Tarn on the Sampo.

At Lute & Drum, the cosmophanic internet potentia edited by Ken Taylor and Pete Moore, Nathaniel Tarn reflects on The Sampo, about which he says, among other things, "Basing himself on entry into one of the greatest of all human fables, O’Leary confirms that the North could hold its explosive but purely lyrical epics against anything that the South could produce and with perhaps the greatest and most solemn celebration of chivalry, albeit without ever departing from the commons, kin to the Arthurian legends, the Icelandic sagas, the medieval splendors of Middle High German."

Do you have your Sampo yet?

Reliquiae and the Sampo.

Pleased to report that I have new work in the fourth issue of Reliquiae, the very fine journal edited by Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton, and published by Corbel Stone Press. My poem, "Thirty-Third Amanita Ode: Parmenides/Clouds," is a meditation on Gerard Manley Hopkins's descriptions of clouds in light of his invented term of uplift, instress. For anyone who might have been keeping track, this poem concludes the series of Amanita odes that comprise Earth Is Best, my manuscript of ethno-mycological effervescence. Scroll down to find my "Mycopoetics," published last year in Hambone.

Also, a review of The Sampo in Publishers Weekly. Nice!

Spectral Sampo.

Performing The Sampo at Sector 2337 with Father Bob Hutmacher on the harp.

Sampo arriveth.

The Sampo is here. Official launch on April 27, 2016, at Sector 2337, where I will perform parts of the poem accompanied on the harp by Fr. Bob Hutmacher ofm. Come join us as we loosen the hallucinations.

In the meantime, Steven Manuel conducted an interview with me last month about The Sampo:

Stray Horn interview with Steven Manuel

It's a companion to the interview by Violet Callis that appeared last month in Fnewsmagazine.

5 Questions interview with Violet Callis