Frank Mundo’s New Poetry Book Named Eric Hoffer Award Finalist for Poetry

I’m happy to report that my new poetry chapbook, Eleven Sundry Flowers, illustrated by Keith Draws, is the 2022 Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Awards Silver Award Winner and a 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

I wrote these love poems (sonnets) 19 years ago for my wife when we were just dating. Back then, the poems were selected by UCLA for its WORDs poetry exhibit and helped me win the school’s Poet Laureate Award Nomination.

The reviews have been very positive from Goodreads readers and from the critics. Here’s a few excerpts from recent reviews:

“Eleven Sundry Flowers by Frank Mundo is a profound piece of work that expresses intensely personal thoughts of love and yet is universal. It’s such a fresh and positive presentation of love that it leaves me blown away! I highly recommend this extraordinary book.” –Bruce Arrington for Readers’ Favorite

“Eleven Sundry Flowers by Frank Mundo is a collection of eleven beautiful love poems to his longtime best friend, and now wife, Nancy. The poems are packed with eloquent and expressive metaphors, descriptive imagery, and powerful verses. Poetry lovers, especially those who like nature and love poems, will enjoy this work.” — Theresa Kadair for San Francisco Book Review

“From poems about true love…to works that make you feel enlightened and encouraged by life in general, [Frank Mundo] hit upon a spectrum of words and phrases that you’ll find sticking in your memory and making you feel strength, warmth, and yes, beauty. This striking combination, and the drawings adding to the experience ten-fold, I have to say that all readers out there who wish to follow this author’s “courtship” of his wife and delve into all this beauty, should get this one for their shelves as soon as possible!” – Amy Lignor for Reader Views

With so much hate and sadness in the world today, try some love poems today. If you like art, Eleven Sundry Flowers (Antrim House Books 2021) is beautifully illustrated by Keith Draws on every single page.

Save 50% off Eleven Sundry Flowers by Frank Mundo with this link –>

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More Books by Frank Mundo

Poetry and Parenthood: An Inspired Journey

I was on the Carving a New Path podcast with Andrea Hylen of Heal My Voice. This was Episode 7: Poetry and Parenthood. We talked about the journey my wife and I took from trying to conceive a child to what led us to foster and then adopt two kids — and the poetry this journey inspired and which were later published in my book, “Touched by an Anglo” (Kattywompus Press).

Check it out. The podcast is now available on YouTube here —> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dwXK5AX7Zs

New Poem Published Today at The Lowestoft Chronicle

Great news! My poem “Not One Before Another” (written for my brother) was published today in The new issue of the Lowestoft Chronicle.

Thanks to Nicholas Litchfield for choosing my poem for issue 39, which includes work from Tom Bont, Suzanne Brøgger (translated by Michael Goldman), Christie B. Cochrell, Rob Dinsmoor, Tim Frank, Rick Joy, Robert Garner McBrearty, R. F. Mechelke, James B. Nicola, Ian C. Smith, and Steven Ray Smith.

Please check it out if you have a minute!

Issue 39 —> http://lowestoftchronicle.com/

My poem —>
http://lowestoftchronicle.com/issues/…

Book Review: Just Kids by Patti Smith

Bottom line: the writing is lovely and the story is fine. Just Kids is worthy of the attention and the accolades it’s generating. I get it. I get why everyone is praising this book…

However, and it’s a big however, this book was not for me. I’m just not the right audience for it — why?

The author’s utter adoration/idolization of the artist (an almost religious worship) and the supreme importance given to the aesthetic life are, in my opinion, old-fashion relics, romantic woohoo, from my parent’s generation. This odd mystical certainty that the one true path to the one “true” art requires a life of sacrifice, an unrelenting dedicated commitment (enhanced by drugs and experimentation) to struggle and poverty is frustrating to me — and cruel, in a way, to continue to advance to the current generation. It’s like those faith-healing charlatans who, when they can’t heal your particular illness, blame the failure of their powers on your lack of faith.

Plus, it’s a watered-down brand of poverty that no longer exists, a poverty light, of that specific era — sure, with lice and brownish drinking water — but no real violence, no daily terror, no injustice. A poverty in which the author’s part-time bookstore job can finance an apartment in New York, buy art supplies, rare books and fashionable clothes, food, and apparently fund the opportunity to travel to and bum around Paris.

It’s a poverty in which everyone you meet in the neighborhood (not predators or thugs) is a genius and fellow artist-deity in the making: your neighbor is the next Rimbaud, that guy on the corner who looks like Oscar Wilde paints like Jackson Pollock. The girl passed out in her own vomit is the next-next Andy Worhol.

There was one scene in the book where Smith found like 50 cents (or something ridiculous like that) in the grass at the park and she used it put a deposit down on an apartment, bought groceries for a week and some art supplies to boot. It was fascinating! Imagine this life today. I can’t! I couldn’t. I just could not!

This kind of impossible life, this kind of violent-free poverty, this self-imposed sacrifice to art, this mystical devotion to the artist, is, I’m sorry, too too difficult for me to appreciate — despite the author’s having lived through and thrived in it, and despite this excellent and influential artist having written quite beautifully about it, too.

So, while this memoir was not for me, this art she created could definitely be worth your time.

If you’re a fan of Patti Smith or Robert Mapplethorpe, by all means, read this book. If you believe in art and the artist as special or even sacred, this will be a great read. The writing is interesting and poetic, and even when the author is cold and matter-of-fact (which is quite often), I found the writing to be quite lovely.

I guess you could say, yes, while I did swirl the Kool-Aid around in my mouth and swish it about in between my teeth, I just couldn’t swallow it. I wanted to — I tried! I really wanted to suspend my serious disbelief and just enjoy the story. But, like I said, I just couldn’t do it. I’m clearly not the audience for this book. And that’s ok.

New Poem Published Today at Beautiful Losers Magazine

I’m super excited to report that my poem, “Excuse Me,” was published today at Beautiful Losers Magazine. A friend of mine said my poems were getting a little intense lately, and that it was time to bring back the humor. So, check out my humorous take on making excuses.

Excuse Me .

I’m so grateful to Beautiful Losers Magazine and Richard Gibney for publishing the piece. This is my second poem placed there. The first was “The Upsell Artist,” another funny poem that addresses how often men think about sex.

I haven’t posted a lot since my first chapbook Touched by an Anglo was published, but I’ve been working on a lot of new poems, so be on the lookout for more posts from me this year!

Keep reading and keep writing.

My other books.

New Poetry Chapbook by Frank Mundo Released Today by Kattywompus Press

I’m happy to announce that my new poetry chapbook, “Touched by an Anglo,” was officially released today by Kattywompus Press. 

The chapbook is a collection of 26 poems written and published over the last three years. 

Grab your copy today at kattywompuspress.com.

 
“Frank Mundo, author of the widely published essay, “How I Became a Mexican,” wields a knife you’ve seen, straight out of the kitchen drawer but somehow sharper than you remember, to carve the everyday tragedy and comedy of life right down to the bone. Mundo spares neither our sense of horror nor our funny bone, with poems that speak from the page like your childhood best friend peering over your shoulder.”

My other books, The Brubury Tales, Gary, the Four-Eyed Fairy and Other Stories, and Different are available in paperback or for Kindle at Amazon.com

Thank you for your support!!!! 

New Frank Mundo Poem “re: Your Mother” Published Today

My new poem, “re: Your mother“, was published today for aaduna magazine’s National Poetry Month initiative: Four for the 4th.

It’s the second poem posted on the page (Be careful of the first poem. It has some adult language).

Check it out if you have a minute.

The poem is part of my e-pistle series that includes: “re: Your brother“, and more to come.

aaduna is a timeless exploration into words and images – is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010. Visit http://www.aaduna.org where they put measurable actions to words.

New Frank Mundo Poem Published Today at Beautiful Losers Magazine

I have a new poem called “The Upsell Artist” published today at Beautiful Losers Magazine, a great little lit mag I really like.

The subject matter is a bit racier than my usual stuff, so be warned.

If you want to check it out, please visit Beautiful Losers Magazine.

Here’s the URL if the link doesn’t work –> https://medium.com/beautiful-losers/the-upsell-artist-by-frank-mundo-67b749cbfa73#.xalsj7o31

Be sure to “like” it and share it if you can, so they invite me back in the future.

Thank you for your support. It means a lot to me.

Oh, I have another new poem coming in April — a National Poetry Month feature for aaduna magazine.

Stayed tuned for another post with more info as we approach April.

POETRY VIDEO: Frank Mundo Reading a Sestina at Occidental College

I was invited to read poetry at Occidental College a few months back. I’m not sure if this link will work, but here is a video of me reading a sestina I wrote for my brother called, “Waste of Shame”

If you want to read the poem, it was published in Angel City Review Issue 3.

According to poets.org, the sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.

New Frank Mundo Poem Published in New Issue of Poeticdiversity

Honored that my new poem, “The Average Unknown” is published in the new issue of poeticdiversity.

Check it out, along with all of the great contributors in the latest issue.

http://www.poeticdiversity.org/main/poems-cp.php?recordID=2310&date=2016-11-01

Thanks to editor and writer Marie C Lecrivain for selecting my work. She does a lot of great work for writers and readers in Los Angeles and beyond.

I hope you enjoy it.