Jon Thompson
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The posthumous brilliance of Lewis Meyers

1/15/2026

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Because Lewis Meyers is no longer with us, I thought I'd very briefly stand in for him and offer a sample of his wild brilliance, going at it full throttle. If you like what you see, more is available from his brand-new collection, Field Notes of a Flaneur, just published by Parlor Press in its Free Verse Editions series.

Summer Letters

Tree, the sun’s brainchild.
The caterpillars are crawling to heaven.
The porcupine ate the delectable car tire.
Wind bends the tree. I couldn’t do that.
The black raspberry’s passion for a drop of sunlight.
While I wrote, a butterfly, that critic, rode my wrist.
Brown velvet gown trimmed in yellow with blue polka dots.
A bird squeezed itself through the air.
A bird swallowed space and then exhaled it.
Rain. The saplings. It skins them alive.
A shotgun echoes despairingly from the valley.
Choral mushrooms.
Queen Anne’s lace sweetens wild carrot breath.
The earth’s rigid plates drift below the daisy.
Backgammon on grass, losing every game to ants.
The sun and clouds playing honeymoon bridge.
Creams and lotion. Brushes to apply the lesson.
Like the black lily that comes up year after year despite the hostility of the gardener.
To sleep like an opera star, still singing.
Deplorably rocky meadows.
Toadflax, orange and yellow, opposed to black’s pure repulsion.
The cows’ rustling mouths, but God will scatter their teeth.
The light is too dark for colors to help.
The grape is squashed in bitter prejudice.
Turtlehead, Indian pipe, purple bergamot, heal-all, bull thistle!
The whitewashed wood snaps in exasperation.
Pearly everlasting is my girl.

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Death of the American Restaurant?

1/14/2026

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I recently went to Lily's, a neighborhood restaurant in Raleigh, famed for its pizzas. It was on a Thursday night. I was shocked to see that all the tables were completely empty. Not a soul in the place. It was open--but it was operating to service take-out orders, just like in the bad old days. Before Covid, the joint was always full--bursting with patrons and the hubbub of conversation and of course thumping loud music. You had to weave in and the crowds to fetch your own cutlery. It appears that many have lost the habit, the appetite, for eating out. Some of this can be put down to financial belt-tightening but not, I think, all of it. It looks to me like the tendency in American culture to center everything--eating, socializing, working, entertainment-- in the home is taking another prisoner. Cinemas in the U.S. are languishing too--barely holding on with reduced attendance. Most new films can be seen at home immediately on platforms like Netflix or shortly after opening. To me, it feels like there's a greater and greater contraction of social space in the U.S. since Covid. Less places to see others, to come into contact with others, less opportunity for spontaneous interaction. I hope I'm wrong. If I'm not, the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in this country will only become more severe...
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More new FVE titles

1/13/2026

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Delighted to announce two new titles from Free Verse Editions: Lewis Meyers' brilliant--and posthumous--collection, Field Work of a Flaneur​ (winner of the New Measure Poetry Prize) and the wonderfully audacious, mesmerizing new collection by Jean Gallagher, Rivermouth Shouting. Available on the Parlor Press website, your favorite online vendor, and discriminating bookstores everywhere!
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L'histoire de Souleymane

1/12/2026

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Directed by Boris Lojkine, this film traces two days in the life of an African immigrant in Paris who works as a bike messenger delivering food. Although the film is fictional, it has a documentary "feel" to it. But the film's heightened suspense comes from the dramatization of his daily struggles. And everything is a struggle and there is much that is working against him, not least his color and his lack of resources. Because he is applying to become legal, and does not yet possess work papers to make what little money he earns he is forced to borrow, at an extortionate rate, another bicycle messenger's license. The film owes much to the great nineteenth-century tradition of naturalism where the protagonist finds himself or herself pitted against a pitiless system. But the film adds a twist to the time-honored formula. A close-to-the-bone rendering of the small daily struggles of immigrants: doesn't seem like the stuff of a thriller. But it is.
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Free Verse Editions publication of Tracy Zeman's INTERGLACIAL

1/12/2026

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Happy to announce Free Verse Editions' newest title, INTERGLACIAL by Tracy Zeman. A wonderful and most timely collection. Available online from Parlor Press, other online vendors and the best bookstores. Be sure to check it out!

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New books forthcoming from Free Verse Editions!

1/10/2026

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I’m delighted to announce the newest cohort of Free Verse Editions authors and their books: Ashley Seitz Kramer, Proxemics; Claire McQuerry, Through Glass Rooms; Kylan Rice, Cloud on Page Opposite and Kathleen Rooney, O Western Wind [New Measure Poetry Prize winner selected by Rodney Jones]. These books will be published approximately one year from now. Look for them at your favorite bookstore, on Parlor Press’s website, or your preferred online vendor. Many thanks to Rodney Jones, our New Measure Poetry Prize judge, and all those who submitted manuscripts for publication. Happy New Year to all!
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Madmen

5/27/2025

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I'm late to the party, but am watching the TV series, "Madmen," which is a brilliant look back at early 1960s America. "Madmen" is of course a pun with various meanings--the men of Madison Ave., ie the world of advertising in New York, but also "mad men"--men who are made mad by their license and privilege. "Privilege" is an overused and perhaps abused term these days, but to me what this series dramatizes is not just the power of these white male advertising executives, but the casual cruelty to women and blacks that this system inculcated. Seeing women only as sexual objects, they are blind to every other capacity they possess. The ad men/ mad men literally are blind to  the world they live in, misperceiving it, and so they remain blind to their own cruelty and themselves. With the current MAGA nostalgia towards the fifties and sixties at high tide, "Madmen" reminds us of the tremendous loss of human capital marginalized in that time, and the costs of that uber-hierarchical, conformist, unbalanced world. Not least to white heterosexual men themselves. Don Draper, the advertising whiz at the center of the series is a cipher to himself, and as a human being is lost. It turns out the series is like nothing more than a horror film where everything supernatural and outré has been ruthlessly stripped away, revealing the horror and emptiness of that way of life in that era. Don Draper is Gatsby, one generation on.
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Catholic theatricality

5/9/2025

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Watching Pope Leo introducing himself to the world reminded me anew of how intensely theatrical papal introductions are. The black smoke. The white smoke.  The imperial banner hanging down from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, "the Loggia of the Blessings." The crimson velvet curtains trimmed with gold behind the new pope so like those in a theater. The stagecraft of the supporting actors on the balcony, speaking in Latin (mystery, the ancient). The Loggia has to be the most impressive stage in the world. Everything high, remote, and authoritative so that the choreographed human gestures take on a mythic dimension. Then there is the drama of new life replacing new death--the whole event turning on the carefully-guarded element of surprise, which of course is crucial to any dramatic performance. Gramsci once said that the Catholic Church is "the oldest and most successful political party in the world." To me--and I write as a Catholic apostate--there is certainly some truth to the claim. And if it is true, it is true in part due  to the Church's mastery of theater and stagecraft. Yet the Church knows too the deep human appetite for ritual and continuity. An appetite which can be used to ensure its own continuity and interests--but also it can be addressed and used on behalf of the spiritual and physical needs of wretched of the earth, and even those more fortunate. With each new pope, there's the question of "Which Rome is now going to turn up"?
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Free Verse Editions author on the underground!

5/6/2025

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Jeongrye Choi's poem "Forest" from Instances, ​translated by the author, Brenda Hillman and Wayne de Fremery, has been selected for display on London Underground Tube carriages throughout June 2025 as part of the "Poems on the Underground" initiative. It will also appear on a variety of high profile UK websites devoted to poetry (like The Poetry Society, The National Poetry Library, and more). Brava!
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Sharp Nine Gallery

5/5/2025

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Turns out that just 20 miles away, in Durham, NC, there's a a fine jazz nightclub. In fact, better than fine: Downbeat magazine ranks it as one of the 100 finest jazz clubs in the world. Last weekend, we went and heard the Lynne Arielle Trio there. I love her version of "Blackbird..."
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    Poet, professor, citizen and editor.

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