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
Imagine our town rests in a mountain-bowl at twilight, common and small as dust and dream but huge in life beyond what it seems, its few lights jitter on the river’s skin, the dam pond’s spillway lets its waters out as upstream they come in under a steel truss bridge, the dam buoys’ stillness under…
“(Swifts) feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air. They can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses, but they can’t really land on the ground.” —Researcher Susanne Åkesson Swift I’ve been airborne since Augustus set the footings of the Roman Peace —in that alone I flew…
August 18, 12:10 pm orange serpentine between sloped green and me sky pondlight blue clean, clouds cumulous/cirrus half unseen in a frame like dream geometry/physics bone-like brick wood-like flesh and glass that, with reflections, sings with ridges and walls, choral: concrete, spheres, steel and other distinctly human things Jim Culleny 8/18/19
A Simple Ontology maybe flower petals are held to stems by thought and the wind’s a counter-thought that plucks and sets them elsewhere in the grass to grow in contemplative resolution beside the notion of a grub-pulling crow maybe the wind itself is a palpable bright idea, something about motion and the abhorrence of vacuums something about coming and…
Getting Sealegs topside sun’s brilliant as it’ll almost ever be on ship’s steel on deep see I never knew that things could (at once) still & moving be motion’s feel out here is constant news to me sound of sea-slaps-hull within sheer three sixty hoop that hems hull and me all new ………….unconsciously whatever’s ever…
Imagine This unlikely thing shaped like a dish saucer moonspan wide in nightsky laden with milk for a cat still and perfectly crisp who’s ever less than that and ever more than this sun up moon scats have you noticed that in a miraculous way fully backed by science, truth, even in the dark, will always stare you…
God gave names to all the animals, in the beginning, in the beginning …………………….….. —Bob Dylan Yclept to be called anything, to be called, Jim, for instance, is to be tagged for life unless you choose otherwise and pull a new name from a hat; a new you —say, Ed, which would amount to a tangle…
Ostinato first their concerted honks— unseen, …………then as apparitions they rise from foliage at the foot of the hill framed in a window sash they rise to the cackles of crows already at breakfast in our yard arrayed upon green, black notes of an almost endless chord, ostinato of the articulated sounds of vees that…
Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago 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 Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…
Socrates said to Glaucon,”The things we think we know are like shadows cast by a distant light on the walls of a cave of things unseen we do not know.” The Thin Skin of Our Conceits —For L. who couldn’t find the balloon she’d saved in remembrance of a cousin of her childhood You called last night…
“Time is a static in the mind.”—Malachi Black, poet Timesea In the days when there were bona fide summers when months were loyal to the expected, when they stayed more or less within their lanes, December not copping the joys of July, for instance, when seasons honored tradition and did not insist on mukluks in…
Gull on a Spar I’m a gull on a spar —so much sea, so little far this perch is so unsteady I wonder what my bearings are the roll and sway and pitch, the other gull-calls I am hearing as ship slides into ditch of trough, this captain must be drunk the way he’s steering…
Authoritarian if hubris were astronomical it would appear as a black hole at the center of its galaxy in tie and suit which would not be seen, but whose influence, its dragging presence, would be known by the stars around it that vanish into its maw —would not be seen because its mass’ draw would…
I look at my grandchildren and know that, being so young, they have little serious understaning of Covid and wonder what parts of it they’ll recall. Or will it linger…? How vague a memory will it be. What sort of meaning will it have, one like mine of world war? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Meaning of the…
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…