Richard Newman (poet)
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Richard Newman (born March 25, 1966) is an American poet and editor [1]. His most recent poetry collection, Borrowed Towns[2], appeared from Word Press in 2005.
[edit] Biography
Born in Illinois, raised in southern Indiana, and now living in St. Louis, Newman is the author of Borrowed Towns (Word Press, 2005), and three poetry chapbooks: Monster Gallery: 19 Terrifying and Amazing Monster Sonnets! (Snark Publishing, 2005), Tastes Like Chicken and Other Meditatinos (Snark Publishing, 2004), and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, 2001).
His work has most recently appeared in Best American Poetry 2006 [3] (edited by Billy Collins), Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry [4], Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac[5], Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, New Letters (where he won the 2006 Reader's Choice Award for his poem "Old Bird"), Poetry Daily [6], The Sun, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily[7] [8], as well as many other periodicals and anthologies.
Newman earned his MFA at the Brief-Residency Writing Program at Spalding University. He teaches at St. Louis Community College and Washington University, reviews books for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and, for the last twelve years, has served as editor for River Styx.
[edit] Excerpt from Borrowed Towns
Coins
- My change: a nickel caked with finger grime;
- two nicked quarters not long for this life, worth
- more for keeping dead eyes shut than bus fare;
- a dime, shining in sunshine like a new dime;
- grubby pennies, one stamped the year of my birth,
- no brighter than I from 40 years of wear.
- What purses, piggy-banks, and window sills
- have these coins known, their presidential heads
- pinched into what beggar's chalky palm--
- they circulate like tarnished red blood cells,
- all of us exchanging the merest film
- of our lives, and the lives of those long dead.
- And now my turn in the convenience store,
- I hand over my fist of change, still warm,
- to the bored, lip-pierced check-out girl, once more
- to be spun down cigarette machines, hurled
- in fountains, flipped for luck--these dirty charms
- chiming in the dark pockets of the world.
