Acting Lessons

Midwest native John Lehman recollects and explores his life encounters in Acting Lessons, the newest chapbook in the Parallel Press series. Lehman ponders his past by intertwining his passion for the theater; writing his poetry as if they were screenplays and making references to Hollywood and literary icons of the past and present. Lehman writes, “Though you don’t look like Veronica Lake, as I / watch her movie re-run on TV, I want to lose / myself in its phony fog...”John Lehman is the founder and original publisher of Rosebud, a national magazine of short stories, poetry, and illustration. He is the poetry editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas as well as managing partner of Zelda Wilde Publishing. For three years, with editors Andrea Musher and Marilyn Taylor, he published the free, street-quarterly Cup of Poems and a Side of Prose. John was a finalist for the Wisconsin Poet Laureate position in 2004 and again in 2008. Dramatic readings of his plays, A Brief History of My Tattoo, The Jane Test, and The Writer’s Cave have been presented in Milwaukee and Madison.