Jim Culleny is the Poetry Editor of 3 Quarks Daily. After a stint in the navy, Jim received a BA in Art Education from William Paterson University and did graduate work in art at NYU. He taught art for several years in NJ public schools in Newark and Bergen County. Taught a little bit of everything else during two years at a remote residential community school in New York’s Adirondacks. Was a social worker in Lower Manhattan before Soho was Soho. Made a living most of his life as a carpenter, designer, and builder. Did regular radio commentary for about 10 years during Morning Edition on WFCR.FM in Amherst, Mass. and some for NPR on All Things Considered. Played and sang his way from rockabilly to jazz in numberless band permutations over a period too long to believe. Came to poetry through songwriting. Has had work published in The Third Muse Poetry Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Penthouse Journal, and in 5-Minute Pieces, a chapbook published in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He’s also been writing a regular op-ed column for the past 12 years for the Greenfield Recorder along the beautiful Connecticut River, and is presently making a living as project manager for an Architectural firm. Jim lives with his wife, Pat, of 31 years, and his 17 year old granddaughter. He has three daughters and four other grandchildren. Email: jimculleny [at] comcast.net
On the Edge of a Joke on the tip of my tongue a funny thing is on edge an ambivalent thing I think, as if a comedian on a brink in a no-nonsense universe of serious laughs is set to sail or sink but all anticipation feels this way in the space before a punch line,…
Like The Old Harry ….. –for my father, Jim My father was an opaque poet of blue collar verse who’d sling odd terms from the corner of his mouth opposite the one holding the lip-gripped cigarette issuing curlicues of smoke which circled his cocked head his eyes squinting from their sting his playful gags filled earcups from which I, with…
“The writer [Lorca] died while mixing with the rebels, these are natural accidents of war . . .” —Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco. “The country has to toughen up … part of the problem …is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?” — US president, Donald Trump Last Day of Federíco García Lorca Federico, in…
New Vinyl …. —an Elegy to take an album in your hands, to feel its slight heft, to unsheathe it from clear synthetic skin, to slip it from its cardboard cover, to scan its art, to flip it over, read, then draw it from its inner sleeve with care (platter’s rim to palm just so)…
Galleon the complexity of your crossed purposes beauty and war, grace and wastefulness, you rest solidly at sea upon a liquid without yet dropping through, a steel log with algorithmic spurs hollow inside of rust and rot, a contradiction, weighty, weightless, floating divine swan human pawns Jesus weeps Mars is gloating . Jim Culleny 2/15/20…
Begin flames are the feathers of this bird but I’m not calling the fire brigade —life burns life this is a particular bird whose flame is multitudinous red with flamboyant nuance: high-frequency colorwheels thrown in and well-played purple notes of a bass line in its wings —but “multitudinous” fails to tell the tale of this…
Banks along a river its banks are set and keep the river in the river being in the river the river’s in its being within its banks, whole, astatic, a river flows unbound, ecstatic a falling river goes within these banks, astatic, this river grows unbound, ecstatic this falling river flows until, without banks, this…
Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck almost 60 years ago to the day and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18 year-old who’d never really read a book through, to the lives that can be found in them. —Thank you A. Gaeta and E. Budde…
As If About a Painting . takes many steps to top this mountain as if Olympus a prickly pine’s upon one nub as if Zeus pagoda house shed as if Many Mansions sky sun red some blue as if Noon some on steps are climbing as if To move calligraphy top right as if A thought balloon each…
If you talk about it, it’s not Tao If you name it, it’s something else What can’t be named is eternal Naming splits the eternal to smithereens …………………………… —Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC Lao Tzu’s Lament at first I think, I’ve got it! then I think, Ah no, that’s not it I think, it’s more…
Darkroom, 6:44 AM . sun’s not up but imminent, trees in the window are emerging shades in a darkroom bath three boys sleep in a room downstairs near mother; in another a girl sleeps with another mother— all still new as if just born on this darkroom raft I look up again, sun trumps umbra…
High and Blue Enough plums on limb tips across a grassy slice of space have just begun to taste the sunny juice that tips the scale of day —a star that sprays its golden light across turning leaves above our arbor vitae emeralds, brushy backboned sentinels twenty feet tall we planted there when they were…
by Jim Culleny I’ve done a number of things to make a living over the years, but my most protracted make-a-living venture has been as a carpenter. But I’ve not done that alone: without the right tools a carpenter’s as helpless as a musician without an axe. Tools are body’s extension, and mind’s. Which brings…
“What the earliest scriptural-literary texts . . . do is attempt to find a language to come to terms with . . . the contingency of being.” —Amit Chaudhuri, from Storytelling & Forgetfullness A Skeptic’s Critique of Storytelling what is a story anyway but a trip through landscapes inhabited by characters bent by other characters…
Imagine This thing shaped like a dish saucer moonspan wide in nightsky laden with milk for a cat a gesture of someone kind who is always more than this and ever less than that sun up moon scats have you noticed that in a miraculous way fully backed by science the eyes of truth will…
Einstein & Etta James (reading below) I’m fourteen when Einstein is in Princeton he’s old & heading out of breath as I am fresh and new at breathing in some but there the landscapes of the space between our ears divides Al used levers of mind to lift mass in time while mine took to…
My friend, poet Nils Peterson, sent me a new poem of his the other day. It moved me to spontaneously add a second verse which I presented to him and he liked. So this is a collaborative venture. The first stanza is Nils’, the last stanza, following the break, is mine. Two writers, one poem.…
Eye to Spirit every year I’m given the gift of her garden which she sweats over and in which is all color, lush, side by side soil to buds, roots to blossoms edge to edge eye to spirit beginning to end . Jim Culleny 7/17/19
Water Lilies At Lido saucers in space, a flock, a green gaggle of water lilies upon cool liquid too precise to be Monet’s, too crisp but let me lie upon your quietude let me swim among your green voids let me calculate the diameters of your circles with the calipers of my eyes yes even the…
Flight From Gravity …………… a story, a poem a recollection of 77 summer solstices bundled into a single thought of when a young carpenter with muscles, sweating, carries a 2 by 10 joist from lumber pile to house, its skeleton being assembled in the sun, a thought that segues into a later solstice down the…