John Brugaletta
March 8, 2009
John J. Brugaletta is a retired English professor from the California State University at Fullerton. He has published two volumes of poetry, The Tongue Angles and Tilling the Land, a chapbook, Apologias, and numerous poems in periodicals. Gardening, woodworking, and reading tend to feed his various poetic styles from humorous narrative poems to others that grapple with weighty theological questions. Listen
Hosted by Rachel Wheeler
May 18, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Rachel, I am one of the lucky students who sat under Dr. Brugaletta’s tutelage at CSUF. To this day he is the apex of professors and teachers who most affected my life and my mind.
Every once in a while, I do a Google search for him because we fell out of touch and he no longer lives on Rose in Fullerton.
I am thrilled to have found this broadcast of your interview. It was like I was back in his livingroom thirty years ago listening as trained and untrained poets shared the intimate details of their hearts and minds.
He has not changed one whit. I look forward to ordering and receiving his books of poetry. And the professionals are correct: he does have a clear voice. I remember his telling me that about my own writing. I credit his exemplary teaching for that. Do you know that he allowed me to talk him into teaching a course on CS Lewis? Remarkable.
Would you please pass along my email adress to him, along with this clumsy note so that if he remembers me, we can get back in touch.
Thank you,
Cindy Sicard Baynham
April 16, 2011 at 11:03 pm
The South Coast Poetry Journal is one of two out-of-print journals that I go on missing, year after year. Wish it would return. It was nice to listen to this interview and hear John read his poems. I had not heard his voice before. I hope you will forward this message to him. Thank you.
April 22, 2011 at 4:08 am
Hello Marjorie: It’s good hearing from you, and I enjoyed your kind remark on SCPJ. It would be nice to choose poems like yours again from the mail to publish, but I’m now retired from teaching and so have no ready access to intern editors. But I still write–more than ever, actually. Would you like to trade poems in a kind of poetic one-man/one woman show now and then? I’d be pleased to do so. Let me know what you have been doing and what your proclivities are. I don’t travel much any more, and I live in the far north of California in the redwoods, on ten acres of spectacular nature with my wife Claudia. Email me at jbrugaletta@gmail.com.
July 25, 2011 at 7:11 pm
Congratulations on your new publication! Sitting here googling former profs that I worked with and what a find! How are you and Claudia? Pix shows t hat you haven’t changed. Hope all is well. How wonderful to live on such grand property! Just imagine the garden you must have! Tinge of jealousy here; but not of the work involved! Retirement is great. It was one of my better choices…whether to stay at CSUF or retire! I’m so glad that I did…I have no regrets.
July 27, 2011 at 2:16 am
Linda, are you the retired secretary from the English Department at CSUF? Thank you for the message.
John
jbrugaletta@gmail.com