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Poem: "What was Precious"

I'm very happy to announce the publication of my poem "What was Precious" in Valparaiso Poetry Review. You can read the poem here, and listen to my reading of it here.

Lostutter-SuperbSunbirdColor

Cover art (Superb Sunbird, 1991, by Robert Lostutter, b. 1931) for issue XIX.1 of Valparaiso Poetry Review

This poem has been marinating a long time—it first came together back in the fall of 2013, while I was still relatively fresh out of the MFA, living in South Haven, and working at the Bailey Museum. I have to thank my great friend, the incredible writer Melissa Sevigny, for being its first reader and helping me improve it in critical ways, and to the inimitable Maurice Manning and my workshop group at the Sewanee Writers' Conference in summer 2015 who helped me along even more. It's a great privilege to appear once again in VPR, one of the longest-running online poetry journals out there, and the series of poems on memory, loss, and time that follow my poem in this issue give such great depth of poignancy and beauty to my little piece that I couldn't have hoped for a better home for it. Thanks as always to Edward Byrne for his ongoing support of my work and the incredible gift to poetry of his editorship of this great journal.