George Franklin

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A Man Made of Stories

Some stories are our own, some are heard from others, and some are stories we imagine.  The poems in A Man Made of Stories embrace them all.  Whether traveling by train through the Ozarks, walking under the orange trees and bougainvillea of Las Dueñas in Seville, or listening to Pavarotti in a laundromat on the Upper West Side in New York City, they take the reader on journeys through experiences that shape both the literal self—born on one date, dead on another—and the imagined self that continues in the lines of a poem.  At the old Roman wall in Barcelona, where merchants left marks from sharpening their knives for hundreds of years, the poet asks, “are we / The stone shaped by so many knives, or / Are we the knives sharpened by stone?”  These poems celebrate what has been lost and what remains, whether it is the beauty of aging bodies, the nobility of the animals left behind by Noah, or simply time spent talking over a glass of wine.  They find their value in the finite, in this all-too-mortal world we inhabit and cherish without guarantees or faith, except perhaps that “the world is sayable” and that we can find a home in our daily lives together “in the way / Our hands touch involuntarily as we talk, / How we look at each other as we carry / The leftovers to the refrigerator and / Our dishes out to the sink.”

Poetry and Pigeons: Short Essays on Writing

This book began to take shape last April when I was sitting in an outdoor café in Madrid watching pigeons hop up on the tables and demand potato chips or anything else they could get. It occurred to me then that our poems are a bit like that. They are strange creatures with wings who like to take off on their own and don’t care much what their poets want or hope for. When we first start to write poems, we’re amazed these creatures exist at all and don’t ask questions. Later on, though, we ask ourselves what poems are, what they do, and why and how they do it. Sometimes, we even ask how they could do it better. The short essays in this book are attempts to answer questions like these, and to give other writers some ideas they can use—or argue with—in their own attempts to understand what they’re doing.

CONTENTS: * Poetry and Pigeons * Why Poetry? * How to Write a Love Poem * Myths of the Poetry Biz * Writing About What’s No Longer Here * Poetry and the Image * Translation and the Poetic * Prose Poems * The Impulse to Publish * Saving Poetry? * Defending Love & Nature * Ten Things I Learned as a Guest Editor * On the Irrational * Against Prompts * Born Too Late? * What Is a Poem?

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What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused

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In What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused, the angel doesn’t know the purpose of his presence among humans, but grief draws him to itself repeatedly. He is helpless to improve matters, even though he sees what is happening with perfect clarity. The saint, more precisely an anti-saint, also refuses any subterfuge, excuse, or consolation that would diminish the harshness and injustice he witnesses. If the saint had been Job, he would have spit into the whirlwind or, better yet, laughed. He wants to shake people out of their certainties and especially rejects the transcendence of the philosophers. Unlike the angel, the saint sees a bitter humor in the tragedies that surround him, and that humor gives him an equanimity that surfaces in his conversations and encounters. Both angel and saint are creatures of negation and irony. They are fundamental, modern, even mirror images of ourselves. If the angel of sorrow and the saint of unbelievers did not exist, just maybe, it might have been necessary to invent them.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR WHAT THE ANGEL SAW, WHAT THE SAINT REFUSED

You will be astonished at what a narrative poem can achieve when you read George Franklin’s ground-breaking collection, What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused. You will learn the difference between grief that is despairing and grief that is not despairing, the second hinging on an appreciation for the unremarkable life, as you follow an angel with no destination, an angel drawn by humanity’s grief. The angel can change nothing. /He is not here to bless or comfort, to join a war or stop one.  Still, capacious imagery challenges philosophy: [pigeons] arc across the sky like missiles thrown off course, and creates a beauty that transcends existentialist angst: drafts/From the roof and door pulled the fire one way, then another. The terrible beauty that exists, to borrow a phrase from Rilke, because Franklin’s angel will make you think of Rilke, shows you that though pain is never symmetrical, your own grief will be balanced by a belief in something larger than death. You will find harmony in a refuge of cellos and resilience in waking from a dream laughing. ––Jane Ann Fuller, author of Half-Life

 If the angel struggles to remain aloof and elevated, “Even though he could spread his wings / And be elsewhere, the angel stands still in the road,” the saint embraces the muck of imperfection, “he will consider your hands. What kind of work does this one do?  He disdains hands without callouses.”  In the masterful language of George Franklin, the angel and the saint can be memorable observers of the human tragedy, celestially poetic step-siblings, or powerful window to look from at who we are. You choose. Yet, I think Mr. Franklin would agree, the third option will open your eyes to examine your own life. Let these poems do that. ––Juan Pablo Mobili, author of “Contraband” and Guest Editor at The Banyan Review

 Angels and saints occupy a decent amount of space in poetry, but George Franklin’s angel and saint bring them to our doorstep the way few poets have or can. His angel is empathetic and sad over human tragedy, but he knows he can offer no relief—he’s only a witness for eternity. Both the angel and the saint sometimes engage with humans (the angel’s talk with the philosopher and the saint’s talk with the librarian are priceless), including with train conductors, gamblers, and others just trying to get by. The angel writes letters and cheers on explorers, whereas the saint is more cynical and employs a more austere lens, though both want to know so much more about the often-difficult mysteries of living. The philosopher says to the angel: Everything I am, I have put into my books. But we know there’s more. And so, on we all go, a fallen angel asking: What is even a moment of such happiness worth? And the librarian closing the door of the cabin and walking home again. George Franklin has given us huge vistas for our backyards in this thoughtful, brilliant book. –– Tim Suermondt, author of A Doughnut and the Great Beauty of the World

Remote Cities

From a cathedral in Cuernavaca with its frescos of samurai and soon-to-be-martyred priests to neighborhoods in Miami at the end of lockdown, to New York City in the 1970s, or to mythic Greece, the poems in Remote Cities are conscious of history as a process happening right now. They look back at us with an urgency that demands response, not that we embrace this or that political or religious dogma but that we live our lives with a sense of their fragility and value.

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Remote Cities reviewed on Good Reads by Elizabeth Gauffreau https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5828800566?fbclid=IwAR075LEvCnOvUXywMA-w1MMsKzAKOgitcXtkNEfAy6ZIFm2SU6N96VfN3cc

Remote Cities reviewed in Pedestal Magazine by Shawn Pavey: https://thepedestalmagazine.com/george-franklins-remote-cities-reviewed-by-shawn-pavey/?fbclid=IwAR3m4PuxkGX7btzhac9oIPNjv55PM0LdKvqYi4V-70gtO0jkSYoQhygNWAg

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR REMOTE CITIES:

The poems in George Franklin’s Remote Cities are poems for grown-ups, for people who know what it is to have loved, to have been disappointed in love, to have recovered love. They are wise, thoughtful, self-effacing, realistic about nature and human nature, without illusion but also without bitterness. They understand what it is to find one’s self embedded among the complex ties of family and family history, with all its unsolved issues of duty and responsibility. They understand, without posing and without extenuation, what it is to live in a fallen political and historical world in which there are few unmixed institutions and few soluble problems. They see human life in the widest context, as they are reflected in history, poetry, fine art, and the way the classic stories face us with but do not solve the dark puzzle of our being. To all of these George Franklin brings an acute eye for detail, and a sad, knowing, and thoughtful sense of what it is to be alive and to know that life all the way through. —John Burt, author of Victory

If Robert Hass was right, in that all the new thinking about loss resembles the old thinking, what can be done to restore our lives and world? Remote Cities gathers the lost tribes, from antiquity to modernity to now, in a collection ritually anchored by the presence and body of the beloved, “mi amor”: her nightgown, white shoulders, and the memories, walks, and sensuous meals they share. Reminding us that every person, poem, era, and artwork is a1so looking back at the perceiver, Franklin has done the heretofore impossible: write an epic love poem that, in its refusal of death and dying, casts a new narrative song on the world’s “utter wreck,” making stars shine brighter than before. –-Virginia Konchan, author of Bell Canto

Noise of the World

The poems in Noise of the World tell real stories, real because the poet doesn’t shy away from the limitations of being human.  There are love poems, moments of desire, of “Pressing my lips and teeth hard against / Your shoulder, dissolving beneath your / Fingers, tongue, the shiver in your / Abdomen,” but they are tempered by the knowledge that the person loved will never be fully known and, ultimately, even desire is something that can’t be understood.  His poems of history, like his love poems, find their reality in particular moments such as “The dark hands of the Zapatistas / Curled around white cups, eyes ignoring / The camera,” or “That cup of coffee and the soft, white bread / Depend on being born here, not there.  Then, / Not some other time.”  History encompasses as well the poet’s family, his life in Miami with his compañera, the Colombian poet Ximena Gómez, the classes he teaches in Florida prisons, his travels to Europe, Colombia, and Mexico, the Covid-19 quarantine, the writers and artists who’ve shaped how he sees and responds, and the solitude he experiences: the “House that quiet, the dog outside poking / His nose into opossum smells or / The pleasure of rotting leaves.”  This book celebrates sensual life and the imagination while reminding us that even in moments of love or solitude, even when we don’t hear it, the noise of the world is still there.

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Save an extra 25% when you buy Franklin’s Noise of the World and Traveling for No Good Reason (Free US Shipping)!: $25.50

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NOISE OF THE WORLD:

Brian Fanelli of Pedestal Magazine reviews Noise of the World: https://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/george-franklins-noise-of-the-world-reviewed-by-brian-fanelli/?fbclid=IwAR0f7TFN3J7_0KaBOF1kZTwkichiSgqqLqu8Bdm3f8FJ_h-jpl58vaWyklE

With his new and remarkable collection, George Franklin offers vivid images, portraits, snapshots, and narratives, conjuring the wonder of travel and romance, the bewilderments of aging and loss, the treasures and illusions of selfhood, and the complex legacies of family. These poems are meticulously crafted, Franklin addressing what it means to love, to be aware of inevitable death, and to seek wholeness in, as he writes, “the random pieces of our lives.” Impeccable work from a versatile poet at the height of his alchemical powers.

 – John Amen, Editor, Pedestal Magazine

In his new collection Noise of the World, George Franklin offers an intimate exploration of the emotional pressure points in our lives. In this day and age when the loudness of life can overwhelm, his careful observation of people and places, in memory and recollection, in imagining and re-imagining, focuses us on the importance of who we are and what we do in the unseen moments of our days. The subtle power of Franklin’s craft lies in the attention and intention, and at times devotion, of his words, which resonate long after reading. Threaded through this collection is a deep understanding of the connections between us and the tenuous nature of it all. Noise of the World chronicles a lifetime of tender observation, whether it is a connection with places traveled to or home during lock-down, or in moments in time with a lover, an aging self, or a dying father. These deftly crafted poems slow down time, allowing us to savour the moments that our lives are made of. 
 –Kusi Okamura, Editor, The Wild Word

Traveling for No Good Reason

Winner of the 2018 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Manuscript contest

These poems in Traveling for No Good Reason tell stories, and they invite the reader to enter into those stories. Whether the poet is drinking Cuban coffee in Miami, visiting Joseph Brodsky’s grave in Venice, teaching writing workshops in a Florida prison, learning to read Greek in New York City in the 1980s, or trying to make sense out of a love that is unexpected and undeserved, the stories are about the recompense we receive for our losses, the pleasures and ideas that allow us to start to live all over again. Sometimes that recompense is erotic, sometimes merely the fact of telling the story. The poems are conversational in style while at the same time seeking out what is often hard to talk about: the end of a marriage, a friend’s slow death, or what desire might actually mean. Regardless, it’s the conversation that’s always foremost. In looking to understand, these poems themselves want to be understood, to be transparent. They may engage historical or mythological figures or the woman whose life the poet shares, but their conversation is ultimately with the reader.

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Save 25% when you buy Franklin’s Noise of the World and Traveling for No Good Reason ($4.63 US Shipping per order)

CLICK to hear George read three poems from the collection!

REVIEWS OF TRAVELING FOR NO GOOD REASON:

by Richard Allen Taylor in Pedestal Magazine: https://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/george-franklins-traveling-for-no-good-reason-reviewed-by-richard-allen-taylor/

by Deborah Bacharach in Broadsided Press: https://broadsidedpress.org/broadsides-to-books-is-the-arrow-in-motion/

Reviews on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Traveling-No-Good-Reason-Sheila-Na-Gig/dp/1732940606