GLENVILLE, W.Va. – Glenville State College Associate Professor of English Dr. Jonathan Minton has released a book of poetry entitled Technical Notes for Bird Government. The October 2018 release consists of poems written over the past decade.
“All of these poems had been previously published individually in various journals, so I decided to see how they would work as a book. It meant doing extensive revisions to make them fit together, and culling it all down the standard 75 page length for a single volume of poetry. While revising I noticed my recurring obsession with birds, as well as the idea of the absurdity of controlling the world around us, so I came up with the title. I didn’t intend to nod to Chaucer, but when someone pointed out that it was similar to ‘Parliament of Fouls,’ I wrote a poem in direct response to that,” Minton explained.
Several fellow writers praised the book in an announcement from the publisher.
“Testing the language of myth, the naturalist, and the historian, Jonathan Minton’s Technical Notes for Bird Government taps into a vast, skeletal architecture underpinning ‘the hugeness of the world, and its wounded places where we vanish.’ Mapping its rifts and junctures, these poetic sequences emerge in surprising ways, at times coiling into themselves and at times unfurling fast to the edge of ‘another sentence full of horizons and strange creatures.’ It’s a remarkable book. Reading it, one is in the presence of an electric, relentless intelligence,” said James Capozzi, author of Country Album and Devious Sentiments.
In addition to teaching literature at Glenville State, Minton also serves as advisor for GSC’s literary journal Trillium. His chapbooks include Lost Languages (Long Leaf Press) and In Gesture (Dyad Press). He also edits the journal Word For/Word. In 2015 he received GSC’s prestigious Faculty Award of Excellence.
Minton and fellow GSC professors Dr. Fred Walborn and Dr. Marjorie Stewart will all be featured at an upcoming campus event, A Celebration of Words. The event is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 8 at 4 p.m. in the Robert F. Kidd Library. The event is free and open to the public. Minton will read from Technical Notes for Bird Government, Walborn will read from his recent book, Two Days at the Asylum, and Stewart will recite poetry. Guests are also invited to participate in an open stage following their readings.
For more information about Minton’s poetry book, which is available on Amazon, contact him at Jonathan.Minton@glenville.edu or call (304) 462-6322.
