Roy Bentley

03/04/08

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Roy Bentley is the author of ten books of poems.  The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana won the 11th Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 2005 and is available from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble online.  In 2001, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry, and has won an Ohio Arts Council individual artist fellowship in poetry 6 times.  Here's a reading of the poem "On the Diamond behind Garfield Elementary, Melvin White Proves There Is but One Boog Powell". (Downloading this requires Windows Media Player and patience: pause the playback until the file is present in its entirety, then hit Play. Or: simply go to YouTube and search under the word 'bentleymon' for a slew of videos of me reading poems; "Boog Powell" is among them.)  Here are two poems from Black Box, a new book: http://www.drunkenboat.com/db9/poetics.html

 

Roy lives in Stuart, Florida where he writes full-time.  A recently completed novel is making the rounds.  The work is about a forty-something ne'er-do-well Ohioan who hears what he takes to be the voice of God command: Go, start me a dive team.  The book is called Church of the Diver.  (God makes an appearance as a 300-pound mechanic named Thumper who works at a Shell gas station/convenience store in Dayton.)  The plot involves a bunch of hard-working Ohioans, outliers of mixed race and heritage, falling in and out of love and founding The Church of the Diver in the process--oh, and it turns out that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Dayton!  (Where better?)

A chapbook entitled Woman & Alligator: The Florida Poems is out from Pudding House Publications.  (The chapbook has been nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize by Jennifer Bosveld, the editor at Pudding House!)

Here's a video of me reading a poem from the new chapbook: (Suspended Florida State Quarterback Identifies Himself as God.mpg) (If you should experience a problem in playback, same directions as above: hit Pause and wait a few minutes for the video to download in its entirety before attempting to watch the fireworks...)  Here's a portion of Connie Willett Everett's review in Ohioana Quarterly, Winter 2007: "The Florida Poems trace Bentley's transplantation south, moving to accommodate his wife's new job.  Florida may be familliar, even desirable, vacation land for Northerners, but living there is another matter.   ...Ohio has its abolitionist past, and Florida has, well, something else.  ...His avid readers will want to grab this book for their collections.  New readers will discover Bentley at his best."

Copies may be ordered anytime from the author.  ( For more information, about this or other books, my current email address is: bentley.roybentley@gmail.com).  Breaking News!  Funerals in the South, a chapbook, has been accepted by Pudding House and is due out in 2008.  Look for more information about its release on this web page soon!

 

Books:  Woman & Alligator (Pudding House Publications, 2007), Strange Privacies (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2006), The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine Press, 2006), Bentley Hotel (Pudding House Publications 2005), Greatest Hits:1980-2001 (Pudding House Publications, 2002), Reparation (Pudding House Publications, 2001), Any One Man (Bottom Dog Press, 1992), The Edge of Heaven (Bottom Dog Press, 1988), Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama Press, 1986) and The Way into Town (Signpost Press, 1984)
Journals:  American Literary Review, the Southern Review, The Journal, Drunken Boat, the Florida Review, Indiana Review, Laurel Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, North American Review, the Ohio Review, Shenandoah, the Evening Street Review and Sou'wester.
Gives readings? Yes.  (Here are two poems from his audio CD, 16 Poems: "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari" and "Strange Privacies") The CD is available for $10, plus $2.50 postage and handling.  Send a check or money order for $12.50 to Roy Bentley / 4872 SE Mariner Village Ln / Stuart, Florida 34997.  (Please allow 2 weeks for delivery.)  Offered price of the signed CD is good only as long as supplies last.

 

 

 

Contents

 

1.       The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari

2.       Why Palestinian Men Fire Submachine Guns
in the Direction of the Bone-colored Face of the Man in the Moon

3.       The Importance of Singing before Long Silence

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