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
The Slim Hope of Ponce de León. best of all seeming impossibilities, of all the unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias, is the slim hope of Ponce de León (the golden nut of Eden’s treeto hoard and hold and keep alive,like the fire-tenders of prehistory,an ember no matter how smallof coals hot and red of…
Writing a New Leaf this new page is herejust as morning’s here without a mark upon it virgin territory pristine asPleistocene snow but the previous page belowis indecipherable through the new white sheetof this day’s blank uncertaintyit shows as lines of shadow the absolutenessof the leaf beforeis now unclear and as I look aheadand let…
$hip of $tate I'm on a big boat(which the nautically savvy call ship)if this ship's a cocoon of light atmosphere its steel will float, but it will tipif its load’s unbalanced—if its equilibrium is offit will start to list,if not corrected it will end a sacrificial goatsucked to bottomas Neptune's universal lawswill have directed and…
Fundamental Misunderstanding…. — thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, etc. everything ever written or saideverything drawn or played or sungevery headline that cried or bledevery fresco, every poemeverything wrung from our cranial spongeevery inky insult flungevery instrument ever madeevery expletive blasted from lungsevery face on a canvas hungevery righteous canto prayed…. that pounded the planks of heaven’s floorevery…
Xu Bing’s Phoenixes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine standing under Phoenix and his lofted bride both newly risen in the nave of a churchat a quarter of the height from floor to vaultI am small and still beneath their static glide a cross in the distance where they might have perchedis centered…
Winter Solstice With J. Kepler .we're deeply in— in as deeply as we get before we spin again round an ellipse's rimto a more congenial spot for blood and breath what the astronomical survival odds (our outer limits) arewho knows? for time is short by last report listening now to ersatz jazz I change Pandora's…
.—from a TED Talk Idea what is the space of creativity? lightning flash …. stroke …….. epiphany ………… eureka! ……………..something new? ………………….no an idea's a networka liquid network a new configurationa slow hunchhatched from the minds of many thinkers gaining capacity which for decades flickers and finally surges into view. by Jim Culleny 12/18/14
Poet Builds a House all that we are arises with our thoughts,the Dhammapada says,with our thoughts we make the world …….thing one: tour the foundation,…….scrape down its roughness…….with the edge of a hammer head,…….dis the mason who left behind a lumpy job,…….who forgot what a trowel is for,…….who was halfway home already when he bent…
In the Middle of a Cycle.everything comes in waves— some of which break like 70 footers at Portugal’sNazaré .… “Invest in a good surfboard”she said as if she’d already readthe morning edition of tea leaves, coffee grounds,or whatever her most knowledgeable herb my father, late in life,during his period of popping nitros,having sludged his lungs…
Elemental Earth Today I troll for a poem of humusdark and rich as the French Roastwhich always starts my dayand always is a gift In this four billion year terrapoemfungi, woodlouse and eelwormsspend millennia decomposingin concert with nematodesactinomycetes and protozoadoling water and, with bacteria,fix nitrogen in a schemeage old and symbiotic,while on it menwomen and…
“The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the twobasic words he can speak.” —Martin Buber, I and Thou.Conjugation In a diner my elbows rest upon Formica. I hold a book.Curlicues of vapor rise above the coffee you’ve just poured.I lure Thou with my take on Buberhoping to shift the poles of my twofold…
The Impossible Glamour of Istanbul the narrow streets on the hillleading from the mooring of our shipwere stepped and cobbled, or bricked.from overhead they must have looked like laces knitting together masonry wallswhich lined those ancient spaces greenhorn that I was (and am,in cosmic time at least) under the luckof many graces I walked, naiveunafraid/unbrave…
Hedge we unload the freight of dayas night wraps up what day has toldthere’s not much more to say—myself in shade, eagle in her hold both are restless in day’s throes.who among us really understandswhat night becomes, where daylight goes,who know the ground, the place we stand? still the worm in unturned earth makes way,a…
Early Autumn Surf …… it’s still the birds have gone knowing it’s time but today is an anomalous summer daywhich, breaking protocol,has oozed into early fallwith temperate trappingslulling me with spacious softnessand late brilliance,being the last echo of July,the final peal of August’s bellexpanding as I surfdown the hump of its luxurious waveformunder the comfort…
Add 30 Seconds add 30 seconds to anytime, what’s that interval? hell, double itwhat’s that? have you ever had a day that lasts threeor one that goes so fast it’s past —instantly? are those durations short or long,if hours mean anything? subtract 5 hours from anytimedo we really think we’ve minced minutes?as we tick them…
Parallel Universe everything unknown returns to lifeupon awakening in my bed supine in lightsun bequeathed day ignites a fire beneathmy blankets burn mind’s the filament of a lampupon awakening stupidity tumbles down a sheer of chancesmall thoughts plunge they start an avalanchethe ground gives way beneath my feetupon awakening where am I?light ricochets from every…
Tide the way it comes, goes, surges, disappears, a perfect metaphor for shapes of time, overused as moon for that which vanishes and reappears. quiet now, the wedding past too much so— a house that buzzed now hushed, silence loud sharp, slimmer than a midnight crescent silence also comes, goes empties, spills, ebbs and fills,…
History before a beginningis the end of a previous beginning history’s a tangled skeinnot a straight-laid thread it’s full of knots of strands of varied weightsand counter-weights of light and lead when teased apart we learnwho today has lost and who is winning who is floatingwho is falling who is free, or who is haulingsomeone…
Invisible Disassembling the invisiblehas its own mathematics, different rules apply,the process has its special calculusbecause the unseen is huge and impudent,powerful and odd When we were dumb and ignorantthe spirit wind would startle us, would frighten us,shatter shelters, split the sky with light—unseen, but real, we named it God The invisible has popular cachet,being as…
In the beginning was the word —John 1:1 Entreaty send me a poem that hunkers on hauncheswatching for the day to begin, that waitsfor the right word to come with the sunduring the last hours of the night-watchwhen all are asleep except the watcherand there is still rustling in the underbrush,the wordless sounds of something…