The Man I Was Supposed to Be: Poems (ebook)

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“Home”

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“The Man I Was Supposed to Be”

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“Loggers”

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Bio

JOHN STRULOEFF is Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. He recently served as the third Malibu Poet Laureate and is the author of The Work of a Genius and The Man I Was Supposed to Be. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Atlantic, Verse Daily, The Sun, PN Review (UK), The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, Vagabond (Bulgaria), Poet Lore, Rattle, Open Spaces Magazine, Willow Springs, Harpur Palate, The American Journal of Poetry, ZYZZYVA, and many other journals and magazines. A former Stegner and NEA Fellow, he now lives in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Praise

THE MAN I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE

Finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry

Finalist for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize

Finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry

“These poems are beautifully shaped, and written with such verve that they finally become a dark, unswerving music of self-discovery. The subjects are varied – from a night time constellation to a salmon run. What is constant is the level of craft and care, and the eloquence of feeling which shines out of this distinguished debut collection.”

— Eavan Boland, author of Domestic Violence

“John Struloeff’s poems bear witness with unsentimental tenderness and sober respect to the community of loggers and fishermen of the Northwest, men making difficult lives out of a natural world whose spiritual power they contact only as they destroy it.”

— Donald G. Marshall, The Poetry Foundation

“John Struloeff writes solid, sonorous lines. He knows work and has respect for work. He doesn’t need to mystify you with fancy footwork. He locks into the struggle it is to be a man. I put him in the great tradition of Philip Levine and Richard Hugo.” — Howard Junker, ZYZZYVA