Swimmer Climbing onto Shore (2005)
& The Choreographer (2013)
The Choreographer
“All through The Choreographer, we encounter our own humanness in mirrors both dark and bright, as Gerald Fleming reveals us to ourselves. Each of these pieces feels unexpected yet somehow inevitable. I love their mordant wit, their sparseness and precision, their relentless truthfulness. This book is filled with music, and Fleming’s lyrical mastery is nowhere clearer than in the stunning sequence at its center—prose poems sprung from fifteenth-century Sephardic songs that seduce us into his imagined world of irresolvable ache, foolishness, and joy.” —Joan Larkin, author of My Body: New and Selected Poems
Gerald Fleming’s most recent books are Night of Pure Breathing, prose poems (Hanging Loose Press), and Swimmer Climbing onto Shore, poetry (Sixteen Rivers Press). Fleming taught in San Francisco’s public schools for thirty-seven years and has written three books for teachers, including Rain, Steam, and Speed (Jossey-Bass/Wiley). From 1995 to 2000, he edited and published the literary magazine Barnabe Mountain Review. In 2013, with his brother and sister—glass artists Bernie Fleming and Michaela Fleming—he launched the limited-edition magazine One (More) Glass.
READ GERALD’S POEMS
from The Choreographer
Publication date: April 2, 2013
Sewn paperback / 116 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9819816-7-3
Price: $18 Place an order
Video of Gerald reading at Petaluma Poetry Walk, Jungle Vibes, Sun. 9/18/11.
Gerald’s poem “Bone & Silence” is archived on the website poets.org of the Academy of American Poets.
Gerald’s poem “Long Marriage” was featured in American Life in Poetry, column 208.
Swimmer Climbing onto Shore
“Fleming gifts us with a rare generosity, revealing the ‘extra’ in the so-called ‘ordinary’ experiences of travel, friendship, and family ties in our daily lives. In a voice of condensed, colloquial intimacy sobered by awareness of the world’s menace and acknowledging the irrational in himself, he reaches a high compassionate humor as he infuses his exploration with the surprising pleasure of sudden discovery. As he himself says, ‘It has to do with joy.’ ” —Jack Marshall, author of Gorgeous Chaos: New & Selected Poems, 1965-2001
READ GERALD’S POEMS 
from Swimmer Climbing onto Shore
Publication date: 2005
