Category Archives: Humor

Cupping Our Palms, Winner of Meadowlark Press’s 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize!!!

https://www.meadowlark-books.com/2022/04/congratulations-jonathan-greenhause.html

A million thanks to publisher Tracy Million Simmons, publicist Linzi Garcia, and judge Bart Edelman, who has chosen my manuscript Cupping Our Palms as the winner of Meadowlark Press’s 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize!!! Thank you as well to all the finalists and semifinalists and all the poets and readers out there, without whom we’d all just be writing and reading by ourselves.

Here’s the link to the wonderful Birdy Poetry Prize announcement and reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eINqPahAg4

And here’s a breakdown of the event so you can skip right to:

2:21 – 8:55: A reading by Ruth Maus (“Valentine”)

9:30 – 17:47: A reading by Brian Daldorph (“Kansas Poems”) and 17:47 – 22:51: Brian’s reading of poems by the late Antonio Sanchez-Day (“Taking on Life”)

24:09 – 40:23: A reading by Alison Hicks (“Knowing Is a Branching Trail”)

40:40 – 44:30: Announcement of the finalists and semifinalists

45:10 – 46:15: Tracy’s introduction of Bart Edelman (“Whistling to Trick the Wind”)

46:15 – 48:00: Bart’s introduction to “Cupping Our Palms” and subsequent commentary (48:00 to 50:00)

51:55 – 53:48: A few words (or rather, loss of words) from me, followed by 7 of my poems:

53:48:  Thanks a lot, Shakespeare, for the Starling

55:30:  Beacons of Light

56:33: Damn Our Shortsightedness

57:53: The fire-escape, no longer weighed down

59:30: To Sugarcoat the Truth

1:01:24: A poem written in my past life as a 15th century Georgian monk

1:02:33: Cupping Our Palms

Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH, MEADOWLARK PRESS!!!!

“You Once Felt Gigantic”, New Ohio Review, Fall 2019, recent audio recording

You Once Felt Gigantic

“Consoling The Whims Of The Tiniest, Whiniest Dictators”, highly-commended for the 2021 Welsh Poetry Competition

My tiny whiny dictating children and I would like to thank Kathy Miles for selecting this poem for 10th place — obviously in honor of the greatest soccer player in the world, Lionel Messi — in the Welsh Poetry Competition. Congrats to the winner Estelle Price for her wonderful
ekphrastic poem “iii”.

http://www.welshpoetry.co.uk/winners-2021/

“Babu Bangladesh!” by Numair Atif Choudhury

You should order this novel RIGHT NOW. It is BRILLIANT.

My “Positively Poetry Reading Series” performance for the Hoboken Public Library’s National Library Week!

Yes, here are those promised cows, daffodils, and the absence of Holocaust poems:

You can almost smell that I-78 highway extension through the thin gloss of YouTube.

And here’s a friendly guide to jump straight to your favorite poems:

00:00 Introduction

01:02 The origin of life

02:28 A small dot appears.  A genesis.  A thing out of nothing

05:45 Thanks a lot, Shakespeare, for the Starling

07.46 Departing from Sengen Jinja

10:00 Naming Things

11:46 Why My Kid Sobs at the Ice Cream Parlor

14:18 Not a Holocaust Poem

15:53 Cows & Daffodils

17:58 Lakawa a Stat on

20:05 A Single Swallow Doesn’t Signal Spring

20:39 Animal House

22:09 A poem written in my past life as a 15th century Georgian monk

23:32 From Out of the Darkness

26:47 Beacons of Light

28:02 Post 11

29:17 Epilogue

Check out the “Positively Poetry Reading Series” through the Hoboken Public Library!

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Hoboken Public Library is hosting the “Positively Poetry Reading Series” through its Facebook page. Hoboken’s reference librarian, Ethan Galvin, reached out to me and 8 other New Jerseyans who live and breathe poetry (and several cancer-causing chemicals), and he will be uploading our videos every Tuesday and Thursday of this month.

If you love backdrops featuring the I-78 extension, you’ll love my reading, which will be viewable anytime after 7pm on Tuesday April 20th. It’s got cows, daffodils, and definitely no Holocaust poems. Welcome to Spring!

https://www.facebook.com/events/hoboken-public-library/positively-poetry-reading-series-in-honor-of-national-poetry-month/516364116396180/

“Exit the Town Drunk”, finalist for The New Guard’s Knightville Poetry Contest

Many thanks to Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven for selecting my poem “Exit the Town Drunk” as a finalist in The New Guard Knightville Poetry Contest 🙂 And special congratulations to the winner, Amy Tibbetts, for her poem “Smooth Rock Tripe”. You can read Amy’s poem and mine in the print edition of Volume X , which will be published early next year; here’s a link to the contest announcements page and information on how to pre-order Volume X:

https://www.newguardreview.com/tng-contests

“Dear Mom”, from Paterson Literary Review’s Zoom reading on March 6th, 2021

Thank you, Ms. Mazziotti Gillan and Ms. Desai, for organizing such a wonderful reading today for Issue #48! The following is a link to my reading of “Dear Mom”, which can be heard from 1:06:10 to 1:08:00, right after “Emptyness”, by the Ghanaian poet Geosi Gyasi, and right before “Second Hand Clothes”, by fellow New Jersey poet, Fred Iucci.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48R-GDNQuU