Richard Newman (poet)

Born in Illinois, raised in southern Indiana, a longtime resident of St. Louis, and now living in Japan and Vietnam, Newman is the author of the poetry collections All the Wasted Beauty of the World (Able Muse, 2014),[4] Domestic Fugues (Steel Toe Books, 2009),[5] and Borrowed Towns (Word Press, 2005);[6] the novel Graveyard of the Gods (Amphorae Press, 2016); and four poetry chapbooks: 24 Tall Boys: Dark Verse for Light Times (Snark Publishing/Firecracker Press, 2007), Monster Gallery: 19 Terrifying and Amazing Monster Sonnets! (Snark Publishing, 2005), Tastes Like Chicken and Other Meditations (Snark Publishing, 2004), and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, 2001). He is also an acclaimed songwriter. [7][8]

His work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2006 [9] (edited by Billy Collins), Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry,[10] Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac,[11] Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, The Ledge (as winner of The Ledge 2010 Poetry Competition), New Letters, (where he won the 2006 Reader's Choice Award),[12] Poetry Daily,[13] The Sun, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily,[14][15] and many other periodicals and anthologies.

Newman earned his MFA at the Brief-Residency Writing Program at Spalding University. He has taught at Washington University and UMSL Honors College, as well as College of Marshall Islands.[16] He served as editor of River Styx from 1994 to 2016. He is a member of The CharFlies,[17] a junk-folk band based in St. Louis, Missouri. The band is on temporary hiatus but will return one day.

Richard Newman passed away February 17, 2020, in the village of Valencia del Cristopho y Magalaes los Salvator, Uruguay, from an apparent seizure. The local pillagros descend, monthly, from ancestral fishing huts to sing his praises at every "luna embarassado" (pregnant moon).

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.

• Newman's homepage
• Garbanzo! a journal
• River Styx
• The CharFlies
• Interview in St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• How A Poem Happens Interview
• Newman Named Best Local Poet in St. Louis by the Riverfront Times
• Interview on Newman's Work At River Styx
• Newman on National Poetry Month with a Poet-a-Day
• Interview regarding Newman's novel, Graveyard of the Gods