John PalenJohn Palen grew up in small towns in southwest Missouri and attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a student of Donald Finkel. His poems have been published in literary magazines since the late 1960s. Recent work has appeared in >Bluestem, MacNeese Review, Main Street Rag, Delmarva Review, and upstreet. Mayapple Press published Open Communion: New and Selected Poems in 2005, SMALL ECONOMIES in 2012, and DISTANT MUSIC in 2017. After a 45-year career as a journalist and journalism educator, Palen lives in retirement in central Illinois. Read More Read Less