[Tim Murphy]

Recent Activity

The Psalms: Alabama Literary Review will publish Julie Stoner’s excellent essay containing Psalms 2-6. Maryann Corbett has written an incandescent essay on 22, including her rueful yet grateful recollections of arriving at The Deep End and encountering the Editor from Hell. Cathy Chandler's scholarly look at 11 is coming out in Dappled Things. The Flea is publishing Psalms 30 and 32. New Walk just published 103. Commonweal just published 68. My publisher, Lewis and Clark’s Dakota Institute Press, has committed to the book. The file, along with Msgr. Laliberte’s nihil obstat essay, has been forwarded to the United States Catholic Council of Bishop’s Committee on Sacred Scripture for imprimatur.

My stuff: Dappled Things, a new journal aimed at young Catholics, took three of my poems, Triduum, Cathedral on the Prairie, and Refusing the Call. Commonweal took Septuagint, dedicated to OUR Seree Zohar. Gray’s took Lessons in Humility, a five part hunting sequence. 14X14 took Thaw. New Walk took Climbing Days and Cast a Cold Eye. The Flea took To Julien, Tessie Buckley Murphy, and Partial Indulgence. John Mella took a couplet for Light. First Things just published Father Tom and Mato Paha. I just read proof for the five sonnets of Alan’s Ashes for Hudson Review. Chronicles recently published two poems and took 12 epigrams.

Performances: I am the new pro bono rock star English teacher at Bishop Shanley High in Fargo, where I taught six days this semester: Scots on Burns Day, Yeats et alia on St. Patrick’s Day, Basics of Iambic Pentameter for all the Shakespeare students, Alan’s Psalms (two days) for all the freshman religion students, and classical meters for the fourth year Latin students. The kids are great, and I am having a blast! I also made two lengthy presentations to Fargo’s GK Chesterton Society, Alan’s Psalms, and Devotional Poetry from Beowulf to Wilbur.

Book update: The double volume, Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder is slightly delayed (does this sound familiar?), but should be out in June. Hunter’s Log is on schedule for September. The Dakota Institute and I have agreed on another double volume for 2013.

Sorry if any of this is redundant with earlier postings. Hard to keep track of all this.

[Maryann Corbett]

Hard for us to keep track of it, too (she said, smiling.)

I'm pleased to know that a publisher has committed to the psalms; I wasn't sure that had happened yet. Good news.

[David Rosenthal]

Wow Tim, that's a lot of stuff! You've got more poems coming out than I have lines on the paper for the past six months. But maybe that's an easy bar to clear. Still, an impressive list. Congrats.

David R.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

My favourite part of this impressive list is the teaching! Great for you, and lucky kids! I'm so glad you're doing that, Tim!

Cally

[Tim Murphy]

Lucky Tim, Cally. Though when I do get up and recite without text for forty minutes, the kids quit whining about having to memorize one sonnet. Truth is, with Alan gone, I've got a big hole in my heart to fill. I've never taught before, except here or as a visiting lecturer, and it's just great to have 394 kids at my command. Thanks, Maryann and David. I've written and placed about 150 poems in the last 18 months, and I well remember the years when ten poems was a bumper harvest.

[Roger Slater]

Wow! I'd admire your energy just for submitting 150 poems in that time span, let alone writing them and getting them accepted in all those fancy places. Well done and bravo, Tim.

[Adam Elgar]

Yes that output is as impressive as the acceptances - and the teaching!
Congratulations, Tim!

[Julie Steiner]

...and I well remember the years when ten poems was a bumper harvest.

Heh! I'm still in those years. You give me hope. Congratulations!

[Tim Murphy]

To give you an idea of what the kids are like, after I taught Yeats, explaining that I'd memorized 10,000 lines of him as a kid and explaining his paralyzing effect on so many of his successors, this was the exchange with my 15 year olds.

Boy 1: Mr. Murphy, how did you overcome the influence of Yeats in your twenties.

Teacher: I wrote some very funny parodies of him when I was about 25 and got over him.

Boy 2: Mr. Murphy, I've googled you and I want to know what kind of shotgun do you shoot.

Teacher: A Winchester Model 23 that has both .20 and .28 guage barrels.

Boy 2: Wow! Would you bring it to class and show us?

Teacher: Sorry, I'd go to jail.

Girl 1: Mr. Murphy, why don't you adore Yeats now as much as you did when you were our age?

Pretty grown up interchange for a bunch of high school freshman.

[Catherine Chandler]

Great news, Tim! Dappled Things has, of course, also published my essay on Alan's Psalm 11. I'm expecting my copy of the issue any day now!