SUMMER 2025

On July 20th, ten miles from the Devil's Tower (the big rock formation featured in Close Encounters' last scenes), I scattered my folks' ashes, fulfilling an old request. The landscape of northeast Wyoming, a vast semi-desert thankfully green this July across its ponderosa forests and cattle-dotted pastures, has inspired generations to write holy chants, cowboy camp songs, country music, and the occasional pop lyric.  To a decades-on, adoptive Easterner like me, Wyoming's skies and landscape are marvelous but often too big to populate with one imagination.  But the ashes are scattered, family finally met and enjoyed on their land and in their lives, with many cousins, their children and grandchildren met for the first time.  A change of climate requires more than spring to summer.

And so it's time for a new issue of Expansive Poetry Online, and we have a good news to start.  Charles Southerland, a marvelous poet appearing in this (and many other venues) for many years, has recovered from a dangerous health crisis and has returned to EPO.  Send a get well wish to Charlie.  Send another to Frederick Turner as he struggles with a vicious health crisis himself. 

We have a delightful newcomer for Summer  (though he's not new to the rest of the world), poet and award -winning translator Michael Palma, whose brilliant translation of Dante's Divine Comedy was reviewed favorably here a short while ago (and in a variety of outlets nationwide). 

Three years ago we had a remarkable segment from William Carpenter's since-published epic Eϸandun.  This issue we have a segment from another Carpenter epic, one yet in progress, set during the English Revolution of the 17th century. 

Poems this month have arrived from Bruce Bennett, Susan Jarvis Bryant, William Carpenter, Sally Cook, Steven Duplij, Claudia Gary, Pierpaola Isoldi, Arthur Mortensen, Michael Palma, Brian Palmer, Joseph S. Salemi, Charlie Southerland and Frederick Turner.

 Poetry:  Select to see new and past postings.

Essays: Joseph S. Salemi, "The Unwanted Voices"

Reviews: La Divina Commedia, Michael Palma's new translation (complete),
                review by Joseph S. Salemi

Archive from Original Journal (1996-2018):  Divided into two sections, New and Old.   

Online Prosody:  As of now this will remain in the Old archives until editing and rewrite are complete. 

Contributions are by assignment, as we do not have the resources to manage online submissions.