“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.” —Don Marquis
I am happy to announce the release of my first spoken poetry album, What All Cats Know, available for free or “name your price” streaming and download via the bandcamp.com link here.
The album includes 30 of my original and previously published poems recorded in my home studio with a couple of disinterested and incorrigible felines lounging nearby.
I am excited to announce the release of my book, A Halo of Flies: containing a handful of new and previously uncollected poems and song lyrics, three short essays on the contemporary poetry scene, and some professional poetry book reviews I had published during my stint as a reviewer at NewPages.com and the journal Sacramental Life. Some of the poets whose work I review include Barbara Crooker, James Matthew Wilson, and Meghan Privitello. You can purchase the book at the link here.
This was a deeply satisfying project for me personally and is the first “hybrid” book in terms of content that I’ve published, mixing both poetry and prose together in one volume. I would particularly like to acknowledge and thank professor and poet extraordinaire, Joseph Hutchison, for first encouraging me to try my hand at writing poetry reviews. Taking his advice has led me to establish some lovely professional relationships in the literary world that I otherwise would not have cultivated.
7/31/23 Press Release, Denver, Co Author Daniel Klawitter wins prestigious writing award
The Colorado Authors League (CAL) honored Denver-based poet Daniel Klawitter with a 2023 Writing Excellence Award. Klawitter won the poetry category nod with his book Where Sunday Used to Be: New and Selected Poems (Published by Wipf & Stock/Resource Publications).
A 2002 graduate of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Daniel is the poetry editor of the journal Doxology and the lead singer/lyricist for the indie folk-rock band, Mining for Rain.
The Colorado Authors League (CAL) has provided a professional community to established writers across genres for over 90 years in Colorado. From Mary Coyle Chase, author of the play Harvey, to adventure writer Clive Cussler to numerous best-selling authors of today. Visit our website at coloradoauthors.org to find a complete list of CAL’s 2023 award winning books.
About Colorado Authors League
The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors join to keep up with changes in writing and publishing. CAL provides like-minded people with a place to share knowledge, contacts, and marketing expertise. To learn more, go to coloradoauthors.org.
I am so happy to announce that my book, Where Sunday Used to Be: New & Selected Poems, with a foreword by the poet and scholar David J. Rothman, is now available from Wipf and Stock publications. Publishing a New and Selected is always a big deal for any poet. It means that one has previously published enough work over time to put together a “greatest hits” of sorts along with some new poems demonstrating the author’s development and mastery of their craft. It is a literary legacy of sorts and a major milestone by any measure. I appreciate any and all support and am both humbled and grateful to be a practitioner of this art that poet Carl Sandburg called “a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.”
My thanks to Azure Literary Journal for publishing my new poem that pokes a little fun at that Granddaddy of postmodernity, Jacques Derrida. The poem was published along with a cool illustration by one of their staff, Evgenia Barsheva. You can read it for free here.
My thanks to editor Vera Ignatowitsch for including my poem in the February 2022 quarterly issue of Better than Starbucks:
A Ghazal for Compassion Fatigue
Oh mama, the world is wet with weeping again.
Oh papa, the storm-tossed & lost are sleeping again.
When hope is double-crossed, the cost can be severe.
How often can hardened hearts start beating again?
The trauma that we all hear is a mantra of fear.
A litany of terrors & errors repeating again.
The stretcher-bearers bear the bodies from the rubble.
But why be too troubled with all that bleeding again?
We are punished & pummeled, worried & wearied.
But all things buried will soon start pleading again.
Grand Little Things (GLT) is an online literary journal that embraces versification, lyricism, rhyming and formal poetry submissions…a still rather rare aesthetic focus given the near dominance of free verse and postmodern “experimental” poetry in North America today. And so, I am indeed very grateful to GLT’s wonderful editor, Patrick Key, for publishing my new poem, “Those Other Po-Mo Poets” which you can read at the link here.
Patrick told me the poem made him laugh, which was certainly my intention, as it pokes light fun at a certain strata of poets who still seem to think that using rhyme or writing in a received poetic form like the sonnet will doom you to sound like a 19th century Victorian.
I recently wrote a poem that me and my long-time musician friend turned into a full-fledged song: “The Ballad of Miranda McAfee”…ostensibly inspired by an all-women run Brewery in my home state of Colorado. The video for our song on YouTube is here.
And if you’d like to learn more about the brewery that inspired it, just google “Lady Justice Brewing.”
I am happy to have had a new poem, “A College/Collage”, recently published in the August 2021 online issue of Uppagus. You can read the poem here. It is a triptych poem inspired by the reality of the student loan debt crisis in America but also my own memories of being an undergraduate student.
For a few years now, I’ve been wanting to write a tribute song for the great American poet, Emily Dickinson, known during her lifetime as “The Myth of Amherst”. I’m happy to say the song is finished and the lyrics incorporate snippets of her own poetry. I hope you’ll give it a listen and let me know what you think!
Poet Daniel Klawitter 