Unlikely Stories Presents

DUANE LOCKE stared down Medusa back in '76

To the Unlikely Stories home pageThe potent images of Duane Locke's poetry often catch one by surprise; he'll start a poem in one direction, then switch gears as a poem ends, slamming us with the force of his unique visions. You'll find an intense range of emotions in the poems we present here.

Duane Locke, ex-Poet in Residence at a university, ex-Professor of Humanities, Ph.D. in Renaissance literature, Photographer, Painter, now unemployed, lives in an old, decaying, two-story house in the sunny and tropical Tampa slums. The very ugly neighborhood has been made more colorful by the police pasting yellow and orange posters on all the poles advertising that the location is a high drug district. The scene is further enlivened by the bright colors of expensive cars, stolen, stripped and abandoned on the streets. Duane lives alone as a stranger and alien since he does not understand the joys, customs, costumes or language, some postmodern form of English. He has had over 2,000 poems published in over 500 print magazines such as APR, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander. His 14th and latest book of poems is Watching Wisteria, available from Vida Publishing. Drop him a line at duanelocke@netzero.net.

Duane's works here at Unlikely Stories are:

2003:
Statue

2002:
Poem for My One-Legged Lover, the Wine Glass, No. 51
Poem for My One-Legged Lover, the Wine Glass, No. 53
Poem for My One-Legged Lover, the Wine Glass, No. 54

2001:
Confession of Stra Schrag, No. 4
Transformation
The Examined Life

July 1999 - July 2000:
Cemetery Under the Pines
The Power of Prayer
For a Girl with White Gold Hair who Left Only Her Shirt on a Stuffed Chair