The Meadow 2016 Novella Prize winner is “The Spider” by Mark Brazaitis [pictured] and can be read both in the print issue as well as online. Brazaitis is the author of six books, including The Incurables: Stories, which won the 2012 Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. His latest book, Truth Poker: Stories, won the 2014 Autumn House Press Fiction Competition. The Meadow is the annual literary and arts journal of Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada.
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!
The Malahat Review 2016 Novella Prize Winner
The Malahat Review #195 features Anne Marie Todkill’s story “Next of Kin,” winner of the 2016 Novella Prize. Todkill’s entry was chosen from 225 submissions by three final judges: Mark Anthony Jarman, Stephen Marche, and Joan Thomas. She has been awarded $1,500 in prize money and publication.
Of “Next of Kin,” the judges said: “With its controlled reveal of complications, it has the drive of a mystery story—but the mystery under investigation is the intricacies of a family over time. Anne Marie Todkill is an accomplished writer, offering surprising and astute insights into the relationship between sisters. Her dialogue is sharp and she is especially incisive in writing about sex. Her narrator Marian speaks with a knowing voice, at odds with her ‘small life’; the things she withholds come to the reader as a series of small explosions. Todkill imposes no pattern over events and offers her characters no epiphanies. Instead, incidents refract off each other and the story speaks powerfully through its silences. Like all good novellas, ‘Next of Kin’ offers both the concentrated pleasures of a short story and the scope of a novel.”
Read an interview with the Anne Marie Todkill here.
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Cuban & Cuban-American Writers & Artists
The newest issue of New Letters (v82 nos 3 & 4) includes a special section of Cuban & Cuban-American Writers & Artists co-edited with Mia Leonin, author of Braid (Anhinga Press) and Unraveling the Bed (Anhinga Press), and a memoir Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin currently teaches creative writing at University of Miami. The introductory note by Editor Robert Stewart reads:
“Humans don’t wait for revolution or democracy in order to live their lives,” says Mia Leonin…Her point underscores both the force of literature and art, and the hope found there. The impulses to generalize about certain groups, to categorize and perhaps condemn–to indulge in the quality of discourse imposed on us by many critics and politicians–find their antidote in literature. “The poems, stories, and essays in these pages,” Leonin continues, “remind us that Cuba is not an idea or ideology, a photo op or a news line. Likewise, its diaspora is neither offshoot nor derivative. Whatever its temporality, literature is the present moment unfolding, and these writers carve out each moment with authenticity and vision.”
Authors and artists whose works are featured: Chantel Acevedo, Alfredo Zaldivar, Ruth Behar, Lisiette Alonso, Cristina Garcia (“Berliners Who, two stories” can be read here), Orlando Ricardo Menes, Ana Menendez, Laura Ruiz Montes, Pablo Medina.
A Mariel Epistolary, fiction
, Chantel Acevedo
Utopias, poems, translated by Margaret Randall
, Alfredo Zaldivar
For Three Months I Am Alone in La Habana, poem in English & Spanish
, Ruth Behar
Three Poems
, Lisiette Alonso
, Cristina Garcia
Two Poems
, Orlando Ricardo Menes
Two Essays: The Rooster That Attacked My Sister & Wandering Creatures
, Ana Menendez
Two Poems, trnaslated by Margaret Randall
, Laura Ruiz Montes
That Dream Again
, Pablo Medina
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Water~Stone Review – 2015
If I had to pick one word to describe Water~Stone Review #18 it would be: Story. Regardless of genre, nearly every piece in this issue has some sense of narrative, of back story, of foreshadowing; there are stories told to us, shown through careful detail, and trolled through symbolic imagery by the many authors in this hefty annual—which is a factor also worth note. The editors of Water~Stone have a unique sensibility in their selections as an annual publication. It’s almost a shame from the review standpoint to have to read the entire publication in a short period of time, because I felt I should slow down and let each piece sink in before moving on and, in some cases, reread and re-reread works that deserve the attention—even with so much new waiting to be read. That speaks to good submissions as well as good editing in selection.
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weirderary – June 2016
weirderary is that kid in high school who, when called weird, would smile proudly and say, “Thanks.” weirderary is the weird things you do at home when you think no one’s watching. weirderary is exactly the kind of read I’ve been looking for.
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West Marin Review – 2015
West Marin Review’s 2015 issue Editor’s Note draws attention to the journal’s lack of overall theme, though readers will quickly see Volume 6 is tied together by the social climate and by strong, absorbing writing, with lots to love in both poetry and prose.
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Creative Nonfiction – Spring 2016
This issue of Creative Nonfiction focuses on the sacrament of marriage. But if you think you’re in for an issue of romantic tales and happily-ever-afters, keep in mind that this magazine is nonfiction. While the wedding itself and much of a marriage can be happy, real life happens, and like anything lasting or worthwhile, it has its ups and downs. This issue explores many angles of marriage including “non-traditional” marriages, spur-of-the-moment marriages, fifth marriages, same-sex marriages, marriages that work, those that don’t. Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth’s (of Tugboat Printshop) beautiful and intricate woodcut prints are featured throughout the issue to tie it all together.
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Passages North – 2016
Passages North is a vade mecum. A canon. A bible for literati. An authority. A serious digest. A volume that induces wallet-cracking extra-baggage charges. This annual journal sponsored by Northern Michigan University publishes short stories, fiction flashes, modular and traditional essays, and poetry—loads and loads of poems of every possible breed: ghazals, sonnets, pantouns, free-verse, coupleted-cantations—diversity in form, theme and content receive open-armed welcomes at Passages North. From Pushcart winners to first-timers, from experimental to toe-the-liners, this volume is hefty hefty hefty, and by following the editorial compass of publishing only what deserves “merit,” they have produced a book to please the masses. If you can’t find something that thrills and rocks your sacrum, email me, and I’ll give you the number of my therapist, or maybe we can photoshop your name onto my prescriptions.
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River Teeth – Fall 2015
“My mother taught me that the dead are among us—look closely and you’ll begin to notice them everywhere . . . The world is full of codes and keys, maps and legends. You wake up one morning, and ask yourself, How is it all connected? The question haunts you for the rest of your life.” (Karen Dietrich’s “Air and Water”). Here lies one of my favorite passages from this issue of River Teeth, a collection of creative nonfiction. And how is this writing all connected? It is, after all, deemed worthy to all fall beneath the same covers. I think it’s the human experience, and the raw need to make an understanding of life’s experiences and mysteries.
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2016 Willow Springs Fiction Winner
This year’s winner of the Willow Springs Fiction is “Gorilla Love Story” by Chelsea Bryant. The award provides each entrant with a one-year subscription to the publication; the winner receives $2000 + publication in the annual June issue. Willow Springs offers some of their publication’s content for online reading along with comments from the author about the work.
[Cover image by Marta Berens from Dream Chapter]
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The Poetry Marathon is Complete
Just like the foot race marathon, you don’t get bragging rights until you actually do it. And, appropriately, this year’s Poetry Marathon took place during the summer Olympics. So while I was toiling away at my poetry prompts and posting poems to the official marathon blog, runners from around the world were competing for gold, silver and bronze medals in Rio.
Unlike the Olympics, the Poetry Marathon is an annual event. I originally posted on it here, and the PM website offers a complete history and FAQ of the event. While I’ve known about the event for several years, this is the first year I participated. Luckily for me (and many others), the organizers have created a half marathon, which is what I completed. Both marathons start at 9:00am ET on writing day (Aug 13 this year), then every hour for 12 or 24 hours, participants are expected to write a poem and post it to the PM website. Each participant gets their own login on a group WordPress site, then as each participant publishes a poem, which is housed on their own blog space, it is also posted to the whole group blog. If you look at the site now, what you see are the poems posted by the participants as they came in.
If this sounds like a big commitment of a day, it is – or it can be. The organizers are flexible in letting participants commit to (on their honor) writing one poem every hour and then posting them when they can get to a computer. Some participants commented on having to go to work, so while they were writing the poems, they wouldn’t be posting them until later. Even for me, with a day “off,” I couldn’t be at the computer every hour of the day.
Bottom line: Was it fun? Was it engaging? Was it worthwhile? Yes, yes, and yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Until you do it, you don’t quite “get it.” Write a poem an hour? Anyone can do that on their own. But it was motivating (even a bit demanding) being in the community, committed to having to publish poems up to the website, having to be responsible every hour of the day. In fact, even while I was just sitting working at the computer, I almost missed one of the hours because I was so caught up in my work. I realized it with only five minutes left in the hour and scrambled to catch up! The pressure! It was wonderful. As were the prompts, which the organizers provide at the top of every hour. I admire those writers who had their own ideas for poems, but I relied heavily on the prompts to give me something to write about and get the writing done. There were many who did the same, and it was engaging to see the various interpretations of the prompts – a lot of really creative writers.
When it was done – 12 hours and 12 poems later – I felt a deep sense of pride and accomplishment. Not that I believe I wrote 12 astonishing poems that will shake the world. But because I wrote 12 poems in 12 hours as part of a community of people who were just as eager and committed as me. Surrounded for a whole day by an entire community of poets – reading, writing, commenting, and then doing it all over again, and again, and again. I think immersion is the right word.
I also learned that not everyone will be able to appreciate the experience if you try to share your joy at the accomplishment. “I just finished a poetry half marathon!” I exclaimed to my husband as I walked away from the computer at 9:00pm after just having posted my final poem. “Okay,” he said, not turning away from his laptop.
What you get out of it is definitely personal. Unlike the foot race, and unlike the Olympics, there aren’t throngs of people cheering your completion, no competitors there to hug you for a good race won. Though the organizers and participants do post encouraging comments for one another and have chat groups running to motivate one another, in the end, the sense of whatever it has meant to you will be completely up to you to generate and to own.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I was challenged, I accomplished my goal, and I hope to be back to do it again next year.
Thank you Poetry Marathon! Congratulations to everyone who completed the half 12 hours of writing and the full 24 hours of writing. I get it: You are amazing!
[Applause]
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
This week’s covers just say “summer” to me, starting with this Spring 2016 issue of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. The cover photo is of Chipmunk Creek, Richland County, OH by David FitzSimmons.
The Gettysburg Review Autumn 2016 issue features The Letter A, detail by Alexandra Tyng, 2012, oil on linen. The publication also includes a full-color portfolio of eight of his works.
The online publication Ragazine features Castles in the Sky, oil on watercolor paper by Laura Guese, and also includes an interview with her in the issue here.
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Big Muddy 2016 Contest Winners
Big Muddy: A Journal of the MIssissippi River Valley volume 16.1 features winners of two of Southeast Missouri State University Press‘s annual contests:
2016 Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Award
$500 + publication
“The Mockingbird” by John Blair, Texas
2016 Mighty River Short Story Award
$1000 + publication
“Teachers” by Elisabeth Doyle, Washington, DC
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Books :: 2016 Perugia Press Prize
Lisa Allen Oritz took home the Perugia Press Prize for a first or second book by a woman (now open for 2017 submissions) in 2016 with the poetry collection Guide to the Exhibit.
“Inspired by the displays at a small natural history museum” Guide to the Exhibit is “about what we set aside to examine and remember,” using a quirky, scientific lens.
At the Perugia Press website, readers can find an excerpt from the collection, which will be released and September, as well as preorder copies.
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Amercian Life in Poetry :: Meg Kearney
American Life in Poetry: Column 593
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here’s a fine, deftly made poem by Meg Kearney, of New Hampshire, in which the details deliver the emotions, which are never overtly named other than by the title. It’s my favorite kind of poem, and it’s from her book An Unkindness of Ravens, from BOA Editions. Her most recent book is Home By Now (Four Way Books 2009).
Loneliness
The girl hunting with her father approaches
the strange man who has stopped at the end
of his day to rest and look at the lake.
Do you like geese? she asks. The man smiles.
The girl draws a webbed foot from her pocket
and places it in his hand. It’s late fall
and still the geese keep coming, two fingers
spread against a caution-yellow sky. Before
he can thank her, the girl has run off, down
to the edge of the water. The man studies her
father, about to bring down his third goose
today—then ponders the foot: soft, pink,
and covered with dirt like the little girl’s hand.
He slips it into his coat pocket, and holds it there.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 ©2001 by Meg Kearney, “Loneliness,” from An Unkindness of Ravens, (BOA Editions, 2001). Poem reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, LTD. Introduction copyright ©2016 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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2016 Dogwood Literary Prize Winners
The newest issue of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose (Volume 15: 2016) contains nothing but the winners and runners up of their annual literary contest for 2016. Unique to this contest, once genre winners are selected for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, one author is awarded the Grand Prize overall with $1000 award.
This year’s Grand Prize winner was Anna Leahy’s essay “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.”
A complete list of authors as well as judge’s comments for each of the winners can be found here along with a link for information about the 2017 contest.
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
It’s been a while since we’ve done some cover art features, so thanks to you readers who let us know how much you appreciate this post!
Irresistable: Colorado Review‘s Summer 2016 cover image is just so summery with this full-cover-wrap photogray by Lenny Koh of Lenny K Photography.
Thema‘s Summer 2016 cover is reflective of this issue’s theme: “Lost in the Zoo.” Cover photograph by Kathleen Gunton.
Along with Cimarron Review‘s Spring 2016 issue, I almost had a whole cat theme going. This one taps my appreciation for whimsy with Sabrina Barnett’s photo “Greens (2).”
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Souvenirs & Other Stories
The surreal collides with the real in Souvenirs & Other Stories by Matt Tompkins. While the situations presented are undoubtedly strange—a father evaporates and joins the water system, a man watches the world burn after a botched eye surgery, mountain lions move into a family’s basement, knickknacks and furniture appear in a woman’s apartment—they’re still grounded in reality.
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Invincible Summers
It’s a mistake to call Invincible Summers a ‘coming-of-age story,’ even though that’s what the publishers say on the back cover blurb. Following Claudia Goodwin through eleven (not always consecutive) summers from the time she was six years old, I never got the sense that this was a character in search of herself, looking to grow into some kind of womanhood that was waiting for her—the womanhood defined by the 1960s – 1970s. Nor was she running away, breaking away, struggling to be or become. There was none of that. Instead, what I experienced reading Invincible Summers was a zen-steady character whose ever-changing and unpredictable world was nothing out of the ordinary from what millions of lives look like, if only we could read the lives of those millions of people who surround us. Claudia is a girl, and then young woman, who lives by responding to events, who makes choices which determine the route she takes as she ages, and who explores and comes to better understand the life she has lived.
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The Enigma of Iris Murphy
In twelve stories linked by the bonds of family and friendship, The Enigma of Iris Murphy captures the lives of those affected by the life and works of public defender, Iris Murphy. Characters across the United States—from Omaha to Cincinnati to the Rosebud Reservation—are forever changed by Iris Murphy, in big and small ways. Author Maureen Millea Smith carefully weaves narratives together so that tensions grow throughout the book, and the collection truly reads as a novel in stories.
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Broken Sleep
Any novel which opens with an assisted suicide posing as a public art happening is a book after my own heart. Such is the case in Bruce Bauman’s latest work, Broken Sleep, a story which gathers an eclectic band of characters, each involved in their own personal quests and forming a sort of modern day Wizard of Oz. Broken Sleep contains many a scene which may leave readers feeling slightly guilty for laughing. Case in point; the aforementioned opening gambit.
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Everything I Found on the Beach
Everything I Found on the Beach, by Cynan Jones, begins with police finding a mutilated body on a Welsh beach. What comes next is an unnamed woman opening an envelope, the contents of which fill her with high emotion. I could hardly wait to find out whose body it is and what’s up with the woman.
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Orwell’s Nose
British academic and writer John Sutherland lost his sense of smell three years ago during hay fever season. George Orwell (nee Eric Arthur Blair) apparently suffered from an acute sensitivity to smells, called nasal hyperaesthesia. Pair the two conditions, and Sutherland seized a new way of thinking about Orwell. He cites a quote from Orwell’s book The Road to Wigan Pier, which “contains the four words that have hung like an albatross around Orwell’s neck: ‘The working classes smell.’” From this was born Orwell’s Nose: A Pathological Biography, to be released this year.
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Shock Treatment
If reading about bodily functions, bodily excretions, or strange items put into body orifices offends you, be forewarned, they’ll clobber you in Shock Treatment, the 25th anniversary reissue of Karen Finley’s 1990 book.
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Bilgewater
For Jane Gardam fans, this new reprint of her novel Bilgewater will be a delight, almost as good as Old Filth. For those who don’t know Gardam, you’ll have a wonderful treat. There are some Gardam features which you need to be aware of: sometimes a lot of important information is given in one sentence so you need to be alert; Gardam is British, so sometimes you come across an unfamiliar expression; and this novel has a typical Gardam ending, which took this reviewer three rereads to figure out. But the discovery was fun.
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Amercian Life in Poetry :: Dorriane Laux
American Life in Poetry: Column 591
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Dorianne Laux, who lives in North Carolina, is one of our country’s most distinguished poets, and here’s a poignant poem about a family resemblance. It’s from her book Smoke, from BOA Editions.
Ray at 14
Bless this boy, born with the strong face
of my older brother, the one I loved most,
who jumped with me from the roof
of the playhouse, my hand in his hand.
On Friday nights we watched Twilight Zone
and he let me hold the bowl of popcorn,
a blanket draped over our shoulders,
saying, Don’t be afraid. I was never afraid
when I was with my big brother
who let me touch the baseball-size muscles
living in his arms, who carried me on his back
through the lonely neighborhood,
held tight to the fender of my bike
until I made him let go.
The year he was fourteen
he looked just like Ray, and when he died
at twenty-two on a roadside in Germany
I thought he was gone forever.
But Ray runs into the kitchen: dirty T-shirt,
torn jeans, pushes back his sleeve.
He says, Feel my muscle, and I do.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 ©2000 by Dorianne Laux, “Ray at 14,” (Smoke, BOA Editions, 2000). Poem reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. Introduction copyright ©2016 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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Valley Voices Special Issue :: Michael Anania
Valley Voices Spring 2015 is a special issue on Michael Anania, guest edited by Michael Antonucci and Garin Cycholl, who write, “Anania’s space is the river, the imagined city – a Chicago of relentless modernity, one capable of reinventing itself and making itself for sale again and again as the waters rise and fall. From here, the poet observes and reflects on this Chicago on the make – a sprawl of fresh water and wind, candy and steel.”
Featured in the volume is an interview with Anania as well as several of his poems. Also included are essays on Anania’s work: “Modernist Current: Michael Anania’s Poetry of the Western Rivers” by Robert Archambeau; “‘Out of Dazzlement’…Chiaroscuro Revisited” by Peter Michaelson; “‘Energy Held in Elegant Control’: Vortex Anania” by Lachlan Murray; “Another Italian-American Poet in Omaha: Italy in Michael Anania’s Poetry” by William Allegrezza; “Michael Anania’s The Red Menace: A Study in Self-Production” by David Ray Vance; “‘Like Hands Raised in Song’: Proper Names in Michael Anania’s ‘Steal Away'” by Lea Graham; “On Michael Anania’s In Natural Light” by Reginald Gibbons as well as several more.
“This collection of essays and original work,” the editors write, “offers a set of moments in lands (and waters) surveyed by Anania. That land pretends a relentless modernity – one that Anania has evidenced for readers, colleagues, and other artists page by page, line by line. Charles Olson argued that the poet either rides on or digs into the land. This collection of essays and Anania’s writings attest that he has done both.”
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Books :: 2014 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry
Winner of the 2014 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, Bruce Bond’s Black Anthem, was published this month. The sonnets in the collection are “wide-ranging in their investigations of the body, the psyche, metaphysical hunger, and its place in human conflict.” Black Anthem is available from the University of Tampa Press website in hardcover and paperback.
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2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards
Issue 44 of Paterson Literary Review annual (2016-2017) features the winners and honorable mentions from their 2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards:
First Prize
Ann Clark, Dexter, NY, “Pretend” and Annie Lanzillotto, Yonkers, NY, “Diminished Capacity, an Indictment”
Second Prize
Lynne McEniry, Morristown, NJ, “Splinter”
Third Prize
Maxine Susman, Princeton, NJ, “Thirteen”
A full list of winners and honorable mentions as well as guidelines for this annual contest can be found here.
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Books :: 2015 David Martinson – Meadowhawk Prize
In June, A Different Wakeful Animal by Susan Cohen was published by Red Dragonfly Press. Winner of the 2015 David Martinson – Meadowhawk Prize, A Different Wakeful Animal “takes on the profound questions in language that catches the ear and the imagination. [ . . . ] A Different Wakeful Animal investigates what perishes and what might remain.”
Readers can grab a copy of Cohen’s poetry collection, and writers can still submit to the 2016 David Martinson – Meadowhawk Prize until August 31.
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SRPR Review Essay Feature
Each issue of Spoon River Poetry Review print jounral concludes with “The SRPR Review Essay,” which editors identify as “a long analytical essay (20-25 pp) that blurs the line between the short, opinion-driven review and the academic article. Each review essay is written by an established poet-critic who situates 3-5 new books of contemporary poetry within relevant conversations concerning poetry and poetics. At least half of the books discussed in the review essay are published by small presses.” The most recent issue (41.1) features “The New in the News: Poetry, Authenticity, and the Historical Imagination” by Bruce Bond, and includes critical reviews of The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out: Poems by Karen Solie (Farrar, Straus, and Girous, 2015) and Emblems of the Passing World: Poems after Photographs by August Sander by Adam Kirsch (The Other Press, 2015). A list of recent SRPR review essays can be found here, with some excerpted as well as full text.
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Books :: 2015 Tenth Gate Prize Winner
Looking back to May, Jennifer Barber’s Works on Paper was published by The Word Works. Winner of the 2015 Word Works Tenth Gate Prize. Her third poetry collection, Works on Paper “shows us the power of lyric restraint in the hands of a poet who draws from the well of the small moments of motherhood as well as the sweep of Jewish history.” This year’s Tenth Gate Prize just closed earlier in the month, with results announced on October 1st.
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2016 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award
The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is accepting submissions from publishers for the twenty-seventh annual Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Book Awards (known collectively as the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award).
The awards are designed to recognize and encourage authors and illustrators starting out in the field of children’s books who share Ezra Jack Keats’ commitment to children and diversity. The award is given annually to an outstanding new writer and new illustrator of picture books for children (9 years old and under). Publishers are encouraged to submit works by new writers and illustrators who are committed to celebrating diversity through their writing and art.
To be eligible, writers and illustrators must have had no more than three books published. A selection committee of early childhood education specialists, librarians, illustrators, and experts in children’s literature will review the entries, seeking books that portray the universal qualities of childhood, a strong and supportive family, and the multicultural nature of our world. The award includes an honorarium of $1,000 for each winner.
Deadline: December 15, 2016
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Amercian Life in Poetry :: Carrie Shipers
American Life in Poetry: Column 590
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
As children, just about everyone has experienced the very real fear of an imaginary monster. But what if our mothers could have spoken to our childhood fears? Carrie Shipers of Wisconsin, the author of Family Resemblances: Poems (University of New Mexico Press), depicts just that when a protective mother talks back to her son’s Bogeyman in this fine poem.
Mother Talks Back to the Monster
Tonight, I dressed my son in astronaut pajamas,
kissed his forehead and tucked him in.
I turned on his night-light and looked for you
in the closet and under the bed. I told him
you were nowhere to be found, but I could smell
your breath, your musty fur. I remember
all your tricks: the jagged shadows on the wall,
click of your claws, the hand that hovered
just above my ankles if I left them exposed.
Since I became a parent I see danger everywhere—
unleashed dogs, sudden fevers, cereal
two days out of date. And even worse
than feeling so much fear is keeping it inside,
trying not to let my love become so tangled
with anxiety my son thinks they’re the same.
When he says he’s seen your tail or heard
your heavy step, I insist that you aren’t real.
Soon he’ll feel too old to tell me his bad dreams.
If you get lonely after he’s asleep, you can
always come downstairs. I’ll be sitting
at the kitchen table with the dishes
I should wash, crumbs I should wipe up.
We can drink hot tea and talk about
the future, how hard it is to be outgrown.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 ©2015 by Carrie Shipers, “Mother Talks Back to the Monster” (North American Review, Vol. 300, no. 4, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Carrie Shipers and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 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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Ragazine.CC – July/August 2016
In this technological age, the ping of a new email can at times seem exhaustive, from weekly ads from every place you’ve ever shopped, to growing piles of submissions and chainmail forwards from your mom. But one email to look forward to is the bimonthly announcement for a new issue of Ragazine.CC. Returning from their six-month hiatus, Ragazine.CC brings more to the table than ever before.
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Zone 3 – Spring 2016
The Spring 2016 issue of Zone 3 opens without preface or fanfare, allowing the writing to speak for itself.
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Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2016
The Black Warrior Review (BWR), published out of the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, mixes the bizarre with the familiar in issue 42.2. Best summed up by Megan Milks in their chapbook “The Feels”— a legitimization of queer pairing in fanfiction communities—this issue expands “what is possible in both the actual world and the world of the text.”
Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2016”
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Kenyon Review – May/June 2016
The May/June 2016 issue of Kenyon Review is so of-the-moment with its new section of “EcoPoetry,” wherein each poet gives a personal take on the deterioration of the world’s environment. Poetry Editor David Baker showcases 31 poems “awash with warning,” he says. “The devastation and peril often feel so massive they are already beyond words. But in important ways poetry is always about what is beyond mere words, just past our grasp and our understanding.”
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Phoebe – Fall 2015
“A short story should always move forward in time!” and “Use strong action verbs” and “Only leave the words that do the most work emotionally” are phrases former students of Alan Cheuse may have heard often. “He pushed for more drama, more emotion, fewer words,” writes Phoebe Editor-in-Chief Amanda Canupp Mendoza. “He wanted us to live up to our full potential not only as writers, but as humans.” In July of 2015, Alan Cheuse passed away and this issue, in collaboration with Alan Cheuse Literary Review, opens with a special section dedicated to the late George Mason University professor.
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Lorca’s Glowing Moon
Well, this is a first for me in all the years I’ve been working with literary magazines. The July/August 2016 cover of Poetry is a special treat for those who can access the print version. Artist Chris Hefner has created a glow-in-the-dark moon to celebrate the “moon poems” by Federico García Lorca, translated by Sarah Arvio. The issue features “Two Evening Moons,” “Of the Dark Doves,” and “Ballad of the Moon Moon.” Read more about the translations as well as a statement from the artist about his work and several other images from his collection here.
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Florida Review 2015 Editors’ Awards
Issue 40.1 of The Florida Review features the winners and finalists of the publication’s 2015 Editors’ Awards. This is an annual contest which awards $1000 to each winner and publication to winners and finalists.
Poetry
Winner Christine Poreba for “Negative Miracle”
Finalist Rachel Flynn for “America, February”
Fiction
Winner Matthew Lansburgh for “The Lure”
Finalist Jacob Appel for “The Dragon Declension”
Finalist Miriam Cohen for “Recess Brides”
Creative Nonfiction
Winner Melanie Thorne for “What We Keep”
Finalist Carol Smith for “Tearing Down the House”
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Amercian Life in Poetry :: Sharon Chmielarz
American Life in Poetry: Column 589
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
We hope that you will visit, from time to time, our archived columns at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org, where you may find other poems by the poets we feature. Today’s is the third we’ve published by Sharon Chmielarz. a Minnesota poet with several fine books in print, including The Widow’s House, just released by Brighthorse books.
Fisher’s Club
A roadside inn. Lakeside dive. Spiffed up.
End of a summer day. And I suppose
I should be smiling beneficently
at the families playing near the shore,
their plastic balls and splashes and chatter.
But my eye pivots left to a couple;
he is carrying her into the water.
He’s strong enough, and she is light
enough to be carried. I see
how she holds her own, hugging
his neck, his chest steady as his arms.
I have never seen such a careful dunk,
half-dunk, as he gives her. That beautiful
play he makes lifting her from the water.
And I suppose I should be admiring
the sunset, all purple and orange and rose now.
Nice porch here, too. Yeah, great view.
But I have never seen such a loving
carrying as he gives her. Imagine
being so light as to float
above water in love.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 ©2015 by Sharon Chmielarz, “Fisher’s Club,” from The Widow’s House (Brighthorse Books, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Sharon Chmielarz and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 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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Nimrod International LGBTQIA Issue
Mirrors & Prisms: Writers of Marginalized Orientations & Gender Identities is the title of Nimrod International‘s Spring/Summer 2016 issue. Editor Ellis O’Neal writes in the editor’s note:
Mirrors & Prisms feature the work of writers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual, or anywhere under the umbrella term MOGAI (marginalized orientations, gender identities, and intersex). While Nimrod has always published the work of such authors (and indeed James Land Jones, Nimrod”s founder, was himself gay and fought for gay rights in Georgia in the 1970s as a professor of literature), we have never before devoted an entire issue to LGBTQIA writers. To do so now, we believe, is not only to continue Nimrod‘s tradition of bringing less-heard writers to the literary forefront, but to make clear what Nimrod has always known: that LGBTQIA writers have stories that can make a differences to all readers, of all sexualities and gender identities.
See the complete table of contents here with links to some works which can be read online.
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The Market Wonders
The Dow that can be named is not the eternal Tao. This is the message of Susan Briante’s great and fun new work The Market Wonders. The economic market is a man made concoction, yet it behaves in an almost random manner that seems to follow rules of nature. In the beginning of the book she quotes, “Blake reminds us, ‘For everything that lives is Holy!’” and sure enough the market seems to be alive. This book associates a volatile reverence to money. The subject is about as transgressive as can be. Most people do not read poetry, half of us that read barely understand it, and certainly, nobody is making a living from it. That is to say, unless you’re Tao Lin or Ben Lerner who undoubtedly have other means of income. The rare Ted Kooser who can make a rock star’s living at poetry is once in a lifetime. But Briante builds a relationship between the flow of the market and the flow of words and poetry. The ticker at the bottom of the book is definitely the philosophical icing on the cake.
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A Crowd of Sorrows
“The body of a child is a playground” -from “Red Rover”
Lisa Anne Gundry’s often sparse lines of poetry about childhood sexual abuse and its lingering effects is haunting. While some of her poems reflect a juvenile attention to the art, Gundry’s grasp of the subject matter is spot on—partly because she lived it and partly because she has clearly carefully researched each phase of her own pain and healing and just as carefully referenced these phases in her work. At 116 pages, A Crowd of Sorrows addresses neither too little or too much, spanning accounts of the abuse, counseling, trauma, and the reactions of family members to her confession that her grandfather was a pedophile who had violated both she and her sister in cars and on couches, during the day and at night.
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Are You Here for What I’m Here For?
Tinged with mystery and magical realism, Brian Booker’s Are You Here for What I’m Here For? is an outstanding collection of self-contained short stories with themes of sleeplessness, sadness, and sickness. The characters, setting, and point of view vary from each story, which demonstrates the wide range of Booker’s fiction writing skills. Furthermore, the stories occur in different, sometimes undeterminable time periods, adding flavor and movement to the reading experience.
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The Sorrows of Young Alfonso
“We live for a brief moment en este valle de lágrimas”
Maybe that’s why there is no resolution in my letters. There is no hero announcing at the end that good will triumph over evil [ . . . ] If my letters were a plea for sanity, then writing them was worthwhile [ . . . ] Remember, the observer of any artistic work changes the work, and in turn is changed by it.
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Return to Arroyo Grande
When filmmakers turn to fiction, plot is always king. Characters and their motivations take a back seat, and the subtle components—the way fiction can get deep inside your mind and play with your inner voice—are often forgotten.
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You Must Fight Them
Maceo Montoya’s You Must Fight Them, a debut collection which begins with the namesake—a ninety-nine-page novella, in which Chicano stereotypes are deciphered, defined, mocked, challenged and rendered in heart-shattering detail—is poignant and entertaining. Montoya’s narrators are mostly bookish and well-educated. They are searching for identity and often do not find what they are expecting. The doctorate student is supposed to be tough and fight the brothers of a girl he worshipped in high school. Why tough? Why fight? Because that is how it is and always will be. Lupita, the girl, wants out of this macho-viciousness, but can’t figure out how. Nothing is cut and dry. Montoya deals with smudged borders and crooked lines.
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Jewish Noir
A short story is the perfect medium for busy people, and Jewish Noir, heralded as the first book of its kind, presents a month’s worth of short stories to delight any reader of the genre. Editor Kenneth Wishnia sums up the lure: “[ . . . ] a majority of the world’s Christians are taught that if you follow the right path, everything will turn out well for you in the end. In Judaism, you can follow the right path and still get screwed (just ask Job). That’s noir.”