What Is This Newsletter About?
Old Man Still Howling at the Moon is a weekly newsletter that features a short essay (and also prose poems and fiction) dealing with an old guy’s take on topics as varied as narcissism, the ampersand (&), and how working in a steel plant can be the best apprenticeship for a writer. What distinguishes these short essays, is that they usually deal with both serious and off-beat subjects with a sense of humor.
Who Is This Newsletter Letter For?
My essays, prose poems, and fiction are for everyone because their topics are universal. Also, they are often funny. There is too much tribal bickering going on, and one way to have your adversary listen to you is to use humor. It’s hard to want to punch someone in the nose when you are both laughing. Or as the poet Nicanor Parra writes,
“Humor makes contact with the reader easier. Remember, it’s when you lose your sense of humor that you begin to reach for your pistol.”
This newsletter will also appeal to readers who like many different genres because I often introduce an essay with a prose poem and, intermittently, I offer an original short story to make a point.
Why Should You Read This Newsletter?
I bring a different perspective to the table. I am an English professor, but I have also worked in steel plants and as a carpenter and a drywall subcontractor. This varied background allows me to talk about issues without sounding like a snob.
Also, unlike some newsletters, I don’t just jot down random thoughts about my day, believing that they are significant because they are my thoughts. My essays are rewritten many times to make them as literary as my professional published essays, poems, short stories, and novels.
More important, I care more about my readers (you) than myself. Life is tough. I want to make you make you think and laugh. Mark Twain said a writer can afford to be anything but boring. I assure you: I will never be boring.
Why Should You Become a Paid Subscriber?
Actually, even though I was having a number of people sign up as paid subscribers, I have decided to suspend that until I get at least 500 free subscribers. So you’re in luck. Everyone will receive a post at least once a week until I reopen the paid subscriber link.
Who Is This Guy?
Background
I grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood in South Buffalo, NY with Tim Russert. Tim’s father was a garbage collector, and mine was a mailman by day and rode the crane in the steel plants at night. Both of our families sacrificed to send us to a prestigious Jesuit preparatory school named Canisius High School where we had a classical education, me focusing on Latin and Greek. This classical background instilled in me a love for language and storytelling.
The Long and Winding Road
Despite my formal training, upon graduation in 1969, I chose not to attend college and instead I traveled and worked as a steelworker, a drywall subcontractor, and a carpenter in southern California and Colorado. After about four years of trying to “find myself,” I discovered I wasn’t as “lost” as I had thought, and so I registered for classes at the University of Buffalo, eventually getting an M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of New Hampshire. Currently, I am a Professor Emeritus of English at Providence College where I still sometimes teach.
Not Too Bad of a Publishing History For a Working-class Slob
I have published six books of poetry, four young adult novels, three middle grade novels, two books of short stories, one book of essays, and I have edited three anthologies.
My prose poetry and fiction have been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and two Rhode Island Council on the Arts Fellowships.
My second book of prose poems received the James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets, which honors what the Academy considers to be the “best second book of poems by an American poet.”
What Happened, my young adult novel, received the Patterson Prize and was called by Booklist the “most gorgeously written YA novel of 2007.”
Kirkus Reviews named my middle grade novel The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., aka Houdini as one of the “Best Children Books of 2012,” and it was also chosen by Rhode Island Center for the Book to represent RI at the National Book Festival in Washington.
You can find my past and most recent books, along with interviews and other information, at peterjohnsonauthor.com
Why Any of This Matters?
In truth, all that matters is the quality of the essays, but I think my diverse background and experiences allows me to write about many different topics that will interest you. I mean, how many people have been influenced by works as different as Socrates Dialogues and The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show?
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