Songs From a Curious Ear

As I shop around my first full length collection I have begun referring to my three books of poetry as my “Ditch Trilogy.” Much like Neil Young’s ditch trilogy albums in the 70’s each one sees me fighting to get from the ditch of depression back to the road to carry me away. So Psych Ward Blues is me buried in the ditch. Mercury, In Retrospect is me climbing up out of the ditch. Curious Ear, as I’m calling it, is me making my escape.

Whereas the first two collections were autobiographical the third is a music centric collection capturing all the joy of rock and roll, soul, dub reggae, jazz, hip hop and all points in between. It was written in a marathon session of two weeks of writing and sits at two hundred pages. I cannot wait for you to read it.

Reading a few of my favorite poems from my new book.

My new collection of poetry is available now!

Ted Jackins

I had to have my seventeen year old cat put down yesterday. I wrote him this poem last night and today it’s published in Rusty Truck.

Rusty Truck

For Dex

How could I know
When you woke me
Earlier than usual
That you wouldn’t
Outlive the daylight
Slowly stretching
Through the cracks
In every window
As I rose to feed
You breakfast,
Only a hint
Of the troubles
To come in your
Anxious pacing,
Circling my legs
More feverishly
Than normal,
How could I know
That the thing
Which claimed your
Vision only mere
Months ago was
A possible brain tumor?
How could I know
The pacing which
Had grown more

Pronounced in the
Weeks previous to
This were actually
Seizures?
How could I know
An emergency vet
Visit was in the cards,
How could I know
We’d have to choose
Between you going
Downhill or putting
You down?
How could I know
That my heart
Would break and
Your hugs-
Always a balm
When things weren’t
Going well
Would no longer
Be there when I
Needed them…

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Best of 2018

Albums of the Year

1. Saba -Care For Me 

2. Ty Segall-Freedom’s Goblin

3. Fly Homer Fly-Broken Concentration

4. Papa M-A Broke Moon Rises

5. Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks -Sparkle Hard

6. Anna and Elizabeth -The Invisible Comes To Us

7. Neil Young -Roxy: Tonight’s the Night Live

8. Sleep-The Sciences

9. Earl Sweatshirt -Some Rap Songs

10. Jeff Tweedy -WARM

11. Yves Tumor -Safe In the Hands of Love

 

12. Glimpses-Unrecognizable Shapes

Books of the Year
1. Denis Johnson -The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

2. Bud Smith-Work

3. Sam Pink-Garbage Times/White Ibis

 

4. Thomas O’Keefe-Waiting To Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, alt-country’s beautiful wreck

5. Stephanie Wittels Wachs -Everything is Horrible and Wonderful: a tragicomic memoir of genius, heroin, love and loss

6. David Lynch and Kristine McKenna -Room to Dream

.

7. Michelle McNamara-I’ll Be Gone In the Dark

8. Kevin Ridgeway -Smile Until You’re Alive Enough to Be Dead

9. Michele McDannold-Point of Departure

Films of the Year

1. Mandy

 .

2. Hereditary

3. Bad Times At the El Royale

4. Halloween (2018)

5. Deadpool 2

Song/Short Film of the Year

Childish Gambino-This Is America

 

The Legend of Payne Road

North Carolina Collection

The leaves are falling, it’s getting dark early, and the temperature is hovering on the chilly side. Just in time for Halloween, our graduate student intern, Tim, has prepared a post about a spooky local legend. Read on to find out more on the legend of Payne Road.

“Payne Road” house, courtesy of the book Triad Hauntings.

As Halloween draws near, many folks around Winston-Salem will be decorating their homes with ghoulish and ghostly decor while cutely costumed children will be making the rounds of their local neighborhoods. For sure, a safer and more family friendly Halloween experience. But for those looking for a little mischievous adventure…there is an area just north of Rural Hall that has been the attraction of many a teenager/ twenty-something for the past 50 years. This locale is known as “Payne Road.” I first learned of this area about 20 years ago while employed at…

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My new chapbook Close To the Bone is available now

It contains what I think are the best poems I’ve written over the last few years. Coping with the creeping sense of mortality that settles in in your mind to late thirties the poems deal with illness, grief and fighting to stay afloat in these increasingly violent currents. The chapbook is limited to 25 copies so get yours today.

Close To the Bone

Such a Long Time to Be Gone and a Short Time to Be There

Mom was my first audience. I would write poems or stories and read them aloud to her as my sounding board. I would join her when she ‘d work late Friday night or an occasional Saturday at the local paper and do rewrites on one of the then cutting edge Macintosh computers. They mostly consisted of me substituting words I found in the desktop thesaurus for the originals to show how smart ten year old me was. I still have those stories somewhere which were mostly painful Anne Rice and Stephen King clones but you have to start somewhere. She was always encouraging, though, and that was what I needed. She was the first person I talked to about Catcher In the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, On the Road and her all time favorite, To Kill a Mockingbird. Later, when I started publishing in the school literary magazine i always snagged an extra copy for her and she’d deconstruct them in the car before I’d leave to go into the Smelly Cat for my afternoon coffee and my first circle of true friends. I remember watching a lot of old movies with her. Casablanca was a shared favorite, ditto Annie Hall and other 70’s Woody Allen. She also once made me sit down and watch National Lampoon’s Animal House and we laughed at the same parts. We’d have nights with the classic Dracula and Hitchcock’s Psycho right before Halloween. In later years she was hooked on Dateline and Investigation Discovery and we would bond over true crime and cold cases, especially. I often wondered if dad got nervous that most of those shows featured husbands murdered by the wife?

Mom passed on Saturday after a three year battle with cancer. As per her wishes she died at home in her own bedroom peacefully. It’s going to be a long time before I can get through this and even lonfer, I think before I can think clearly enough to write. I know that the strength will return because it always does and it’s what she’d want from me and for me. In a weird way it’s like a weight has been lifted because I know she no longer has to live in pain. At the same time, though, I am in a state that exists beyond numbness. I have yet to really cry or accept everything that’s happened in the last few weeks, not just this, but I know it will come if I’m just patient enough. I miss you, mom.

 

death is real,

someone’s there

and then they’re not,

it’s not for singing about,

it’s not for making into art,

when real death enters the house

all poetry is dumb.

-Phil Elvrum

 

I have a new poem in Red Fez this month

Closer to the Bone

I’m guesting on the Music Is Dumb podcast over the next few weeks

Listen as I join Mike, Jim and John to discuss new albums by The Internet, Nine Inch Nails, Deafheaven and The Carters

Music Is Dumb #33