Roadside Press to Publish Cistern Latitudes

Roadside Press and I are working on my next full-length poetry collection titled Cistern Latitudes, with a publication date slated for late spring 2024. The sibling publishing wing of Roadside Press, called Gutter Snob Books, previously published my poetry chapbook Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line in 2022, and I couldn’t have been happier with how that one turned out, so I’m pretty excited. Roadside Press is just as dedicated to supporting their authors and putting out beautifully designed books, so I know this new book is in good hands.

Cistern Latitudes will contain 60 new poems, or as I called them, 60 small descents into moments and places that once witnessed tectonic shifts in destiny that are now as silent and still as subterranean pools of water, clear and dark and carrying the truth that life and the world may have lost its way, that tragedy may linger in the corners of our past, but there are still latitudes and geographies out there that harbor safe, calm, and magical futures if we look for them.

I’ll post more details when the book becomes available, but for the moment, here is a sample poem that will appear in the collection. Thank you for reading!


Tributaries is Now Available!

My latest collection of poetry, Tributaries, is now available from Maverick Duck Press! This collection is a series of poems about the Hudson River, from its humble beginnings in the Adirondacks all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems examine at the people and places dotting its winding path.

The poems were inspired by my friend Meg Marohn, who wrote me a poem on her typewriter at the Troy Farmers Market in 2017, after a conversation we had about all the places we lived along the river. After her tragic passing in 2022, I found the poem and wrote this chapbook based on its spirit and vision, and I dedicate this book to my friend. I think she would have liked it, and I hope you do too. The book was published by Maverick Duck Press in July, 2023 and is available now at their website. Thanks for taking a look, and if you’d like a signed copy, please reach out to me! Here’s a sample poem from the book called “Warrensburg,” and I hope you enjoy.

"Grunewald" in The Westchester Review

The new summer issue of The Westchester Review is now up, and it includes my poem “Grunewald,” a piece written from my week spent in Berlin in 2010, a journey magical enough that it still spawns new poems to this day. The issue of TWR has a ton of great writers within, and I’m honored to be included. Be sure to check out the whole issue, and you can find my own piece HERE. Thanks for reading!

"Affliction" Now at Live Nude Poems

I’m a little late sharing this but my poem “Affliction” is now posted over at Live Nude Poems. Despite the title, the poem is not read live or nude, but it is presented alongside a bunch of other great poets, including Kevin Ridgeway, Sam Moe, M.J. Arcangelini, Bill Garvey, and many others. The poem is part of a chapbook I’m shopping around, one of four chapbooks I’ve recently finished, and I’ll post more when they find homes. In the meantime, enjoy!

Excerpts from Both Ways Home

Both Ways Home is now available, and below you’ll find two poems from the Albany, NY section and then two poems from the San Antonio, TX section, and finally a short story from the Albany section called “Bring Your Son.” If you’d like to see even more samples, I’ve posted some at my Instagram profile, @that_poet_james_duncan. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!

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Now Available: Both Ways Home

My next book, Both Ways Home, is now available by messaging me at jamesnyduncan@gmail.com or by visiting Amazon or my online shop. In these 80 poems and 12 short stories, I explore my two hometowns of Albany, NY and San Antonio, TX, the allure of each as strong as magnetic poles over the many years I’ve crossed the vast American landscape to one or the other in search of work, love, friends, and futures unwritten. Marquee lights, Halloween nights, and familiar neighborhood cafes populate the poems, while the stories range from biographical to quiet studies of those struggling to make ends meet and discover their own paths forward in each city. In “Bring Your Son,” a mother contemplates how her divorce might affect her little boy’s future; in “Little Victory Diner,” a runaway works off his meal by washing dishes and bonds with a lonely waitress; a search for a mother’s grave in the Texas heat goes awry in “Empty Spaces”; and in “Dominion,” a young girl lost in the outskirts of a wealthy rural community learns who to trust and who to leave behind as the lights of San Antonio guide her to a future where she is in control of her own destiny. I hope you’ll enjoy this book, one of my most personal to date.

“This vibrant, heartfelt collection beautifully connects two hometowns, and James H Duncan masterfully brings to life the people and places dear to him. As readers, we are lucky to be going along for the ride and to make it home safely, caked in the stardust of daydream believers driving over the horizon, in love with everything that surrounds us.” - Kevin Ridgeway, author of Invasion of the Shadow People

Two Reviews of Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line

Releasing Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line this summer through Gutter Snob Books was an amazing experience, and I’m profoundly proud of the book, the editorial care the publisher displayed to do the book justice, and the reviews and feedback that came in. I had such a busy summer that I wasn’t able to sit down and share some of the reviews in one place but here are two quick ones!

Dennis Williamson took an incredibly deep dive into the collection, saying, “Proper Etiquette In The Slaughterhouse Line by James Duncan is a book for anyone who is at the mercy of ‘just making a living.’ Over the course of seventeen equally unsettling poems, Mr. Duncan adroitly lays bare that it is the myth of American success that we have to thank for such a condition. Indeed, our myths are no less potent than the mythology in which the Romans put so much stock, to the point that they became the backdrop of the horrors in their arenas. Moreover, Duncan traces a lineage from the Colosseum to the modern day American office.” As well as, “Mr. Duncan has become so attuned to the themes he’s treating that he can be right there beside the reader. He’s arrived, and stands on the platform where we wait to meet him. Poet as prophet. He bids us to board the train – next stop, Apocalypse.” To read the whole review, CLICK HERE!

Michael Grover, an editor and poet also took a few moments to review the book, saying, “What this book does is amplifies and brings to the surface the stress of modern employment. The constant threats, and deadlines that we are all under. How we just take it until we can’t anymore. We have no choice. The end of this kind of tailspins into what I would call prophesy. James is just reporting the facts as he sees them. In this World that continues to become more corporate by the day, it won’t take long.” Read the whole thing HERE!

Thanks so much for all your support and feedback, and signed copies are still available at www.jameshduncan.bigcartel.com and Gutter Snob Books!

Live at the Linda, December 2021

I had the pleasure and honor to join a bunch of fantastic poets at The Linda in Albany, NY last December to celebrate the end of another year of local poetry, and the recorded the session for WAMC, the area’s NPR affiliate, which you can listen to here. Albany Poets and the Hudson Valley Writers Guild have a great relationship with The Linda and they’re slowly releasing each poet’s performance as we near the end of 2022. Mine was posted in September. I haven’t listened yet (like most folks, the sound of my own voice makes me cringe a bit) but it was a fantastic night and I’m really proud of the poems I read, including a few that will appear in an upcoming book of mine (called Both Ways Home) that should drop before the holidays. Enjoy!

Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line

Now available from Gutter Snob Books! Order from the publisher or order from my Big Cartel shop!

“The work we do, all of us, this whole universe of spreadsheets and emails and wrenches and lesson plans and bus routes, this work we do is just to keep us from thinking of Love.”

When our value is judged by our productivity, when we’re seen more as cogs in a machine than human beings, when the warnings of a world on fire are ignored by CEOs and politicians cashing in at every turn—doom is inevitable. These poems explore the grinding, churning world of the working class waiting in line for their turn in the slaughterhouse, and when the world begins to fall apart after years of dour warnings, we’re still expected to come in and punch the time-clock as the bombs fall, the water dries up, the toxins spread, and the end comes for each of us. But the boss is throwing a pizza party at 4 p.m., so don’t punch out too soon!

“James Duncan shows his work. He is thorough and true. There is a cadence to these poems that goes beyond the poems themselves. The entire book moves like a train. Duncan uses language as a vehicle in which the reader truly travels. There are depots and little worlds along the journey. There are tiny poems inside each poem itself. His poems are crafted like stories told between friends, stories too painful to tell, stories written in real time and reflection, stories that are windows and stories that are lessons learned through the grinding grief and unpredictable joy that define nearly every life ever lived. Duncan reminds us that our lives are large, real and precious, but so much is lost in the paperwork and the phone call and the everyday business of our lives. This book is a catalog of the glory and the desperation of being alive in a world that challenges decency. These poems fight to deny that challenge, to disregard it even as we live it and see it out the windows of our brains, our bargains with ourselves and as we bump along the tracks of our lives. Duncan reminds us that "if you’re going to die, die with decency.” — Dena Rash Guzman, author of Joseph and Life Cycle

“James Duncan's new collection of poems punch me square in the teeth. Most of us work a job we hate just so we can survive in a world that would rather see us exhausted than in love, that would rather see us depressed than creative, that would have us put our heads down and live among the meaningless than to look up and discover awful truths. These are poems in the vein of Carver, Bukowski, and James Wright. Workers, fighters, and people with little hope, trapped in a system they cannot beat, but sometimes can beat late at night during the exhausted hours. These poems take the everyday mundane existence we are force fed eight hours a day and show us there is hope, but only if we are willing to open the doors of the slaughterhouse.” — Frank Reardon, author of Loud Love on the Sevens and Elevens, Blood Music and others

“With Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, James H. Duncan does a superb job of showing us our humanity exactly as we are living it, the pain, the struggle, the sickness and all the manifestations of any joys we can find to keep ourselves grounded. Duncan’s poems are both heartbreaking and equal parts exuberant within the expression of the simplest speck of human minutiae. This book of poetry exposes our very soul.” — John Grochalski, author of Eating a Cheeseburger During the End Times and P-Town Forever

So I've Had a Little Luck With Some Poems...

Over the last few months I’ve had more than a little good luck when it came to placing new poems into some great journals, some of which are old favorites and others are brand spankin’ new, literally the first issue ever in one case. There are a bunch more poetry publications coming soon, but I’ve added the more recent releases below and included links when applicable. The editors of these journals have my deepest thanks. It’s always an honor when someone else grabs your work out of a bustling inbox and says, “This is the one!” Or two, for that matter! And of course, my thanks to you for reading!

“A Splinter” now appears in Trampoline

Picturesque” now appears in Viva Brevis

“Saint Michael” now appears in Book of Matches

“Both Ways Home” now appears in San Pedro River Review

“Ode to Madison Avenue at 6:15 PM" and "Topo-Chico” now appear in Day Job Journal

And the party never ends” and “Riverwalk” now appear in The Rye Whiskey Review

“Wednesday Night South Main Avenue” and “May the Moon Shine On” now appear in Roadside Raven Review

New Poetry Collection Coming Soon from Gutter Snob Books

Later this year, probably late summer or early autumn, Gutter Snob Books is planning to release my next poetry collection, Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line. It’s a chapbook focusing on work life and the office “grind” culture in modern America and how destructive it is, and as the poems go on the story evolves into a tale of our impending apocalyptic end as a human society and how even down to the very last minutes on the punch clock, the corporate machine churns on and spits us out like used cogs, replaced by bones and nuclear winter. So yeah, cheery uplifting stuff! But I’m thrilled editor Michele McDannold selected the collection for the Gutter Snob Books 2022 lineup, and I’ll post more details and the cover when it all comes together. Thanks very much, and stay tuned for even more publication news soon!

New Poem in Black Poppy Review

My poem “Creatures Who Survived” now appears at the delightfully grim Black Poppy Review, which describes itself as a journal focusing on “dilapidated, mossy grounds…hidden paths and nooks which lead to words that linger and haunt--poems of abandonment, flora & fauna, folklore, ghosts, memories, nature, night, solitude, weathering, wonder, and the otherwise forgotten.” My piece certainly fits into that mold. It’s one of the post-apocalyptic poems I wrote pre-pandemic that I’m working into a future chapbook of similar pieces, so stay tuned for that. Thanks to Sandy Benitez for accepting this piece and for publishing such a cool review!

Five Poems for Halloween

The trees are blooming orange and yellow and the wind rattles the leaves down the street, so that means Halloween is almost here again! To celebrate, I dug into my archives to pull up five of my more Halloween-centric pieces for you. The first two appeared in the wonderful but now deceased Lonesome October Lit, an online journal that focused on eerie and spooky poems and stories. (All pieces are archived online!) The last three pieces are from my book We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, which is available online or through me (if you want a signed copy). The book contains many more poems and pieces like those below. I hope you enjoy these pieces and that they get you into the Halloween spirit!

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Strange Gods of the Prairie Anthology

The Gasconade Review puts out an annual poetry anthology (among many other individual collections) and this year they titled their anthology after one of the three poems of mine they selected for inclusion, “Strange Gods of the Prairie.” The other two poems they accepted are “A Dying Orchid on Fire” and “Two Chairs on the Front Patio,” and I’m thrilled to be included alongside the likes of John Dorsey, Linnet Phoenix, William Taylor Jr, Shawn Pavey, Zara Lisbon, Tim Heerdink, Holly Day, Ace Bogges, and many others. The cover art is pretty cool and you can find copies online for $15. It’s a big one so it’s worth your money. My thanks to the editors and congrats to all who made it into the anthology!

"Umbra" Now Appears in Pine Hills Review

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My poem “Umbra” now appears in the always fantastic Pine Hills Review, the literary magazine of The College of Saint Rose, a small liberal arts college in my hometown of Albany, NY, and located just a few blocks away from where I’m typing this now. They’ve published a poem of mine before (“How to Watch John Ashbury Read Poetry”) and it’s always an honor. This new poem is from a series I wrote based on some of my favorite words and the connotations that come to mind with each, and they also have an audio version of the poem that I recorded for their site. I hope you enjoy!

Poetry Audiobooks Now Available at Bandcamp

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Three of my poetry collections are now available in audiobook form at Bandcamp, including We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, Feral Kingdom, and my half of the split-collection Vacancy (the great Kevin Ridgeway wrote the other half). The files are available to stream for free at the site or on the Bandcamp app, and they’re only a few dollars each if you wish to download them. In the coming months I’ll be working to create and post more poetry audiobooks, then turn to my short story collections, and eventually longer fiction if people are interested in that too. Thanks for all of your support, and as always, signed copies of the books are always available. Just drop me a line!

New Poem in The Mantle, Issue 14

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My poem “Fugue” now appears in The Mantle, Issue 14, alongside the works of Emily Scudder, Elise Houcek, Blue Nguyen, and other writers who are definitely worth checking out. It’s a small lineup but editor James Croal Jackson picked a great slate of folks, and I feel very fortune to appear alongside them. The poem itself is about the cyclical nature of life and fate, and what is lost will be found again, only to fade back into the night. I hope you enjoy!

Two Poems in New Dreamscape Anthology

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Open Skies Quarterly is a print and digital journal that recently teamed up with Shrouded Eye Press to create a series of anthologies, and their most recent is called Dreamscape, in which all poetry touches on the themes of dreams, nightmares, daydreams, etc. The collection includes two of my poems, “The Ghosts of Flat Tires and Dead Flowers” and “The Cold Northern Edge of Your Rope.” The latter is somewhat apocalyptic and political while also being one of the more calming and peaceful poems I’ve written in a while. The former is about daydreaming in my living room and appears in my latest book, Beyond the Wounded Horizon, a split collection with J Lester Allen. You can download the Dreamscapes Anthology for free, or purchase a copy in print form. Thanks for reading!

"Derelict" in Redshift 4 Anthology

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My poem “Derelict” now appears in the fourth edition of the Redshift anthology, published by Arroyo Seco Press. The publisher, Thomas R. Thomas, teamed up with guest editor and prolific L.A. poet Kevin Ridgeway to sift through all the submissions to put together the final lineup, which features an absolute landslide of fantastic poets, including a bunch I previously published in Hobo Camp Review. It was great to see so many familiar names, such as Rob Plath, John Dorsey, Wendy Rainey, Jennifer Lemming, Gabriel Ricard, Jason Ryberg, Jeanette Powers, Alexis Rhone Fancher, John Grochalski, William Taylor, Jr., and many many others. I had a great time reading through and seeing the works of so many writer aquaintences I admire, and I highly entourage you to give this collective a shot. The anthology is now available online. Thanks!

Coming Soon: Beyond the Wounded Horizon

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Our impending split-book of poetry Beyond the Wounded Horizon, co-authored by myself and J Lester Allen, is important to me on so many levels. Not only does this collection contain some of my absolute favorites of our work, but I have wanted to publish Lester (as many of us knew him way back when) for years, ever since he worked so hard on my 2009 release Maybe A Bird Will Sing through his then publishing house Bird War Press. He added so many wonderful details to the now out-of-print book: special bands to hold together the bundles of saddle-stitched copies, bookmarks, stylized watermark art on the cover and back. I was so impressed and so grateful, and it feels like I fulfilled a bucket list item by attempting to return the favor in some small way with Beyond the Wounded Horizon, which should drop in early summer.

We met back in those heady days of MySpace when it felt like artists and poets could connect with so much more openness and ease, mostly because all our pages came with blogs, readily stocked with new work we could browse as we got to know each other. I met so many writers in that period that I still communicate with daily and weekly, but the camaraderie and connection I made with Joe (as many of us know him by these days) felt different. Even though we didn’t speak as often as I did with other writer friends, getting to catch up over a quick chat, a phone call, a beer at his place or on the road, it felt like talking to an old friend from another life, someone I didn’t need to impress or entertain, and each conversation was a comfort.

Some of the poems in this book speak to those moments of ease and fun (the cover photo is even from our first hangout at Bleecker Street Bar in NYC), and many more speak to that whole era of life when he and I were on the move, crossing the country on separate journeys, zig-zagging bars and highways all through California, Texas, NYC, the Midwest, and the small towns of Pennsylvania and western New York state. Some of the poems come from that chapbook of mine Joe published, and some come from a chap he released back in 2010 as well. But many poems are new, many are reflective, and there are poems that show where our separate journeys have taken us, to somewhat steadier lives where work and love and peace are still punctured by strangeness, by nights of music and nostalgia, and by an eagerness for more, more of the lives we left behind along those dark highways, but also more of the quiet goodness we’ve found along the way.

And we’re not finished, not in any sense, but I admit that this book is one I would be proud to leave as a capstone, a collection that combines the past and the present in such a meaningful way. But I’m sure it’s not the end. The itch to write, to hit the road, and to track down friends for another neon race through the bars and diners of some distant city will call once again, someday, but for now I’m very proud to offer you all this book of new and selected poetry, one we wrote in honor of those old days of burgeoning friendships and madness, and one that tips the hat to the many more nights of wonder to come. Thanks for all of your support over the years, and we hope you enjoy this book.