“Were you close?” I’m asked, as if grief
Would sting less deeply were we friends
As well as son and father. Further apart
Two men could never meet, though blood bends

Through arteries, veins and capillaries
Summoned into Presence by his pleasure.
Oh that I could have grown more slowly—
Remember being small, and cradled like treasure.

—First published in Santa Monica Review (Summer 1996) and reprinted in Mohr’s poetry collections Pruebas Ocultas (Bonobos Editores, 2015) and Bittersweet Kaleidoscopes (IF Editions, 2006); poem appears here with his permission.

Bill Mohr’s

poems, prose poems, and creative prose have appeared in dozens of magazines, including Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, Caliban onLine, Miramar, Santa Monica Review, Sonora Review, and ZYZZYVA. More than a dozen anthologies have featured his writing.

In October 2018, What Books/Glass Table Collective in Los Angeles will publish a bilingual collection of his poems, Los Manantiales del Nirvana (The Headwaters of Nirvana). In 2015, Bonobos Editores in Mexico published a bilingual edition of his poems, Pruebas Ocultas. In addition to a spoken-word collection, Vehemence (issued by New Alliance Records in 1993), individual collections of his poetry include Hidden Proofs (1982) and Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (2006). His account of West Coast poetry, Holdouts: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance 1948–1992, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2011 and has gone into a second printing.

From 1974 to 1988, Mohr worked as editor and publisher of Momentum Press. In addition to publishing landmark collections of Los Angeles poets such as Poetry Loves Poetry in 1985, he brought out books by poets such as Alicia Ostriker, Jim Krusoe, Holly Prado, Kate Braverman, Jim Moore, Harry Northup, Joseph Hansen, and Leland Hickman.

His awards include being appointed a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego and is currently a professor in the Department of English at California State University, Long Beach.

Author’s blog: www.billmohrpoet.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Why the Heart Never Develops Cancer, in Luvina; two-minute video reading at YouTube by www.Poetry.LA (May 2010)

⚡ Part One: The Publisher Speaks with Poet & Lit Historian, Bill Mohr at IF SF Publishing (27 March 2012)

⚡ Part Two: Let’s Not Deceive Ourselves about the Lack of Engaged Literacy in this Country at IF SF Publishing (28 March 2012)

⚡ Part Three: A Poem Is Language Occupying the Architectural Infrastructure of Language... at IF SF Publishing (29 March 2012)