About Jim from the Mellen Press web site
"...James Sutton, a graduate of Iowa's Writers workshop, studied poetry with John Berryman, George Starbuck and Marvin Bell. He was also a professional lobbyiest. As poet, he writes sonnets on the theory that difficult form separates poets from politicians. As lobbyist, he makes political statements by not making political statements. Here, doing both, he extends the sonnet as a form and obviates gender wars by returning to high culture."
EVEN GRIMMER and BLUE LAUNDRY should be on the reading list of every serious citizen and every politician, serious or not.
EVEN GRIMMER: 100 Sonnets Vers de Societe
by James Hercules Sutton
From the Introduction
When government can't dump a dud, grimmer grows even grimmer. These memorialize grimness just before the Iowa Presidential Caucus in 2008. Despite the subject, I enjoyed the writing, which improves the odds you'll enjoy reading. Try reading aloud because poetry, like mind, transforms in the act of remaking itself. If a word or reference eludes, maybe the Notes... --Thanksgiving 2007
by James Hercules Sutton
From the Introduction
"Harry is at it again, furious at his country's shame and jealous for it's pride; but why impersonate Ensign Pulver? Because the subject is Dubya and the object is dirt. As National Laundry Officer , Harry cleanses what has been sullied. Here are his duty logs from September through December 2004., during the Presidential Campaign...."
by James Hercules Sutton
From the Introduction...
These poems probe my time through personae who probe theirs. In No. 3, Daedalus wonders where artists belong. His implicit answer is "where artists can grow and make a living. As Crete is inimical to both, he enlists his art to excape it. This applys to my time.
Personae are mythic, historic or contemporary, except for Thumper, Long John Silver, and equally fictional Harry pondering his relationship to Wallace Stevens. Words, deeds, thoughts, feelings ascribed to them are imaginary, and nothing should be inferred about persons, living or dead, from the idea of them that I use to advance my theme, other than that they were a source of inspiration.
Poems appear by event--oldest first, beginning and ending with Zeus....
by James Sutton
Published by Mellen Poetry Press, Lewiston, NY
From the Introduction
"In Harry's Gloom, Harry mentions a dictionary of "what words really mean."...His definitions operate on clang, puns, half lies, litotes, hyperbole and a half dozen other tropes too obscure to inflict by design. Basically, they compare "what is" to "what should be" or "what's claimed." "This is bound to irk any who want to freeze things as they aren't," says part of him." --Dr. Emile T. Zook, The Lancelot Professor of Aesthetic Linguistics, The University of Lackland
by James Hercules Sutton
From the Introduction
Since poetry reveals who one is, it should be popular whare narcism thrives. But schools here teach children to hate poetry by exposing them to its least objectionable manifiestation, then testing on it. Media displace poetry as the mechanism for creating culture in the act of communicating it. Poets labor in universities to hatch large rare eggs, preferably lyric, Non disputandum--as long as some birds remain to arn of crisis....Speaking for myself, I write from commitment to constant emergence. Words are how I wrestle with the Angel. I learn by speaking, and speak to create meaning. This produces results, but can alienate; only ten per cent are auditory learners. One tries to be polite, but only the harmless do no harm.
by James Hercules Sutton
From "This Book," often called an introduction.
This book is about what was going on in a mind responding to the life of its time. Mostly we never know. One could watch TV forever and have no idea what someone was thinking in Iowa at the cusp of the Millennium. If that's important to you, what follows is what you should know....Life is boring; so's the alternative. Writing these wasn't, which improves the odds you'll enjoy reading. They have something to say and start with the most difficult subject.
by James Hercules Sutton
These memorialize friends, their vicissitudes, my domesticities, and mind in the act of making mind. I enjoyed writing, which improves the odds you'll enjoy reading. Try reading aloud, because poetry, like mind, transforms in the act of remaking itself. If a word, reference, or typography eludes, maybe the Notes....
204 Sonnets by James Hercules Sutton
From the Introduction
"...As for blue grunge obtusing Harry's brain, certain recurrent symbols flash and strain, "Rings" earn a frequent mention; drones who won't or can't do what they're hired for; ditto swine, with belly to the trough; queen bees who don't know how to sting; hurtful and vicing minds among the rapping young; pedants who hate and don't prepare kids for a better fate; poets who bore; gross failures of the state; mad elephants who throw their weight around; terrorists strapping others to their fate; pollution poisoning both flesh and ground; and blue grunge slowly percolating through Harry's roots and into his brain tissue...."
by James H. Sutton
Published by The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York
Third in a trilogy of sonnet sequences about a young man's quest for manhood. In Harry's Gloom, he finds purgatory when unable to create significance. In this book he finds heaven by recognizing and memorializing moments of happiness, often tiny, until they merge.
Winner of the 1997 Mellen Poetry Prize, "Best long poem in Great Britain and the U.S."
From the Introduction
"This is fiction, an interview between an ex-admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy and a captain in the U.S. Navy at the beginning of the Allied occupation of Japan, starring Toshiro Mifune and Harrison Ford.
Episodes were suggested by histories, biographies and confession on both sides. Capt. Tameichi Hara leans pacifist, before the Bomb, when he decides that compulsory suicide betrays samurai values. In rejecting abuse of bushido, he's more samurai than the navy he serves. I was attracted by the irony of this and by his character. He is the last samurai.
This isn't his story, 'though it pays homage to it. This is what happens when events take on their own momentum, when bureaucracies are self-serving, when machines built to serve people require people to serve machines, when racism rules because we don't spend time with each other, When eyes are plugged with mud because light is painful - and nemesis that burns through mud when light can no longer be ignored. A time or place like any other, like our own." --James Sutton
by James Hercules Sutton
About Prometheus
"James Sutton has put everything, into this comedic retelling of the epic story of the Firegiver. It's hip and romantic, it's clever and classical, it sings, and it tells a Big Tale. If you like eavesdropping on the conversations of the Gods, if you take your progress with a teaspoon of salt, or if you have ever felt that humankind is being messed with--here's food for thought and fodder for the canon. In a richly populated and entertaining sonnet series, Mr. Sutton reinvigorates the timeless questions fo free will and destiny. Can ideas boogie? They do here." --Marvin Bell.
From the Introduction
"You may wonder why a comic epic was written as a sonnet sequence around a Greek myth. I noticed something Promethean in the conflict over abortion and liberation theology, and wondered whether the Firegiver could explicate these movements or their future. The myth seemed to be saying that anyone who worships (or opposes) progress is doomed to the irony of this and by its finality; but religious murders, in Brazil and the United States, made it urgent for me to broadcast something uncoded to true believers: No Cause is so just that it can't be destroyed by its zealots.
This thought led to others: ...
[among them] ...*Only meaning gives moral order, and perhaps existance, to life and the Universe. Meaning is the synthesis of thought, feeling and action. The meaning of meaning is the creation of meaning. People exist to create meaning; that is what people are for. This is the meaning of life...." --James Sutton
By James H. Sutton
Published by The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY
by James Hercules Sutton
by James Hercules Sutton
