If there were a word to define the December issue of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, it’d have to be “eclectic.” There truly is no other word I could think of that would adequately describe the nature of the pieces here. The writing ranges widely in style and tone from family-drama fantasy “Vengeance is Born” by Ashley Crisler to “Blister,” Eric Obame’s stark and sobering poem about drug addiction. To be as explicit as possible: eclectic is always a welcome thing in my book.
NewPages Blog
At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
Foliate Oak – December 2017
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The Tishman Review – October 2017
The Tishman Review is a literary magazine chock-full of the literary goods. I mean, the thing is stacked with a stunning array of quality writing.
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2017 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize Winners
The January/February 2018 issue of Kenyon Review features winners of their 2017 Short Fiction Prize:
First Prize
“Lionel, For Worse” by David Greendonner [pictured]
Runners Up
“When Do We Worry” by Kimberly King Parsons
“Canto” by Lorain Urban
Each of these works can also be read full-text online here along with commentary on the selections by Judge Lee K. Abbot.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
Southern Humanities Review continues celebrating its fifty years in print with issue 51.2, lush cover art by Victoria Marie Bee, & the buzzards came & undressed her (pigment print, 2016).
Published by the Department of English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston, the cover image of Crazyhorse Fall 2017 is “Blue Hole,” a digital photograph by Shane Brown.
Annelisa Leinbach’s vibrant art is featured on the home screen as well as in a portfolio for the Winter 2017 issue of The Writing Disorder online literary magazine.
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American Life in Poetry :: Kim Addonizio
American Life in Poetry: Column 668
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
I’ve had a couple of aquariums (or is the plural aquaria?), but I didn’t take very good care of either one. The glass clouded over with algae, and the fish had to live on whatever they could scrounge because I’d forget to feed them. Some liked eating each other. But here’s a poem (a sonnet!) about an aquarium you can actually see into. The poet, Kim Addonizio, lives in California, and her most recent book is Mortal Trash (W. W. Norton, 2016).
Aquarium
The fish are drifting calmly in their tank
between the green reeds, lit by a white glow
that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank
glass that holds them in displays their slow
progress from end to end, familiar rocks
set into the gravel, murmuring rows
of filters, a universe the flying fox
and glass cats, Congo tetras, bristle-nose
pleocostemus all take for granted. Yet
the platys, gold and red, persist in leaping
occasionally, as if they can’t quite let
alone a possibility—of wings,
maybe, once they reach the air? They die
on the rug. We find them there, eyes open in surprise.
We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1994 by Kim Addonizio, “Aquarium,” from The Philosopher’s Club , (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994). Poem reprinted by permission of Kim Addonizio and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
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Schuylkill Valley Journal Features Prisoners Poetry
The fall 2017 print issue of Schuylkill Valley Journal includes a special section of poetry written by men imprisoned at Graterford Prison in Philadelphia. Fran B. provides an introduction to the section entitled, “A Poetry Workshop at Graterford Prison,” which begins, “In January, 2017, I started a poetry workshop at Graterford Prison. I had wanted to do this for a long time, several years, and my semi-retirement enabled me to think that I finally had the time to devote to the project.” Fran explains how he worked with the Prison Literacy Project of Pennsylvania and a group called Lifers, Inc. in Graterford Prison to get the workshop started, building a rapport with the inmates, and developing guidelines for their sessions. Fran shares some of the prompts he developed and the responses these elicited from participants.
Contributing Writer Eric Greinke provides an editorial comment on the works selected: “Although all of the poems that were submitted have merit, this particular group of five poets display special talent and affinity for poetry. Poetic talent can appear anywhere, under any circumstances, because it is the result of the inner human drive to evolve and connect. These five poets transcend situational concerns and rise to a universal level that communicates to our shared humanity. Their poems have in common an emotional intensity but each poet sings with his own unique voice.”
Included are ten poems by five poets: Reginald L., Terrell C., Ben C., Aaron F., and Eduardo R.
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Glimmer Train 2017 Sept/Oct Short Story Award for New Writers Winners
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September/October Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held three times a year and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The January/February Short Story Award competition has just opened: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
1st place goes to Maxime Kawawa-Beaudan [Photo credit: Scott McCrae] of Berkeley, California, who wins $2500 for “Waiting for Fireworks.” His story will be published in Issue 102 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major print publication.
2nd place goes to Kristen Hamelin Tracey of New York, New York, who wins $500 for “A New World.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue, increasing her prize to $700. This will be her first major print publication, as well.
3rd place goes to Oliver Kammeyer of Boston, Massachusetts, who wins $300 for “They’ll Fix That in Turkey.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching! Family Matters: January 12
Glimmer Train hosts this competition once a year, and first place has been increased to $2500 plus publication in the journal, and 10 copies of that issue. It’s open to all writers for stories about family of any configuration. Most submissions to this category run 1000-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.
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The Whetting Stone
What do you do when the person who promised to stay with you for better and worse, sickness and health leaves? What if they leave by taking their own life? What do you do with the subsequent feelings of betrayal, sadness, and guilt? If you’re Taylor Mali, you write poetry about it. The Whetting Stone, winner of the 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize, encapsulates Mali’s grief in the aftermath of his wife’s suicide in 2004.
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Good Stock Strange Blood
“where time, they say, ends. Whereas for extending, whereas what you might call a leaking or a wandering. Incalculable lang, incalcable list—what’s spun down the hole. No pulling or leaping up. Blackness, only the din of our existence. Wishing-rod defunct. Hear my voice without echo, always defunct. A stone in hand. A crown in laughter.”
— from “One falls past the lip of some black unknown”
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Most American
“One thing we ought not forget in this America is how our impulse to forget is so strong.” Rilla Askew, Most American
From where I sit right in Shawnee, Oklahoma, I am 41 miles from Rilla Askew, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of Most American: Notes From a Wounded Place, a collection of essays on race, violence, history, and Oklahoma. Six months ago, I would not have expected this proximity and would have read this novel from a distance out of curiosity, but disconnected from the Oklahoma Askew memorializes in these pages and connects to the larger American drama.
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Thousand Star Hotel
The other day a seemingly nice older man whom I don’t know exclaimed, “I really don’t care for this hot weather—are you from Japan?” Hell yeah, I should have said. In fact, you know that movie Godzilla? That’s based on my life. It makes me want to vomit radioactively and commit zombie homicide, except in my version there is more than one Asian who survives. Our real conversation was not nearly as fun, but at least it didn’t end in violence. Our daughter overheard this and admonished me: “Don’t talk to strangers, Daddy.” – from “Greek Triptych”
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Volver
Antonio C. Márquez’s Volver is a “memoir” in the truest sense of the word, as its subtitle “A Persistence of Memory” suggests. Beginning in the Pre-World War II borderlands near El Paso, Texas, and moving to Los Angeles, the Midwest, and then all over the world, Volver recounts Márquez’s life and travels, from a poor boy to an established expert in his field who is called on by the government to be a cultural representative in other countries.
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The Book of Donuts
I’ve discovered that the donut is a popular topic for books, but I haven’t noticed an entire book of poems on the subject. The Book of Donuts, edited by Jason Lee Brown and Shanie Latham, helps fill in the gap. The editors have brought together several dozen diverse poets with equally diverse attitudes toward the confection.
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The Walmart Book of the Dead
Lucy Biederman’s newest project The Walmart Book of the Dead has been called “fearsome,” “extraordinary,” and “inventive.” In a work that Biederman calls experimental, she puts together a collection of spells that are meant to remind the reader of the Egyptian Book of the Dead—but in this collection, the tomb is a Walmart.
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World Literature Today Inspires Writing as Resistance
In these turbulent times, we can’t help but wonder just exactly how words do matter, in the sense of “for good” instead of what we see so much of bandied about in terms of knee-jerk thoughtlessness. World Literature Today provides the perspective “Words Matter: Writing as Inspired Resistance” in their January-February 2018 issue. In addition to its regular content is “Treasuring the Tradition of Inspired Resistance”: A Conversation with Maureen Freely by Michelle Johnson, poetry by Iossif Ventura and Anna Maria Carpi, an essay by Liliana Ancalao, three audio poems (online) in Mapuzungun, Spanish, and English, by Liliana Ancalao, a web exclusive interview “Breaking Open Gates: A Conversation with Emmy Pérez,” by Norma Cantú and Chelsea Rodríguez.
Readers can access five articles per month without a subscription; WLT is a paying market for writers and encourages subscriptions.
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Ecotone :: The Craft Issue
Ecotone‘s mission is to publish place-based work exploring “the ecotones between landscapes, literary genres, scientific and artistic disciplines, modes of thought.” The Fall/Winter 2017 issue is themed on “Craft” and opens with Editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell’s “From the Editor: The Craft of Editing,” which includes the insightful list of eight “Guiding Principles for Ecotone Editors.”
Content includes fiction by Jill McCorckle, Alexis Schaitkin, and Farah Alie, nonfiction by Ellie A. Rogers, Andrea Mummert Puccini, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ben Miller, and poetry by Cortney Lamar Charleston, Nina Sudhakar, George David Clark, Jessica Guzman Alderman, Dawn Manning, Lauren Camp, Cate Lycurgus, Lynne Thompson, David Macey, Athena Kildegaard, and Molly Tenenbaum. Each contributor also offers one sentence on craft, “what hopes and concerns about craft, writerly and/or otherwise, the writers and artists who are part of the issue might have.”
The gorgeous cover and bookmark insert for this issue deserves recognition: designed and printed by Rory Sparks at Working Library in Portland, Oregon, with text hand-set in Lining Gothic, Franklin Gothic, And Garamond Italic, and printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell 100lb on a Vandercook Universal I AB P.
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Still Point Art Online Gallery
Founded in 2011 by Christine Brooks Cote, Shanti Arts celebrates and promotes Art, Nature, and Spirit. Along with publishing a wide array of books, Shanti Arts also produces Still Point Art Gallery and Still Point Arts Quarterly. The print publication features full-color art throughout, and the website includes the full exhibition of artwork. Nature’s Textures is the current exhibit, running through January 31, 2018.
Artists’ works honored in this exhibit:
Best in Show
Tricia Hoye
Award for Uniqueness of Concept and Originality
Jane Gottlieb
Award for Exceptional Composition and Design
Stefynie Rosenfeld
Award for Distinctive Interpretation of Theme
MJ Edwards
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The Chattahoochee Review Examines “Neighbors”
In a double issue (Fall 2017/Winter 2018), The Chattahoochee Review focuses on “Neighbors.”
Editor Anna Schachner writes, ” Some of our special-focus topics are more wistful than others. This one – Neighbors – certainly is. When our editorial staff chose the topic, I don’t think any of us were specifically thinking of borrowed cups of sugar or Christmas carolers at our front door, but, given current national and global events, it’s hard not to yearn for that simplicity and purity. Still, most of the work in this issue fluctuates between a kind of yearning for proximity, for connections, and a kind of wry suspicion of it.”
See a full list of contributors here.
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Prime Number Magazine Monthly Contests
Prime Number is a quarterly online publication of “distinctive poetry and short fiction that takes readers to new places, introducing them to interesting characters, situations, and observations.” A publication of Press 53, the editors enjoy engaging writers in two monthly contests: the Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Contest, which is a low-cost ($7 – a prime number) reading fee with a prime number first prize of $251, and the 53-Word Story Contest, which is free (is 0 a prime number?) and comes with a prompt.
Both winners are published in future issues of the publication.
Winners currently featured are Flash Fiction “Interrogation” by Michael Chin and 53-Word Story “Dance on my Grave” by Hannah Ambrose [pictured].
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Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest Winners
Winners of the Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry each receive $500 in addition to publication. Finalists are awarded $100 and publication.
Poetry Winner
Judge Robert Wrigley
“Tying a Tie” and “Airborne”, two poems by Edward Harkness
Finalists: Poems by Ellery Akers, Deborah Fass, and John Pass.
Nonfiction Winner
Judge Nicole Walker
“Ghost Trees” by Jennie Goode [pictured]
Finalists: “What Remained” by Kristina Moriconi and “Northern Wardens” by Alisa Slaughter
Fiction Winner
Judge Padma Viswanathan
“N-Place Exiting” by Thomas Ausa
Finalist: “The Stilled Ring” by Luther Allen
Read more about the winning works here. The contest re-opens in January 2018.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
“The Cowards” by French photographer Iva Iova on the cover of Into the Void #6 is from her series, The Remains , of which she writes, “The last decade held a concentration of questionable political and social events. [. . . ] A population raised and educated to be Deaf, Cowards and Heartless.”
Kikki Ghezzi‘s oil on linen entitled “Snow Flake” is featured on the cover of Salamander #45 with a full-color portfolio of more of her works inside the issue. She writes, “My paintings are increments of time and increments of marks and strokes in a meditative moment. They are the time of a walk, the time of process. The kind of ‘glow”’ time in my paintings is infinite in both directions, outward in accumulated, immeasurable brush strokes and inward towards a glow point.”
Oil on canvas “21 August 2017” by Lynn Boggess invites readers into the December issue One online poetry magazine, which features a “Second Look” section in which writers discuss poems they admire. This issue’s Second Look is Patrick Kavanagh discussing The Great Hunger.
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CFS: “Bearing Arms: Responding to Guns in American Culture”
The Editors at Broadsided Press write:
We have, according to the constitution, the right “to keep and bear arms” in the United States. But how, in the wake of Las Vegas, Pulse, Sandy Hook, Trayvon Martin, and other abuses of firearms—by citizens and in some cases by those trained to protect and serve—do we bear that right? How do we bear it?
At Broadsided, we believe that art and literature belong in our daily lives. They inspire and demonstrate the vitality and depth of our connection with the world. We had to speak out—we had to make a space for you to speak out—on this issue as part of our ongoing “Broadsided Responds” feature.
We put out a call to visual artists asking for submissions. Work came from all over the country, in all media. Powerful, provocative, dynamic work. Guest Arts Editor Stacy Isenbarger selected six pieces that offer a range of attitudes, aesthetics, and opportunities. Of her decision, Stacy has this to say:
How do we confront that of which we already hold tightly? Collectively, these chosen works offer a dimensional conversation of this weighted issue. Some may suggest a boundary of societal judgement, but they don’t necessarily reveal what side they are one. Instead these pieces offer evolving space. They welcome an opportunity for viewers to discuss how we bear that which touches our lives.
We now ask you to respond with words to six works of visual art by Sandra Cohen, Jonathan Frey, David Kamm, Osceola Refetoff, Dixie Salazar, and Kristen Woodward.
See full images and guidelines here.
When you submit your writing, be sure to be clear as to which piece you are responding.
DEADLINE: December 27, 2017.
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Glimmer Train Craft Essays December 2017
The December 2017 Glimmer Train Bulletin is a fun read this time around, with an eclectic mix of craft essay written from teachers and authors, some of whose works have recently been published in Glimmer Train Stories.
Author of the novel The Luster of Lost Things , Sophie Chen Keller’s [pictured] essay, “On Writing from a Child’s Perspective for Adults,” is a topic I have often tried to better understand as a reviewer assessing others’ writing;. This was an instructive perspective to read, as Keller asks, “But how to manage that voice while keeping the novel from becoming a book for younger readers – especially when my inspiration for plot and tone was those books for younger readers?”
For essays on writing and revision, University of Chicago Professor Will Boast offers his advice on “Cutting Out the Bad Bits,” while Andrew Porter, Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Trinity University in San Antonio writes on “The Long First Draft.”
And, in these volatile times, Iranian-American writer Siamak Vossoughi comments on “The Political Lives of Characters,” noting the decision writers face: “Political beliefs can matter a lot, in stories and in life, and they can not matter at all. [. . . ] A writer only runs the risk of being preachy or dogmatic if he or she makes a character of one political belief less three-dimensional and human than that of another.”
The Glimmer Train Bulletin is free to read online each month here, or have it delivered monthly to your inbox.
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2017 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize
Ruminate Winter 2017 features the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize recipients awarded by judge Shane McCrae:
First Place
“Elizabeth Asks” by Maggie Blake Bailey
[pictured]
Second Place
“Bookend Quote from Bro. Yao” by Amanda Hawkins
Honorable Mention
‘”All These Months Since Your Diagnosis” by Emily Ransdell
Finalists whose works are also included in the issue: Jen Stewart Fueston, Dante Di Stefano, Janine Certo, Mason Henderson, Jake Crist, Jehanne Dubrow, Kerri Vinson Snell, Charity Gingerich, John Sibley Williams, Berwyn Moore, and Mark Wagenaar.
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Terrain.org – December 2017
Terrain.org exists at the meeting place of natural and manmade, an online magazine on human nature and our place within the natural the world. Work is added to the website on a rolling basis, so there is always a chance for readers to encounter something new upon each visit. So far, this month provides new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for exploration, as well as a guest editorial: “Letter to America” by Barbara Hurd.
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The Boiler – Fall 2017
The art in the latest issue of The Boiler features paintings by Gloria Ceren and photography by Klara Feenstra. Ceren’s work evokes feelings of chaos and smoldering heat with warm colors and layered textures. Feenstra’s photography gives the sense of looking in from the outside, the overlaid image appearing like a reflection on glass as if the photographer took photos from the other side of a window. The writing in this issue of The Boiler echoes this: although we’re taking in the poetry and prose in this issue from the outside, the colors and chaos draw us in to examine it closer.
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Carve – Fall 2017
Reading Carve, named for Raymond Carver, is a unique experience. The cover of the Fall 2017 issue is freshly-styled and modern, and the magazine format is a nice contrast to standard lit journal dimensions. This issue features the winners and Editor’s Choices of the 2017 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, as well as an author interview following each piece. Though the interviews might disrupt the flow of the magazine for some readers, most of them are engaging and reveal important details about writing methods and inspiration. Carver fans will likely be delighted to discover that each interview is titled “What We Talk About.”
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Able Muse – Summer 2017
Where to start. The fans of Able Muse look forward to each issue’s featured poet and featured artist, and the Summer 2017 issue does not disappoint. The issue notably holds the attention with distinct content that varies from what one usually finds in a multi-genre journal.
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New England Review – 2017
Volume 38 Number 3 of the New England Review is a multifaceted issue, covering life in the army (Austrian, WWI and American, Iraq) as well as family, identity, and adventure.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
One of the cover images, “Lotus Buddha” by Christine DeCamp, for the online publication Leaping Clear is reflective of its mission, to promote “accomplished artists whose work is informed by dedicated meditative and contemplative practices.” There is more from DeCamp and other visual artists and writers in the Fall 2017 issue.
The cover image of the fall 2017 issue of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative is a gorgeous waterfall photo from White Mountains, N.H. by David FitzSimmons.
Tim L. Vasquez of Untamed Photography offers a seemingly surreal image for the cover of the fall/winter 2017 Concho River Review.
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Lyric Voice, Politics and Difficulty in Poetry
In the Fall 2017 issue of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, the regular feature 4X4, in which four of the contributor’s answer the same four questions, addresses questions about the concept of lyric voice, what the most “productive relationship” is between poems and politics, and the inherent (or not) difficulty of poems. James Longenbach, Sarah Gridley, Jonathan Moody, and Jennifer Moxley all weigh in, responding in turn to the four questions.
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Speculative Fiction in Translation by Women
Speculative Fiction in Translation (SFT) “often flies under the radar, despite the fact that it is an important part of the speculative fiction universe,” writes author and editor Rachel Cordasco in her introduction to a special section of “Speculative Fiction in Translation By Women” in Anomaly 25. While “SFT has been growing in popularity over the last few years,” Cordasco notes that, “like the publishing world as a whole, the world of SFT is often dominated by male authors.”
Her selection of included works highlights some of what she feels are the best female authors writing speculative fiction in languages other than English, offering readers a variety of stories and styles. In addition to this, Cordasco started SFinTranslation.com, a site on which she indexes SFT, reviews works, and posts news and interviews relative to SFT. Cordasco herself is working on translating Italian SF.
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Poetry Celebrating The Prompt
The December 2017 issue of Allegro Poetry Magazine online features poems that “celebrate that perennial feature of poetry workshops and courses: The prompt.” Editor Sally Long writes, “Poets were invited to describe the prompts that gave rise to their poems. The result is an issue that not only includes some amazing poetry but also a selection of ideas that will hopefully inspire new poems.” Contributors include Sarah Law, Bill Brown, Kersten Christianson, Rick Blum, Cathryn Shea, Lisa Stice, Charles Rammelkamp, Cat Campbell, Andrew Turner, Helen May Williams, Harry Youtt and more.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
It’s hard to get the full effect of the Fall 2017 The Georgia Review cover art, which features work by poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths printed on mirror metallic stock. A portfolio of her work and essay, “What Has Changed,” is included in the issue, with an introduction by Jenny Gropp.
An untitled enamel on plywood by Mose ” Mose T” Tolliver attracts readers to the Fall 2017 issue of Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.
Love love love Mary Jo Karimnia‘s work, which she describes in her Artist’s Statement, “I draw in the backgrounds and enhance certain areas with glass beads. Cropped purposefully to omit faces, the images – such as teenagers in costumes at cosplay conventions, dancers in Bolivia, and Catrina icons at a Day of the Dead festival – emphasize how costumes can allow us to explore alternative personae in an anonymous way, which helps us to learn about our past or to imagine a future in which the acceptance of eccentricities is the norm.” The Cincinnati Review Winter 2018 includes her work on the cover as well as a portfolio inside.
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Tribute to Alden Nowlan
The Autumn 2017 issue of The Fiddlehead features “Remembering Alden Nowlan.” Poet, novelist, and playwright Nowlan passed away in 1983, and this past fall, Goose Lane published the Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan. Fiddlehead Editor Ross Leckie writes, “It is an occasion for a celebration of Nowlan’s remarkable achievement. In this issue of The Fiddlehead readers will find a brief appreciation by David Adams Richards and a previously unpublished interview with Nowlan conducted just before his death by two intrepid high school students [Corinne Schriver and Carmen McKell].”
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2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction Winner
Katie M. Flynn’s “Island Rule” is the winner of the 2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction selected by Richard Bausch. Her work appears in the Fall/Winter 2017 issue of Colorado Review.
In her Editor’s Note, Stephanie G’Schwind writes, “Every fall, we have the true pleasure of publishing the winning story of the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. This year, it’s Katie M. Flynn’s ‘Island Rule,’ in which an environmental biology professor is haunted by memories of the surreally accelerated evolution and ensuing political violence that expelled her, as a child, from her island home. Final judge Richard Bausch calls it ‘a very strange, audaciously original and convincing story that arrives at metaphor; it partakes of Kafka, being so matter-of-factly realistic .’ It’s a wonderful, daring story, richly deserving of the prize.”
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Playing with Dynamite
Parents can be strange and dichotomous creatures, and delving into their lives doesn’t always give us answers we expect. Sharon Harrigan, who teaches memoir writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, discovered this when she set out to learn more about her father, Jerry. She compiled the results in her first book Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir.
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Cover Stories
Writer and editor Stefan Kiesbye believes that “every story leaves a multitude of stories untold.” He acted on this idea by inviting fifteen writers to each choose a favorite story, then write a cover for it. The resulting anthology is appropriately titled Cover Stories. Most of the favorites were pulled from the past, but contemporary writer ZZ Packer also made the list.
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Havana Without Makeup
If you’re locked into learning about far off locations through TV, movies, or social media, it’s time to stimulate your brain with a different interpretation. Herman Portocarero fulfills that task with his latest book, Havana Without Makeup: Inside the Soul of the City. Portocarero was born in Belgium of Spanish and Portuguese descent, and for the past 20-plus years has been ambassador to Havana from Belgium and then for the European Union, completing his post in September 2017. His take on Cuba’s capital city offers unique insights.
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Autopsy
i am alive by luck at this point, I wonder
often: if the gun that will unmake me
is yet made, what white birthwill bury me, how many bullets, like a
flock of blue jays, will come carry my black
to its final bed, which photo will be used“What The Dead Know By Heart”
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Our Sudden Museum
The word “museum” is usually associated with velvet ropes, alarms, roving guards. As Fanning introduces the word sudden into these carefully executed spaces filled with unfamiliar objects, he invites motion into a static world, redrawing the boundaries of artifact and observation. Though Our Sudden Museum is dedicated to the memory of his father, sister, and brother, and is filled with funny and painfully wrought elegies, unforeseen death reverberates his attention into new, unexpected places. Ultimately, with a broad range of forms and tones, Fanning ushers us into an elevated, enlightened space only reached through profound grief. Fanning’s delivery is charged with urgency and grace, since at any moment, the mundane or cherished could be taken away, suspended under glass.
While objects in museums travel and assume hefty historical weight through their membership in a rigid collection, Fanning tackles the transfiguration of emotion, the kinetics of memory. The book begins with “House of Childhood,” where, in a fluttering metamorphosis, the speaker is alternately a house, a bird, and the very seams holding artifact together:
Every dream I’m in its bones. Its bones
though hollow of me now. Its walls. What holds
the hallowed dust. The joists. The moans.
Oh Ghost, Oh Lady of Sorrows, I’m old.
I’m grown and gone. I’m a bird that can’t thrash free.
“The Bird in the Room” captures a similar dynamism that is quite original in a volume exploring grief. When faced with the challenge of listening to an aging parent, how many of us would invite such action, such ambiguity, into the scene?
As she speaks I try to hear her
through another feather
falls
from her mouth
The shadow of a wavering tree
covers the wall
Does she know
it’s in the room with us
In a volume chock full of confrontations with death, this speaker copes how most of us would:
What are you doing she asks
as I open
her door trying to let
the thought of her
death escape me
And yet throughout the book, we are offered the full gamut of methods of weathering death, and Fanning isn’t afraid of delving into sometimes vulgar or vividly morbid detail.
“I’d kick your coffin over / and piss the makeup off / your face, my sister says,” begins “Love Poem,” which catalogs the ultimately ineffective threats siblings hurled to keep a suicidal brother alive:
One week ago tonight, we stood over Tom
in his box, staring at his bad
cosmetic job, rouge on the flat
cheekbones, the lips sealed
a sick pink.
And yet the magic of Fanning’s work lies in the universal. Even if the reader hasn’t experienced the death of a sibling, who hasn’t joyfully perused items that don’t belong to us? “Sister, now I can tell you this: / how I’d steal // into your room / days you were gone,” begins the relatable “Flute.” The poem contains a breathtaking turn common in Fanning’s work:
I’d stare at the disassembled parts:
each silver tube snug in red
velvet, click of fingered keys
rubbed bronze.
I lacked the adequate prayer
my lips might blow across you,
kneeling over your open casket.
While the book is not broken into sections, the sequencing of poems slowly progresses toward the birth and rearing of children by the end, which provides a perfect counterpoint to such profound loss. In “Paper Dolls,” Fanning masterfully renders the joy and fear involved in an impending birth:
Since our news, the hours
wobble like bubbles from a playground
wand, every minute drifting, oblong
and sure to burst.
And what do children do but rewrite any conception of time we might have had before them? In “Saving the Day,” Fanning’s poetic imagination turns our orderly, painful adult world on its head when he shares discoveries “Upon finding my lost day planner on the floor of my daughter Magdalena June, age 2“:
Pages of my hours’
rigid grids splashed with your unruly hues,
my walls of stacked blank days splattered
by spilled giggles and curlicues. Sweet girl,
my year’s unwound by your fluttering hands.
With my future made so bright by you,
may I ever be ready for never.
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Teaching Wallace Stevens
The Fall 2017 The Wallace Stevens Journal is a special issue focused on “Teaching Stevens.”
The volume includes “Reflections by Poets” from Rachel Hadas, James Longenbach, and Lisa M. Steinman as well as poetry by Josepth Duemer, William Virgil Davis, Sharon Portnoff, Navlika Ramjee and more. Several of the essays focus on global contexts, such as teaching Stevens in Israel, Belgium, China, Sweden, and Portugal. Other essays include:
“Valuing Stevens’s Acts of Imagination” by Charles Altieri
“Stevens and Race: ‘Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery’ Revisited” by Marvin Campbell
“Stevens’s Poetics of Variation as a Guide for Teaching” by Lisa Goldfarb
“Casting for Keener Sounds: How to Make Difficult Poetry Fun Again” by Alex Streim, Zachary Tavlin
“As if Blackbirds Could Shape Scientists: Wallace Stevens Takes a Seat in the Classroom of Interdisciplinary Science” by David J. Waters
“Mountain Climbing in the Poetry Classroom in Malta: Teaching a Stevens Metapoem” by Daniel Xerri
The Wallace Stevens Project Muse website includes a full table of contents as well as previews of each article and full access for subscribers.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
“Dying of the Already Dead” by Gloria Ceren is featured on the cover of the online fall 2017 issue of The Boiler along with additional works within the publication.
Billy Renkl’s “Watching the Sky #2” collage of antique British chromoolithographs is the cover art for v32 n2 of Zone 3 literary journal. Renkl says of his work, “Vintage and antique paper can be surprisingly beautiful, and I find the way that it carries its history with it moving.”
The front cover of Fall/Winter 2017 Poet Lore features a photograph of Coyote Bluffs, Arizona by Ariel Body of Live Laugh Design.
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Rattle 2017 Poetry Prize Winner
The Winter 2017 issue of Rattle features the $10,000 winner of their 2017 Poetry Prize, “Heard” by Rayon Lennon [pictured]. The ten contest finalists also appear in this issue with the chance to be selected by subscribers for the $2,000 Readers’ Choice Award. Ballots, along with subscription information, are available in the publication itself. This year’s finalist poets are Barbara Lydecker Crane, Kayla Czaga, Emari DiGiorgio, Rhina P. Espaillat, Troy Jollimore, Nancy Kangas, Ron Koertge, Jimmy Pappas, Kirk Schlueter, and Alison Townsend.
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Gravel – November 2017
The November 2017 issue of Gravel presents readers with a delicious tapestry of literary treats. The pieces in this issue stood out for the complexity they exhibited and for the strong characterizations they possessed.
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Mud Season Review – October 2017
Issue 33, the latest from online Mud Season Review, promises something unique this month: instead of their usual format of three writers, one in each genre, the editors provide readers with a poetry-only issue. Fourteen poems from twelve poets tackle varying subjects, though it is the poetry that dealt with familial themes which stuck with me the longest.
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The Slag Review – Fall 2017
In the “About Us” section of The Slag Review, the editors describe how the journal is “a little off-kilter,” and how the work they “accept will reflect that.” Readers can be thankful that the credo really shines forth in the Fall 2017 issue of the journal. There’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and they all, in their own ways, exhibit an off-kilter and unique sensibility.
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Ploughshares – Summer 2017
I was delightfully surprised as I delved into this 2017 Summer issue of Ploughshares, a journal filled with fiction and nonfiction stories and essays from a variety of writers. While I recognized the names of several of the authors here, I was also introduced to other writers that I found very interesting.
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Gulf Coast – Summer/Fall 2017
Gulf Coast, published out of the University of Houston’s CWP, focuses this issue on transformation. Strangeness slithers through these pages as bodies, ideas, and objects transform. In Gulf Coast, the fluidity highlights what is most stable: the search for human intimacy and connection.
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Prairie Schooner – Fall 2017
The Fall 2017 issue of Prairie Schooner is both slim and muscular, like the wrestlers in Sean Prentiss’s “Pantheon of Loss,” an essay about self-torture (high school athletics), discipline, and the drive to win despite the consequences. Twenty-two years after his wrestling career ended, when family members ask whether the starvation, pain, and risk of death were worth it, Prentiss still says, “Yes.” Wrestlers, he argues, are driven not by health and common sense, but by the desire to be the last man standing. He writes, “We starve to win.”