Harvest Harmonies 2026

For Harvest Harmonies, something that Choeofpleirn Press has created, two works of poetry or short fiction are featured each week during October. My wife and I decided to add our own contributions for the last week. The other selections are available at our website, https://www.choeofpleirnpress.com/harvest-harmonies

Despite using first-person pronouns, I adopted a persona in my poem. I don't live in my mother's house, and my child doesn't live two states away. Originally, the speaker was female, but I made the gender less obvious. I was going for a feeling instead of accurate details drawn from my life. I was mowing the yard when this poem entered my head. I wish that more of my poems could spring from working in the yard. 

Coats, by the way, is a town of about 68 people in southcentral Kanas. It's about twelve miles south of where my wife was born and raised. One of my students many years ago announced that he was from Coats. I had never heard of the place before then. My wife has promised to take me there the next time we visit her hometown.

Clicking on each picture will enlarge it.

Poems In The Marbled Sigh, Issue #6

Two of my more recent poems have recently been published in Issue #6 of the The Marbled Sigh. You can find my poems at the following link: https://themarbledsigh.com/2026/10/15/james-p-cooper-seeking-the-interstate-other/  

Any comments are welcomed.

My Third Ever Painting

For the 4th of July, instead of driving to a fireworks display, my wife and I decided to paint a fireworks scene from a previous year, using a photograph that I had taken at the time. I only started painting earlier in the summer when my wife had a painting party for her birthday. Four of us got together and painted, using a Bob Ross video as a guide. We later had another party in which we painted a double rainbow over a wheat field, using another photograph that I had taken. I ended up painting over my initial picture, the one that I had created for her birthday. 

My painting of the fireworks display appears below.

It is much easier, I discovered, to paint something abstract like a fireworks explosion than to try and paint a double rainbow over a wheat field. 

Chapbook Titles Published by Choeofpleirn Press

The winning poetry chapbook of our 2026 contest and two finalists have been published recently. This contest will be our last chapbook contest. Beginning in 2027, we will be offering a poetry contest for full-length collections of poetry. Our advertisement is easier to read if you click on it first. These chapbooks are available at Amazon and other booksellers.

"A River Divides Us" in Slant: A Journal of Poetry

One of my more recent poems appears in the current issue of Slant: A Journal of Poetry. Go to this link to read my poem, "A River Divides Us."

Richard Holinger's Manure Dreams

Choeofpleirn Press published its last nonfiction title recently. (We will start offering a short fiction contest later in 2026.) Richard Holinger's Manure Dreams is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other bookstores. 

Bards Against Hunger Kansas City

A poem of mine appears in the anthology Bards Against Hunger Kansas City on pages 12-13. It is too difficult to get a picture of the poem, so I am pasting in a copy.

James P. Cooper

Knowing When Not to Speak 

Despite my profession, I don’t discuss

subordinate clauses with the kids selling

cookies in front of the grocery store.

I don’t ask the pharmacist to give me 

three correlative conjunctions along with

my prescriptions. I don’t ask the person

in produce where the conjunctive adverbs 

are located. I don’t ask the person

needing my help to reach something 

from a top shelf to give me three signal verbs 

in exchange. I don’t ask the person saying 

“excuse me” in dairy to point me toward 

the coordinate conjunctions. I don’t ask 

the person ringing up my groceries to define 

and use an appositive in a sentence. 

Afterwards, at the post office, I don’t ask 

the clerk handing me my change to add 

three present participles to my purchase.

“We all have our specialties,” my doctor says,

when I ask her to check my lungs

for subordinate conjunctions. As we talk, 

I offer to write a prescription for comma 

splices and fused sentences, but she says 

she may call for an appointment when she needs 

to insert semicolons in between

main clauses that are related in some way.

Jazz Favorites for 2024

I never got the chance to include my jazz favorites for 2024 on this blog earlier. My selections appears below in no particular order. With the exception of the Jakob Bro, these albums can be found on Bandcamp.

Jasmine Myra's places much more attention on her saxophone in Rising, her second release. My students, most of whom are in their teens or early twenties, have responded positively to Jasmine Myra's music when I shared one of the cuts from this album.

 

Matthew Halsall's Bright Sparkling Light, recorded during the An Ever Changing View sessions, features three more compositions, approximately twenty-four minutes of music.

Jakob Bro's Taking Turns, a kind of sequel to December Song and Time, features another opportunity to hear Lee Konitz and some of the other musicians from those sessions. 

Sunna Gunnlaugs' Ástin, bjartsýnin og andskotans blaðrið í fólkin (roughly translated as "Love, Optimism, and Damn Babbling in People") features seven poems written by Jón úr Vör, the Icelandic poet, which Sunna Gunnlaugs has set to music. Although I don't know Icelandic, the music appeals to me and makes me wonder what the poems say if they were translated into English. It is hard to find many translations of Jón úr Vör, I've discovered. I don't know of many poets writing in English whose poems could be set to jazz.

Favorite Jazz Releases_2025

My favorite jazz releases during 2025 are included below but in no particular order. Although Soren Bebe's Gratitude had been made available in 2025, it won't officially be released until 2026.

These favorite jazz releases are Matt Carmichael's dancing with embers, Chip Wickham's The Eternal Now, Anouar Brahem's The Last Sky, and Fergus McCreadie's The Shieling. With the exception of the Anouar Brahem, these albums can be found on Bandcamp. 

Autumn 2025

It took until early November for us to see any autumn color, possibly because of the little rain that we had in August and September. Once the leaves starting turning, we had a storm that stripped many of the trees, so what color we had only lasted about ten days or so.

Wild Flowers and Chaos Gardening

Last summer, one of my students described how she sometimes practices chaos gardening, which means she simply throws seeds onto the ground and waits to see what happens. I did the same halfway through the summer by adding some wild flower seeds to two pots, and I have been pleasantly surprised at the results. Even though it is now November, one pot is still producing flowers. I brought in both pots during the two or three days the morning temperatures fell below freezing. Our temperatures have since rebounded. The flowers, however, are hard to photograph because they move so easily in the wind. 

Poem in I-70 Review

One of my poems appears in the recently released 2025 issue of I-70 Review. The release party was held last night, the night of September 26. My poem, "Nights of Less Darkness," is the title poem of my full-length collection that is currently seeking a publisher. Clicking on the image makes it much easier to read.

Wild Flowers_Summer 2025

Even though I didn't have much time to devote to gardening over the summer, apart from cutting out the weeds and watering somewhat regularly, I was still happy to see how well my native flowers did. I need to make a point of planting more echinacea seeds next year. I would also like to grow wild sunflowers as well. 

I loved stepping outside to see the black eyed Susans and to smell the phlox. I had transplanted the black-eyed Susans from another part of the yard a few years ago. When I am driving around and see wild flowers beside the road, I lament not having a shovel so that I could add the flowers I discovered to my yard.

Sunflowers_2025

I made my annual trip to a nearby sunflower field shortly after the labor day holiday. The blossoms opened a little later this year because the month of August was so dry.  We were having a lot of rain up until the end of July.

Link to Video of To Maggie

Because of my teaching, I am less involved in the day-to-day operations of the press that my wife and I run--Choeofpleirn Press. Always busy in promoting the press, my wife has created videos for each one of the chapbooks that we published, in the hope of attracting attention during the Sealey Challenge. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, we published Christine Andersen's chapbook To Maggie Wherever You've Gone, the winner of our annual chapbook contest, earlier this year. A video describing the chapbook and offering a sample poem can be found at the following link: https://youtube.com/shorts/aSUH0xJizKc?si=kRaIOIrKh9RQe3ik

Harvest Harmonies, Beginning in September

Beginning on September 1, Choeofpleirn Press will be accepting poems and stories for its Harvest Harmonies. Eight poems and/or stories will be accepted in October and featured on our webpage. Last year, we devoted Harvest Harmonies entirely to poetry; this year we will be accepting both poetry and stories. We are looking for poems of 12 lines or stories of 100 words. Each work submitted should be devoted to autumn, harvesting, or any other autumnal activity. Beginning in September, submit your work to choeofpleirnpress@gmail.com. For more details, refer to our website at this link: https://www.choeofpleirnpress.com/harvest-harmony

As an example, I wrote the following poem last year. My poem is slightly longer than 12 lines, however. We do make allowances. 

Clicking on the picture makes the poem easier to read.

AI Description of Chapbook

 

Although I am not an advocate of AI and regularly have to deal with essays written fully or partially by AI as a college professor, I have used the AI Mode in Google to describe my chapbook. The summary is fairly accurate, I thought. 

*******

James P. Cooper's "Listening for Low Tide"

"Listening for Low Tide" is a collection of twenty-five poems by James P. Cooper, published as a chapbook in 2022. It explores how sound influences our perception and experiences.

Key themes

The poems are set in various locations including Kansas, Oklahoma, Northern Ireland, Montana, England, and Adak, Alaska. The diverse settings are linked by the prevalence of sound, revealing how past experiences and places can commingle through our auditory perceptions. Cooper highlights both the natural sounds around us, like insects and birds, and the noise pollution prevalent in our modern world.

The poems also delve into themes of connection and belonging, with the speaker exploring the meaning derived from relationships with a significant other and a child. The collection begins with images of darkness, suggesting a time when sounds become more noticeable, and concludes with images of sunlight, representing an appreciation of life balanced by an awareness of mortality.

Critical reception

"Listening for Low Tide" received an Honorable Mention for poetry chapbook in the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award. Judges described the poems as "metaphysical yet modern," where the boundaries between dreaming and waking, as well as geographical and existential borders, become blurred.

Availability

The book is available through Amazon and as an eBook from Barnes & Noble and Everand.

*******

This summary does not alter my perception of AI, however.

Sealey Challenge Video for Listening for Low Tide

My wife created a video featuring my chapbook, Listening for Low Tide. The video can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho6YBOuMlJQ

Choeofpleirn Press Winning Chapbook for 2025

 

Christine Andersen's To Maggie Wherever You've Gone was the winner of the Choeofpleirn Press chapbook contest.

Our judge made this comment:

To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone is a chapbook-length elegy to a young woman who committed suicide by hanging herself. While these poems contain specific details, the poems often end with resonant images and metaphors, allowing the “words [to]…hit the floor screaming” before the poet, in visiting the hill where this woman's ashes were scattered, believes that "the earth /  had swallowed my folly, / entombed my grief." These poems move from grief to bewilderment before repeating these steps. Ultimately, the poet reaches a kind of recognition in that the desire to kill ourselves may sometimes exist, and it takes “feel[ing] the noose / tied taut against the neck…to be absolutely sure that we / would never jump.”

This book is available at Amazon and through bookstores like Barnes & Noble. Electronic copies are available as well.

Early Attempts at Photography

One of the few things that I enjoyed in high school was learning to develop pictures. My father had an old Voigtländer 35mm camera that he let me use. I was limited to using black and white film because it wasn't possible to develop color film at that time in the darkroom available to me. The process for color film was much more complicated. 

I had hoped to pursue photography when I enlisted in the Air Force. The recruiter said that it was a possibility. I didn't learn until I took my physical that I was colorblind, which limited my career choices.

I am adding a few pictures from when I was in high school. I was going through the drawers in my office over Christmas break and discovered these pictures. The last picture here was an occasion in which I placed one negative over another one.

.