Writing & Critiquing Since 1979
News & Updates: Bearlodge Writers Blog
Jim Bowers Bio
Having received degrees from Dartmouth College, Yale University and the University of Redlands I taught English at several colleges and universities in the U.S., including a year at Yale teaching an advanced writing course. I also taught in Finland, China, The Czech Republic and Lithuania.
My short stories intend to probe the human soul, from the depths of depravity to the heights of ecstasy. By bringing to light the evil in us as well as the good we can embrace the paradox of our complexity and delight in the joy of living.
Publication Credits
In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge, Many Kites Press, 2006
Voices from the Underground, Many Kites Press, 2006
Foreign Ground: Travelers’ Tales, Pronghorn Press, 2003
Excerpts of Writing
Hidden Room
Writing: enter a sacred place,
a dimly lit sauna of inner space;
a ritual bath, cleansing and healing,
uniting opposites: what we want to know,
what we do not want to know;
a descent down a winding staircase,
into a hidden room,
listening to conversations
in the depths of soul.
Writing: concentration,
a wisp of air
on the surface of waters;
breath becomes form,
takes its place on the page.
Writing: visualization,
words dance a ritual of attraction;
line by line of
remembered past,
assimilated present,
imagined future;
the picture becomes,
almost complete.
Writing: resurrection
into a world of imagination,
rooted in everyday experience;
singing songs of oneness,
we become,
the protagonist in the story,
the flower in the poem.
James W. Bowers
OUR 50TH ANNIVERSARY
16 MAY 2009
You
and I are dead, reborn as We,
To pierce the fog of all hypocrisy,
To see with eyes unblinking, face to face,
The sorrows and the joy our hearts must face,
For they are both the
same and beat as one:
Three daughters’ love, the Christ’ning of a son
Who transforms our despair to pride again
By straining to transcend his ravaged brain.
My academic mind, your
heart made pure
By doing what we must, though not so sure
That others understand our true intent,
To not be false, say only what we meant.
These bodies soon must
fade to dust, unseen
That we be One, as we have always been.
James W. Bowers
Voices From The Underground
Available from Many Kites Press.
Also Available from Amazon.com
Email Jim