Gene Frumkin Reads | Vox Audio

Gene Frumkin (1928-2007) was an American poet and teacher. Born and raised in New York City and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A. in English, 1950), Eugene Frumkin worked as a bank teller before beginning his writing career as a journalist. He first took up poetry seriously while enrolled in an adult education class taught by the poet Thomas McGrath. Frumkin was an editor at the Daily Bruin while at UCLA. During the 1950s he was Poetry Editor of the literary journal Coastlines, which he co-founded with Mel Weisburd in 195. In 1966, Frumkin moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to take a teaching position at the University of New Mexico, where he remained until his retirement in 1994. At the University Frumkin edited the Blue Mesa Review and taught a number of students who would go on to distinguished careers, including Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Frumkin’s poetry has appeared in Evergreen Review, Kayak, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and many other literary magazines. His work is noted for its meditative character, its wit, and its unexpected turns and surprises, which show the influence of Surrealism. Continue reading

Mary Rising Higgins Reads | Vox Audio

Mary Rising Higgins is the author of : red table(S (La Alameda Press, 1999), oclock (Potes and Poets, 2000), )locus TIDES(( (Potes and Poets, 2002), and)cliff TIDES(( (Singing Horse Press, 2005), Greatest Hits, 1990-2001 (Pudding House 2002), )joule TIDES(( (Singing Horse 2007) and Borderlining: Pieces from R and B (Small Chapbook Project 2007) Her poems, published in oversize formats, are carefully patterned and “shaped” on the page both to produce a striking visual component and to invite alternative soundings. Lyn Hejinian says of Higgins’ poetry,“it is work of précise inventions, work of imaginings that are carefully fantastical, compassionately observed.” Her poems have appeared in such magazines and journals as Blue Mesa Review, Cafe Solo, Big Allis, ecopoetics and Central Park, and she recorded poems for Vox Audio. She lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mary Rising Higgins, innovative poet, friend and colleague of many years, died in Albuquerque on August 26, 2007. Her poetry was startling and radiant, and it had gained well-deserved recognition in recent years. Continue reading

Bruce Holsapple Reads | Vox Audio

Bruce Holsapple is currently working in central New Mexico as a speech-language pathologist. He taught briefly and has a scholarly essay on Phil Whalen’s poetry forthcoming in Paideuma. His poems have appeared in The Poker, House Organ, First Intensity and Blue Mesa. Bruce Holsapple is one of the creators of Contraband, the first persistently serious and successful little magazine in Maine, running from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s. Holsapple grew up in Dexter, tended trap lines as a teenager, attended the University of Maine in the late 1960s and hooked up there with mentors and partners like Burt Hatlen and Jim Bishop. After preliminary excursions out of state, he returned to Portland in about 1969, and then with Bishop, Michael Barriault, Peter Kilgore and others, started publishing saddle-stitched collections of poetry, Contraband. Some early issues are worth money on the Stephen and Tabitha King collectors market. Continue reading

Joseph Somoza Reads in Placitas | Vox Audio

Joseph Somoza taught literature and creative writing at NMSU for 22 years, editing poetry for Puerto Del Sol during most of that time. He has published four previous chapbooks and three full books of poetry, the most recent being Cityzen (La Alameda, 2002). He’s done readings of his poems in many venues throughout the country, including The Green Mill (Chicago), Cody’s (Berkeley), The Cornelia Street Cafe (New York), The Elliston Poetry Library (University of Cincinnati), the Mesa (AZ) Literary Festival, and The Living Batch Bookstore (Albuquerque). He lives in Las Cruces with wife Jill, a painter. Jill Somozahas been painting, drawing, papermaking, and doing collage paintings for 40 years. She has experimented with various materials and is currently painting on vinyl, superimposing large, oddly-shaped, translucent panels. Continue reading

Dana Wilde Reads | Vox Audio

Dana Wilde of Troy, Maine, is at present an editor and columnist for the local daily newspaper. In previous lifetimes he served in China and South Africa as a Fulbright lecturer in American literature, taught literature and writing in Bulgaria, Maine and New York, managed a publisher of legal books and directories, played in small-time rock and roll bands, and coached college basketball, among a lot of other dog-eared occupations and divagations. His writings on nature, outer space and literature, some of which have won press and academic awards, have appeared widely over decades and many are now collected at The Mind Errant . Recent essays can be seen in the Amateur Naturalist pages of the Bangor Daily News. Continue reading

John Tritica Reads | Vox Audio

John Tritica is the co-founder, with Mary Rising Higgins, of L)Edge, a poetry circle now in its 22nd year in Albuquerque, NM. He is the translator of the Swedish poet Niklas Törnlund : All Things Measure Time (The Landlocked Press, 1992). His book How Rain Records Its Alphabet was published in 1998. Sound Remains will appear later this year from Chax Press. He teaches gifted youngsters at Wilson Middle School & engages in backyard farming & soirees. Continue reading