I’m now retired and have move to Olympia, Washington, to be closer to daughter and to myself.  I describe briefly below each of the major headings in the top banner, all drop-down menus which compile my creative and critical work, available in multiple formats here for free and at cost in online stores.

pkameen@pitt.edu

You can access from the drop-down menu above three new collections of poems (Li Po-ems, Harvest Moon, and In the Dark) and a collection many of the poems I wrote between 1975-95, along with a few newer poems. I include full, printable PDFs and sound files of my readings of each collection on their respective pages.

Personal Essays:

This Fall is the collection of essays I wrote in the fall of 2105, over about month’s time, after my daily walks in Boyce Park during the autumn leaf fall, in the shadow of my wife’s sudden passing the previous winter. I include a PDF of the full series, downloadable and printable, if you prefer to read from hard copy. There is also an audio book of my readings of the essays,

Last Spring is a short monograph of essays I wrote in the “spring” term of 2018, my final semester teaching before retirement. It serves as a kind of “bookend” for the processes of growth and grief I initiated with This Fall. I include a PDF of the full series, downloadable and printable, if you prefer to read from hard copy, as well as an audiobook of my reading of the essays.

My essay “Coming to Terms,” the first piece under “Essays,” which pertains to my wife’s sudden and unexpected passing in February, 2015, may be useful contextually in understanding the significance of these walks.

Scholarly Books

I published two scholarly books during my career, still under copyright to the original publisher, so I can’t upload them here directly. My first book, though, Writing/Teaching, which won the CCC Outstanding Book Award the year it came out, is now available in full-text, from the publisher, in the public domain. My second book, Re-reading Poets, documents my life-long love of poetry via the many specific poets who have made my life deeper and more livable.

“Coming To Terms” pertains to my wife’s sudden passing in February, 2015. It provides some context for the “Songs” page and lays the foundation for This Fall, the book of my essays.

I also offer both a sound file and a PDF of the talk I gave at the 2016 Composition Program Awards event in April 2016, titled “All the Time in the World.”

And I added a page that archives some of the major scholarly articles I published in the 1980s and 1990s, most of which are difficult or impossible to track in the marketplace.

I started singing about 5 years ago for reasons I explain under “Songs” above. I’ve now uploaded many, many songs that range all over historically (from Stephen Foster to Herman’s Hermits) and generically (Big Band, rock and roll, R&B, show tunes, blues, country.) They’re sorted by whatever category happens to catch my whim. You can pick the ones you’d like to sample by title or type.

Then, about 2 years ago, I started writing songs of my own, kind of out of the blue, and it’s a process I really enjoy and think I’m getting better at. I’ve made 3 albums now, available here and on BandCamp (paulkameen.bandcamp.com), my first foray into the public marketplace, all free, of course.