sappho

Jan Steckel (Oakland) reads Gabriela Mistral

more about the venue:
AWE: A Woman’s Eye Gallery
678 Portola Drive
San Francisco, CA
across from Tower Market
in Miraloma Park
free parking at the adjacent Ebenezer/herchurch Lutheran - PURPLE church
(415) 265-8237
http://www.awegallery.com/

more about the Whitman-Stein Poetry Fest:
http://whitman-stein.org

help from mother earth

1:10 a.m., in bed, tired of having Sundy, the shorthair, stomp over my pillow, I'm staring at the ceiling, hand on Sutra, the fat fluffy cat who snores, when there's a thump and a ripple passes under the bed. The cats tore outta there. Hm, earthquake, I said to myself. Now maybe I can get to sleep cat-free.

Glenn Ingersoll - September 2013 readings

Sept 13, Friday, 7pm
with Rebecca Radner
and an open mic
at Caffe Nefeli
1854 Euclid Ave, Berkeley
between Hearst and Ridge, at UCB's Northgate

Sept 15, Sunday, 12noon
with Jamie Asaye FitzGerald and Kathleen Winter
part of the Petaluma Poetry Walk
at Riverfront Art Gallery
132 Petaluma Blvd N, Petaluma
between Western and Washington, downtown

blue sky and gentle breezes

A comfortable day in Berkeley. I'm in flip-flops. Just finished a tuna sandwich here at Bel Forno, where I'm using the wifi, a few sips to go on my mocha.

I wrote in my diary. I have some books to read, will probably get thru a few pages.

Browsing accommodations on Oahu as Kent & I are thinking of visiting his nephew who has a boat there. Randall and his biz partner are running scuba and snorkel trips under the name Hawaiian Diving Adventures. I've never worn a scuba mask and I'd like to give it a go.

K & I prefer a walk in the woods to a walk in the mall and Waikiki, as a seething mass of bodies, does not appeal, so we've never thought much of Honolulu as a destination. But the more I read about the island the more it seems a lot of it is rural. Plus it's not big. From one end of the island to the other travel takes about an hour, according to Google maps.

I'd be fine with a day at museums.

FACT, a book of poems by Glenn Ingersoll

FACT

50 short poem poems

by Glenn Ingersoll

The poems are philosophical, humorous, and often conscious of themselves. The book is small enough to slip into a pocket, handy for those moments stolen for contemplation or distraction.

sample poem:

I am trying to think up
a good poem. I would like it to be good
to make up for all the offenses
of bad poems. Though I suspect that's
too much to demand from my simple skills.
Even a really good poem would be able to atone
for little of the intolerance, torture, and warfare
conducted in the name of poetry.

poems from Fact have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Lilliput Review, Shampoo, Fish Drum, and Fish Dance, and other places.

Go to Alba for four Fact poems.
Go to Shampoo for seven Fact poems.

You can read Steve Masover's response to Fact at his One Finger Typing.

Jim McCrary says, "Glenn Ingersoll is a big poet. It is always good to see what he has to say." Read more at Galatea Resurrects.

As well as a review, the poet Jim Murdoch conducted an interview with me on his blog, The Truth About Lies. Roughly summing up, Jim says, "As a body of work [Fact is] thought-provoking and deals with many aspects of the nature of poetry." In the interview Jim asked about the title; I responded: "The poems did not think of themselves as fiction." Check out the post.

The poet Jan Steckel created a Fact page at Goodreads.com. Jan says, "I loved this little chapbook ... My husband and I cracked up reading its little masterpieces to each other."

price: $5 from the publisher
$6 from me - it's signed & includes a thank you card (while supplies last)
[Fact is currently out of print; neither the author nor Avantacular has copies for sale.]

Avantacular Press
Andrew Topel, publisher
1239 6th St
Orange City FL 32763

you may also direct inquiries to the author
lovesettlement@yahoo.com

Glenn Ingersoll
2015 Cedar St
Berkeley CA 94709

[updated 20 June 2019]

Thousand: Thousand

thou. Sand castle, sandpaper. Let me find you, says the wind. The dog lifts her head, ears pricked, nostrils twitching. What did she hear? Something transdimensional? A worm turning? At one end of the world a bell rings; at the other someone waits, listening for an answer. We made it to the top of the mountain. To get any higher, hail an angel. Or a cyclone. Thank you, days, months, years, for counting. There’s not a minute to lose, yet here they are, all over the ground. How many have you squirreled away? Three two-minute segments, one five-minute, one one.