As an editor of creative work, please visit Literary Veganism. The journal provides an example of ongoing work to shepherd creative voices into publication. Previously, I edited five print anthologies on different themes. Those can be viewed under the catalogue tab at the Bibliotekos website. My writing is almost exclusively academic, but some years ago I published some creative work, noted below.
Writer and Poet Robert Bové, M.F.A.: “. . . Prof. Tague brings to bear everything he can to be a good and true witness, an effort that requires a battery of poets, prophets and philosophers he knows well and quotes judiciously, tellingly—and he does so in language at once gentle and painterly, direct and, above all, compassionate.”
Furthermore, writes Bové: Gregory F. Tague asks the “reader to follow him a little farther than the reader might have been prepared to go, the extra step or three being the cost of ethical strife in the arena of the human heart.”
And Bové concludes: Tague writes in “language . . . poetic, detailed, the craft hidden: memories, images, and ideas follow one another with seeming ease.”
Short story writer Mitch Levenberg says of Tague's writing that there is a "merging of image and idea, its brilliant philosophical, biblical, mythical, musings combined with a human thoughtfulness and passion touching the ineffable regions of the emotions, the psyche, the soul."
Joan Kremer, co-editor of Cezanne’s Carrot, regarding “Body, Blood, and Adoption,” says she was “amazed” and “awed by the power of this piece!” And here's a quote (from an email) of a prize-winning short story writer and novelist (whose name I cannot reveal since I did not ask for her permission to use this): ". . . I read your pieces earlier today, and I especially love how -- with poetic, philosophical, and yet very, very grounded prose -- you capture so well the extraordinary experience of adoption and adoptive parenting, which as we both know is an experience like no other in its particulars. And the piece capturing what happened on 9-11 . . . I so fiercely identified with it; my breath caught in my throat, literally, as I read it."
David Herrle (editor of Subtle Tea) calls "Juror on Trial" "clever" - and of the same prose author Mitch Levenberg says, "Wow!" (and a friend simply says - "Beautiful.") Ozone Park Journal says of "Orphaned Birth-Day" that "The images are beautiful, and the language is strong," and, at a public reading, the editors of the journal admitted that they were in a very positive quandary about how to characterize my writing, since it crosses boundaries between prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction - how it is differently unique.
Dorothee Lang, editor of Blue Print Review, concerning “Her Own Bones,” says she was “amazed by the text from start, by the details and reflections . . . exquisite and intense.” The “text [is]. . . vibrating.” (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by BPR). About “Consistency of Milk” (another Pushcart Prize Nomination), Lang says that Tague has “created something intriguing, condensed to a point where prose turns into a kind of different category.”
Dr. James B.M. Schick, editor of The Midwest Quarterly, regarding “Witness to a Measure of Pain.” “a . . . very powerful personal essay . . .” And Dr. Schick on “From Responsibility to Answerability,” “a trenchant . . . thought-provoking essay . . .”
Although my work was not singled out for comment, NewPages.com reviewed the Fall 2006 issue of The Healing Muse, and Jeanne Lesinski, the reviewer, says of the issue (in which my "Care to Give" appears) : "Though we might like to think that we live the life of the mind, our bodies have much to do with our health, both physical and mental, and this collection gives this unity its due."
