It was the hill outside of Otterville
that looked down on where Jesse James,

I’d been told, had robbed the train.

I was heading east, you were staying put.

It was as good a place as any to say goodbye.

My sister had told me… Read full post »

Spring is here, which means driving fun time, unless your vehicle is a garbage truck or there’s a guy in the back seat with a gun who demands that you take him to an Eagles reunion concert.  How do you keep your car in tip-top shape?  Ask the Car Guy!… Read full post »

I don’t know why I ever agreed to go on Poetry Bandstand–like a lotta poets I’m just not the outgoing type. My agent, Maury, has been pushing it forever. “If you want to make the big bucks,” Maury says, “the high three-figure annual incomes like Frost and Stevens a… Read full post »

Celine Dion has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree by a Canadian university.

Mes cher amis–

It is a great honor today to accept from thees fellow with thee funny hat the honorary doctorate degree.  For too long, how you say, “smart aleck” rock critics have made f… Read full post »

ONALASKA, Wisconsin.  The numbers, according to his closest advisors, are daunting: in order to wrest the Republican Party nomination away from current front-runner Mitt Romney, former Senator Rick Santorum must win 70% of the remaining delegates when he has captured only 24% in all the pri… Read full post »

VERSAILLES, Mo.  Lemoyne Green’s family has been in the grocery business in this town in south central Missouri, pronounced “ver-SALES”, going back four generations.  “I guess you could say food is in our blood,” Lemoyne says with a barely-detectible trace of i… Read full post »

There were three of them, and only two
finished the work. Ethereal all,
bluestockings I suppose you’d call them.

One I recall was taking counterpoint;
I noticed how she clutched her book
of exercises to her breast coming out of

class, her cheeks in high color. She took up with
a guy from New… Read full post »

NORMAL, Illinois.  Mary Louise van de Kamp and Letitia Ethridge would, at first glance, seem to have little in common.  The van de Kamps are soybean farmers in downstate Illinois while the Ethridges live in tony Evanston, north of Chicago, where both husband and wife were white-collar profe… Read full post »

Now matter how bad the morning after
that follows the night before,
when we laughed and drank and kicked up our heels,
and thought those who didn’t were bores;

despite the painful headaches
and the tongues that taste of mud,
the eyelids that won’t open
and the alcohol in the blood;

%IMA… Read full post »

WAYLAND, Mass. The first signs of spring are beginning to appear in the Northeast, and with them plans for the numerous walk-a-thons, 6 kilometer races and other charitable fund-raising events that crowd the region's roads with the coming of warm weather.

"We have old narrow highways, so som… Read full post »

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. Firemen worked frantically against the clock in a desperate attempt to save the lives of shoppers at the Barnes & Noble bookstore here after a shelf gave way when "Mudwoman," the most recent work by prolific author Joyce Carol Oates, was added to her already bulging collection… Read full post »

BOSTON.  On a Thursday evening at Symphony Hall, the last few strains of a delicate piece by Debussy performed by the Guarneri String Quartet have left the audience in a blissful state of calm, which is broken only after an extended period of silence by appreciative applause. &nbs… Read full post »

KNOB NOSTER, Mo. In spring, the schoolchildren of this small town west of Sedalia and east of Lone Jack can taste a difference in the milk they are served in school cafeterias. “It’s not stale anymore,” says Joe Don Mergen, a 6th grader at Jerry Lumpe Middle School as… Read full post »

          Charlotte Allen, The New Dating Game, The Weekly Standard

Me and my buddies Ug and Nutz w… Read full post »

The reviews are in for Everyday Noir, and they’re . . . fantastic!  Kirkus Indie says “There’s a chuckle or a laugh in every one of Chapman’s noir-tinged stories.”  You couldn’t pay for a review that good!

Actually, you could.  And I did.

I&r… Read full post »

South Korean scientists have produced cats that glow in the dark.

                                      … Read full post »