Everything I’ve written or made in the aftermath of my wife’s sudden passing in 2015 is here, some of it in multiple formats, for free, accessible via the drop-down menus above.Status, fame, money–-those fruits of external validation and public recognition–-all appeared irrelevant, impertinent really, from the shadow of that loss. So “free” was important to me. And time felt most pressing: I wanted my work out there RIGHT NOW. This website is the way I accomplished all that: free, here, right now. Below are my newest creations. Below that I describe briefly each of the headings in the top banner. Here is a link to a thumbnail CV of my academic credentials: KameenCV.
Bunny and Free brings together two interrelated series of essays published initially on Substack in spring/summer 2026. It is a seemingly desultory collection whose through-line may, at first, be hard to discern. There is, though, a strong emotional undertow that holds them all together. The focal point of Bunny is V.R. “Bunny” Lang, a poet/playwright who came of age as an artist in the 1950s and died young, in 1955. She is best known as Frank O’Hara’s (of Lunch Poems fame) “muse,” with whom he shared both poems and lunches starting in the late 1940s until her untimely death. “Muse” is such a dismissive way to characterize her role in their relationship, which was deep and loving, she serving more often as his mentor than his inspiration. Theirs is a beautiful story of true friendship and mutual trust. The focal point of Free is the character who came to me in a “lucid” dream on the first anniversary of my wife’s death ten years ago, playing out a stunning morality tale that took me months to fully decode. He and that dream became the capstones for the first book I wrote from the shadow of that loss, This Fall, still my keystone book. Because I was discombobulated when I started all this, the self-revelatory aspect of the Bunny series left me very anxious, enough so that I actually unpublished three of the essays. When I reread them after I started Free, I couldn’t fathom what I was so unnerved about, and I re-published them. Here’s what I concluded: Last spring I was feeling vulnerable, unsafe, really, a state of mind that inclines me (as I assume it would anyone) to avoid sharing overly personal material that others might use to judge or criticize me. Now I am serene and confident again, back on my game, so can easily assume such a risk. That’s a lot to get from writing, which is the primary reason I do so much of it. No matter my discombobulation, hunky dory is usually waiting at the other end of the line, of all thoselines I have to write to get there. I hope you will enjoy reading about my “trip.”
My newest poetry book: the other side of the light
November 8, 2024: “Poets, like all artists, can inhabit liminal spaces that are both vividly present, right now, documenting the moment, and powerfully futural, opening ways towards what’s next and new. These two ways of “envisioning,” often at odds in settled times, tend to coalesce cooperatively at historical moments like ours, an old order on the way out, a new one not yet fully fledged, see-er and seer becoming one. The poems in this book may seem on the surface to be doing the former in an extreme way—they are tiny and precise records of perceptions, almost-nothings in a way—and very little if any of the latter—absent as they are of assertions or prescriptions, or even linguistic novelties. For me, what these poems don’t do is more important than what they do. My foundational belief is that the eyes we see with create a default path forward. So to alter that path, which is urgently important right now, one needs first to learn to look in a new way at what’s right there, now, in the moment.” PDF here, paperback via Amazon.
My Substack page now contains four series of essays: “In the Spirit” uses poetry, ancient wisdom texts, philosophy, ethics, and, especially, quantum mechanics, to explore a range of issues that have to do with recovering a spirit of presence in the world. “Quite Contrary” explores the relationship between teaching and leadership, using the Gospel of Mary of Magdala as a scrim. “Bunny” and “Free” are a sort of diptych of dark/light essays I wrote this spring and summer. All of these are available in book form, free PDF here, via the drop-down menu up-top, or at-cost-paperback on Amazon. Here is a link to my Substack page:
On my Instagram page, called “my tiny poems from olympia,” I write snapshot poems to illustrate photos I take on my walks, a reversal of the customary word/image relationship, again, a link and a sample:
“Anyone who goes against the pace of the grind culture is living as an outlier and a risk-taker.” Tricia Hersey
Personal Essays:
I’ve written 15 books of personal essays since 2016. This Fall, my keystone book, which opens the series, was named as a “Notable Book” in the ShelfUnbound Indie Book Awards. These books are available for free, here, via the drop-down menu above, and in paperback and (in many cases) Kindle form, at cost, on Amazon.com.This Fall, Last Spring, and First, Summerare also available as audiobooks here and/or on Audible.com.
Poetry:
I’ve written 6 books of poems since my wife passed in 2015. I also include 2 others that compile poems I published individually earlier in my career. It’s all here for free, in PDF form from the drop-down menu at the top the page, along with audiobooks for many of them. Paperbacks and Kindle versions are available at cost on Amazon.
Scholarly Books:
I published two scholarly books during my career as an English professor. The first, Writing/Teaching, which won the College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award in 2002, explores the teaching of writing in the context of cultural and historical ideology. 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. The publisher owns copyrights on these books, which are available at their cost via the usual online venues. I provide more information about these under the “Scholarly Books” drop-down, above.
Articles and Talks:
I published numerous articles and book chapters during my career, the major ones (from the 80s and 90s, when articles rather than books were the primary vehicles for scholarly exchange) are available here in PDF form. I also include my favorite talk, and a couple of stand-alone essays, including the first essay I wrote after my wife passed, which opened the portal to all the rest of this work.
My Work on Other Platforms:
Substack: On a page called The Spirt of Olympia, I publish short essays on any and all the things that currently interest me: poetry and poetics, ancient wisdom traditions, quantum mechanics, contemporary culture, religion, you name it. Here’s the link: https://paulkameen.substack.com
Instagram: On a page called “my tiny poems from olympia,” I assemble reels from photos/videos I take on my walks and combine them with poems I write to “illustrate” them. You can find them at https://www.instagram.com/paulkameen/.
Bandcamp: After my wife died I began to play guitar and sing. I recorded many cover albums to share with family and friends. I usually include a few of these under the “Songs” drop-down menu. Then, all of a sudden, I began to binge-write my own songs, recording 9 albums. This burst lasted for three years, then stopped. These original albums are archived at https://paulkameen.bandcamp.com.
Everything I’ve written or made in the aftermath of my wife’s sudden passing in 2015 is here, some of it in multiple formats, for free, accessible via the drop-down menus above. Status, fame, money–-those fruits of external validation and public recognition–-all appeared irrelevant, impertinent really, from the shadow of that loss. So “free” was important to me. And time felt most pressing: I wanted my work out there RIGHT NOW. This website is the way I accomplished all that: free, here, right now. Below are my newest creations. Below that I describe briefly each of the headings in the top banner. Here is a link to a thumbnail CV of my academic credentials: KameenCV.
