new poetry book with Mary Snyder Behrens art

It has been a pleasure to learn today about the upcoming publication of a new book of poetry by American poet J.D. Schraffenberger, titled American Sad. Its projected publication date is February 2024, but copies can be pre-ordered now, at an advance sale discount price. The author is editor of the North American Review and professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. More book information, examples of the author's poems, and ordering information can be found here.

Full disclosure: Personally, I am especially pleased that a major artwork by my wife, Mary Snyder Behrens, as been chosen by the author for use on the cover. I live with this work, since it has been on view in our dining room for years, and I pass it multiple times in the course of a day. It is large, for the scale of a dining room wall (48h x 30w x 4d), encased in a plexiglas cover, and so multi-faceted and visually provocative that one cannot help but be drawn in. Titled American Canvas II, it is one of several comparable-sized, related works that she completed in 2002 (can it really have been 21 years ago?).  All of them are mixed media, dimensional compositions of cast-off detritus from our farm, bits of junk that farmers buried years ago (in the manner of amateur landfills), and which, during heavy rains, rise up again to the surface—and, in some cases, cause us harm. 

I for one could not be more delighted that the writer J.D. Schraffenberger has found some strand of common ground between the art he makes with words, and the visual verse that Mary constructs.