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| M.J. Arcangelini was born 11/08/52 in western Pennsylvania, he was raised there and in Cleveland Ohio. At 18 he began traveling around the country by whatever means were available. In 1979 he settled in Northern California: first San Francisco for two and a half years, then rural Humboldt County for 18 years. He currently lives in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco.
He has been a factory line worker, farm laborer, portrait photographer, fern picker, professional fisherman, banker, kitchen worker, pornographer, outlaw, and occasional layabout. He currently works in a law office, which he frequently finds disconcerting. Arcangelini has been writing poetry for 39 years. His work has been published from time to time, here and there, including: The James White Review, RFD, BEAR Magazine, Whisky Island, Taproot, ArtCrimes, Ev’ryman, and Splitw*sky. His poems have been anthologized twice: The Lost Coast Anthology (1984), and Between the Cracks: The Daedalus Anthology of Kinky Verse (1996). As a journalist he has written for The Arcata Eye (Humboldt County), and We The People (Sonoma County) newspapers. He also works in photography, paint, collage, and any other method he can find to get an image onto a surface. |
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| Arcangelini claims that performance is his favored form of publication. He explains that poetry truly lives on the breath, in the moment it is spoken. What appears on the page is closer to a photograph of an event, than an event itself.
The late poet James Broughton said of Arcangelini’s poems in a 1995 letter, "There is a maturity, force, felicity of phrase, tenderness of feeling in your work." In a 1997 letter he referred to the "firm, consistent quality" of Arcangelini’s poems. This is Arcangelini’s first book. You may reach him at joearky@sonic.net. |
about M. J. Arcangelini