Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat is nothing like the usual cat book. Takashi Hiraide is an acclaimed poet in Japan, and this novel resembles a poem, recreating the immense world in small images, opening up to life with love and loss. It’s short like a poem, but though nostalgic and moving, it is not sentimental. The end of The Guest Cat indicates this novel evolved as a reshaping of a collection of essays and journal notes about the narrator and his wife’s relationship with a neighborhood cat Chibi, meaning “little one” in Japanese. This is a quiet, reflective, even philosophical book, which can appeal to more than cat lovers, since it is about how a relationship can change a person, how a communal animal can make one question who owns the animal, and how loss can reveal not just grief but resentment. By the end of The Guest Cat, the narrator notices and loves more, even extending his love to a house he doesn’t own. Continue reading “The Guest Cat”
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The Guest Cat
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Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
Four lines into the opening poem “The Bread” from Jeffrey Bean’s award-winning new chapbook Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, the speaker recounts the defining experience of his life: sitting down at a restaurant table with a girl. Doling out description with subtle music that captures the slowly evolving intimacy of the situation, the stanza quite literally sets the table for the flash of love’s bittersweet onset that occurs in the stanza’s final line. While the straightforward description of the scene details the outward circumstance of the meeting, the allusion to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur” captures the true scope of the meeting’s importance:
The bread, the salad, simple, oiled.
The coats on hooks, exhaling winter smoke.
The hand that was mine, the knuckles, the table, smooth oak.
The girl I’d come to meet, the sky behind her hair, shook foil.
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Why Aren’t You Reading Writer Beware®?
Writer Beware®: The Blog is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America and the Horror Writers Association: “Shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news and commentary, and a special focus on the weird and wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world.”
A recent post by Victoria Strauss is one that answers a question I have heard time and again: How Not to Seek a Literary Agent: The Perils of “Middleman” Services. Strauss begins: “I know I’ve written about this before [this links to a previous article]. But I’m seeing an increasing number of these kinds of ‘services,’ and they are all worthless.”
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Death of Humanities and Lit Flipping
Paula Reiter, Mount Mary University, speaks in a video on “Creative Teaching Techniques: Flipping the Literature Classroom” addressing “the challenge of infusing the literature classroom with creative teaching techniques.” Reiter notes, “I demonstrate how to ‘flip’ the classroom to make time for extended creative projects that involve students directly.” Even more importantly, Reiter addresses the major concern/criticism of literature in our time: Why does this matter in my life?
Access this an numerous other pedagogy articles in Teaching College Literature, an online professional publication which is open to submissions, such as sample syllabi, advice on course planning and design, teaching tips, media (PowerPoint, video, etc.), as well as suggestions for links to resources including blogs, websites and media.
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Hear This :: “Butcher Day” by Kami Westoff
The 2River View online publication of poetry, art, and theory, includes audio recordings for each of its featured poets. Each poet reads his or her own works, introducing themselves by name and title of poem. My general instinct when I find a site where an audio starts up immediately is to look for the X button to make it stop. There is no such option on The 2River View, and perturbed at first, I was grateful once I listened through “Butcher Day” by Kami Westhoff. This poem was a stunner for me. It is haunting enough in its shift between contextual imagery, but the audio recording takes all its content a step further for the reader’s experience. Westhoff’s reading aloud forced me to continue at a steady pace through the connections she makes, from the slaughter of a family cow, to the rape of her sister, to their innocence as children:
Today is butcher day. Clover drags her impossible tongue over the salt lick, slips it into one then the other nostril. Our dog, Blackie, burrows into a bone from last night’s roast, her teeth clunk low and wet until the marrow offers. . .
. . .Today we are eight and twelve, and don’t yet know there is never enough time to be forgiven.
Her reading added to the emotional gravity of the poem, which by the end had gripped me so strongly, I was on the verge of tears. Like many of the poets in this issue, Westhoff has a second poem, which the recording went directly into. I had to hit the mute button on the computer to give myself “a moment” to let that poem resonate before moving on. Other poets in this issue include Bradley J. Fest, Kathryn Haemmerle, April Krivensky, Kristin LaFollette, Michael Lauchlan, Gloria Monaghan, Darren Morris, Sherry O’Keefe, Jacqueline Dee Parker, Sally Van Doren, Kami Westhoff.
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American Short Fiction – Spring 2014
Though this issue of American Short Fiction isn’t overtly themed, Editors Rebecca Markovits and Adeena Reitberger note that they had already selected the stories when they realized “four of the five were about work, the daily grind or the vocation, the answer to what William Carlos Williams called ‘the typical American question’: What do you do?” This does indeed serve as a nice framework for the five pieces of short fiction that make up the issue, work by Tia Clark, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Antonya Nelson, Matthew Neill Null, and Rob Roensch.
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Avatar Review – 2014
Avatar Review, an online annual, “seeks to display the highest quality of writing,” as all do. And while I cannot claim that what is published in this issue is the cream of the crop, there is plenty worth consideration and worthy of merit, including poetry, prose, art, and reviews. Britt Melewski’s “On the Overnight” came with an audio recording of him reading his poem, which enhanced the feeling of the overall poem, especially his last few lines: “saying, ‘remember the absolute worst of times, / remember the fish, the fish, the fish.’”
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The Common – April 2014
An understated sophistication distinguishes The Common. At only its seventh issue, it has the tone of one who is confident of its place in the world. Many times, I paused in my reading to savor the ingenuity of a conceit or turn of phrase, but I never felt as if anyone represented in this issue was trying too hard to impress. They don’t have to: firmly in control of their craft, they steer the reader to exactly where they want her to go.
One cannot help but be carried along in the surprising and delightful rhythms of the “speechifying” of the non-native English speaker, or perhaps a native speaker of a variety of South Asian English—certainly as much a standard as any in this age where English is the world’s dominant lingua franca—in Manohar Shetty’s poem “Toast.
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Devil’s Lake – 2014
Published at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Devil’s Lake offers a sampling of poetry, fiction, and visual art twice a year.
I spent a great deal of time on Matt Morton’s “Spring Bulletin,” and although I don’t think I’ve unlocked all the keys to the poem, I lingered on each moment, trying to take it all in. Written in the second-person point of view, it causes me to be hesitant moving through the poem as I read the lines, “Something / vaguely unsettling about the quality of air. / Something about the humidity that left us / glancing over our shoulders when we mowed the lawn.”
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Frogpond – Winter 2014
Frogpond is the subscription/membership publication of the Haiku Society of America, and for anybody the least bit into haiku or who would like to learn about haiku and the many forms of traditional Japanese poetry and modernized versions of it, this is one of THE publications to be reading.
Frogpond regularly publishes haiku, senryu, haibun, rengay (and other short sequential forms), renku (and other long sequence forms), essays, and book reviews. Each issues begins with a full page devoted to the winner of the Museum of Haiku Literature Award (currently $100) for the best previously unpublished work appearing in the last issue of Frogpond.
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Gulf Coast – Summer/Fall 2014
The University of Houston’s Department of English publishes Gulf Coast, a literary journal started by Donald Barthelme and Philip Lopate in 1982, under the Texas-worthy name Domestic Crude. The current name was adopted in 1986; in 2013 the magazine merged with the Texas art journal Art Lies and began to publish writings about art in each issue, as well as the visual art which has always appeared. The list of distinguished contributors to this issue originates far beyond Houston and Texas, although local authors turn up as well.
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Heavy Feather Review – April 2014
This issue had a lot going on in it, and I am quite frankly left feeling run through the ringer. A full-length chapbook by Colin Winnette, titled “Follow Through,” was stuck right in the middle of this issue! It was intriguing work comprised of short, paragraph style prose poetry, but it completely distracted me from trying to understand the issue as its own piece of work. (I found out, after researching the press, this chapbook placement is a common practice with Heavy Feather Review.)
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The Iowa Review – Spring 2014
Iowa is often considered a fabled place in the world of American letters, and The Iowa Review lives up to the expectations that such a powerful name bestows. The journal has been publishing some of the country’s finest authors since 1970, and in 2014 it’s still incredibly strong.
This issue, the first with Editor Harilaos Stecopoulos at the helm, includes poetry, fiction, essays, and artwork, all consistent with the journal’s previous issues. The issue also includes two interviews and two reviews, both new features, as well as a pairing of three Amber Tamblyn poems with images by, among others, filmmaker and painter David Lynch.
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The Labletter – 2014
The Labletter “has its roots in the Oregon Lab, the name given to a group of artists and their annual gathering.” The magazine began as a way for these artists to stay in contact and share work, and in 2008 it went public—a move fortunate for audiences who care about sophistication, quality, and commitment to art.
In this issue, you’ll find generously-reproduced art, from the front cover inward; exquisite short stories; three beautifully-crafted essays, on collage, theater, and clogging; and fifteen strong poems by four inspired poets.
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Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2014
This was the first issue of Poet Lore I have ever read, and it will not be the last! Well over 100 pages of outstanding poems, poetic history, interviews, and reviews made this more than just another issue to review; they turned it into an outright gripping read. While most of the works were brief (under one printed page), large-scale themes of loss and death are woven throughout. The editors did an outstanding job of finding beautiful poems that also highlighted positive moments in life through the pain. I am not lying when I tell you how a couple of pieces nearly brought tears to my eyes.
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Pretty Owl Poetry – Summer 2014
Pretty Owl Poetry is a brand new online quarterly that publishes poetry and, in opposition to the title of the journal, flash fiction. The poetry is very accessible, not overly complicated or using fancy language.
Take, for example, Clare Welsh’s “Almost Exorcism,” a poem broken into three pieces about children’s reaction to a lump “on the ribs of a dog.” The first part have the children imagining it as a second heart…
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River Teeth – Spring 2014
The editors of River Teeth are candid about their selection process. About half of what they publish comes from unsolicited submissions. The rest may come from authors whose work they’ve heard at conferences, online or regional publications, commissioned work, or from friends, acquaintances, and the editors themselves. “We know all this sounds more than a little intuitive,” writes the editor, “even presumptuous, and quite a bit less than arm’s length. That’s the nature of love, we guess.”
In this issue, animals, parenting, and the nature of memory are the doors authors use into insights about life.
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Southern Women’s Review – 2014
This issue of Southern Women’s Review has a “Bust” theme and is full and broad in exciting and enriching literature including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As I was traveling at the time of reading this issue, I took special note of Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s piece in which the narrator is in China teaching English but is feeling isolated and very much an outsider. Although she wants to learn her own way into the culture, she can’t seem to and retreats back to English literature to find her own comfort.
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Under the Gum Tree – July 2014
The stories in Under the Gum Tree feel very authentic; it is easy to identify with the characters and narrators. In Chelsea Schott’s “The Frederick Boy,” I was transported back to being a teenage girl, that feeling that your crush is the whole world, the terror of a disapproving parent, going over the day’s events again and again in your mind. It begins: “I try not to think of that day last summer on the back of John’s motorcycle—knowing if I think about it too much, if I let myself wander back into that day, I will dissolve into the desire I can’t resist—of retracing every step I took, walking over the same paths…”
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Conjunctions – Spring 2014
The first and most obvious thing to notice about Conjunctions is that its biannual print anthology is enormous. This issue is more than 300 pages, featuring work by Brian Evenson, Laura van den Berg, Robin Hemley, Gabriel Blackwell, and others. The theme of the issue, “exile,” is addressed both literally and figuratively, with work often revolving around ideas of social exile and self-exile as well as physical displacement.
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Cream City Review – Spring/Summer 2014
Based at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Cream City Review is a fun, slim publication that opens its pages wide to different aesthetics and styles. There are magical stories set side-by-side with realist flash fiction, and in the middle of the issue is a special feature on Native writing. It’s rare that I’m able to say I have no clue what to expect from one page to the next in a literary journal, but in Cream City Review, that’s absolutely the case. This is not a criticism, though: instead of seeming scattered or overloaded, the journal is a merry-go-round of brightly colored poems and stories.
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decomP – August 2014
With a mix of flash prose, short prose, poetry, and book reviews, decomP delivers an online literary magazine monthly, with a fair tasting of good literature and samples of audio readings throughout. Adam and Eve’s marital and sex life comes to life in the first included piece, Adam Gnuse’s “Adam, at Night.” Although Eve is comforted by her child, Adam worries and is resentful about his eventual death, seeming to say that even in the beginning of life, the first man to live still questions life after death: “He wonders whether it will be like going back somewhere dark and warm, somewhere safe. Whether it will it be something like growing up. The thoughts don’t comfort him.”
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Dogwood – 2014
This issue of Dogwood serves up a generous helping of surprising and original reading. The talent is evident; even when a poem or story can use more polish, I am interested and compelled to read on. A variety of styles is represented, some more experimental than others, but I never feel lost, either literally or emotionally, or feel that the writers draw too much attention to themselves at the expense of the writing.
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Five Points – 2014
This issue of Five Points is an issue of reflection, from its opening tribute to Maxine Kumin, in which associate editor Beth Gylys remembers researching the literary friendship between Kumin and Anne Sexton for her college senior thesis, to the poems of Ellen Bass and Barbara Hamby, who reflect on meals of pork chops and fried chicken, respectively. We also have the reflective photographs of Vesna Pavlović through his project “Fabrics of Socialism” and Kirk West’s photos of blues venues, artists, and objects. The issue also includes interviews with Kumin, West, and Stephen Dunn.
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James Dickey Review – Spring/Summer 2014
Published at Lynchburg College in Virginia, this review has roots in the South as deep as James Dickey’s. But while its content aims “to maintain an artistic and intellectual connection” to Dickey and his work, the interpretation is generous enough to allow for a good mix of Dickey scholarship, original poetry, essays not about the author but maybe concerning things he would care about, and book reviews. One might say the spirit of Dickey is hovering over the journal, so that, for example, the wilder shores of the avant garde or identity politics do not appear in this issue. We are in recognizable Dickey territory the whole way.
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The Midwest Quarterly – Winter 2014
This all-poetry issue of The Midwest Quarterly was a treat that did not disappoint. I grew up in a rural community, population south of 4000, and we were the county seat: these poems spoke straight to my childhood. As with all good poems, I’m sure there are pieces here that will speak to city folk as well, but the trip down memory lane was outstanding for me. The only gripe I have about the entire issue is that there was no table of contents for easy reference, so it took some effort to relocate my favorites for closer inspection.
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Modern Haiku – Summer 2014
Last month I reviewed Frogpond and noted it as one of THE journals for haiku enthusiasts. Modern Haiku is another of THE journals haikuists should be reading. This journal has been in continuous print since 1969, with a masthead of esteemed haiku experts, each a haiku household name: Kay Titus Mormino, Robert Spiess, Lee Gurga, Charles Trumbull, and the current editor, Paul Miller.
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Poetry – July/August 2014
Because the Poetry Foundation’s website is such a fixture of my online reading, buying an issue of Poetry always make me feel like I’m donating to public radio. Lifting an issue from the bookstore shelf and leafing through it, I can almost hear the faintly accusatory voice of a pledge drive broadcaster playing the guilt card, asking, “How often do you find yourself enjoying the vast resource that is the Poetry Foundation website, or sending the articles and poems you find there to friends? Isn’t that worth $3.75 a month to you?
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River Styx – 2014
With this double-issue blowout, River Styx celebrates its thirty-ninth year (“because who wants to turn 40?”) as one of the country’s most “thoughtful yet accessible” literary ambassadors. Boasting a long list of notable and returning contributors and brimming with poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art of great depth that’s also deeply entertaining, this issue is River Styx turned up to eleven. Nowhere is this more evident than in the issue’s poetry. Featuring new poems from Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, Jeffrey Bean, Stephen Dunn, Albert Goldbarth, Ted Kooser, Lawrence Raab, Robert Wrigley, and A.E. Stallings, among others, River Styx’s latest issue is Xanadu for those who enjoy provocative free verse and formal poetry of a largely narrative bent.
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Wicked Banshee Press – Spring 2014
After a brief interview with Denise Frohman and a note from Women of the World Poetry Slam Host City Chair, Wicked Banshee Press (a brand new online journal) plunges right into the poetry, and it doesn’t fool around with any feet-wetting. The very first poem sends a strong emotional sting with Tara Betts’s “Throwing Away a Wedding Dress.” Describing it as “dented and dew-dotted, dried / fondant, crumbling and collapsed / in loose folds,” a metaphor for the entire marriage.
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Your Impossible Voice – Summer 2014
Your Impossible Voice, a newer quarterly e-publication, has taken strides to give a great literary experience through the professional and engaging look of their website to the well-formatted work of their publication. As far as the work goes? Well, let’s explore. Karen An-hwei Lee’s “Letter from Orange County: Twelve Fragments” falls under the category of nonfiction in this issue, and is a beautifully written homage to a past place, or rather to a current place that is no longer what it was, but I could argue that it could also fall under the category of poetry with lines like these…
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Beecher’s Contest Winners
Beecher‘s Spring 2014 issue publishes the winners of their recent contests in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction:
Poetry Contest Winner, selected by Frank X. Walker
Roy Beckemeyer’s “Tree Shadows“
“tree shadows
angle
their skeletal souls
like Chinese
script….”
Nonfiction Contest Winner, selected by Eula Biss
Anne Penniston Grunsted’s “The Art of Not Turning Away”
“My five-year-old son Bobby has terrible, all-consuming anxiety at the doctor’s office. Any doctor can trigger him—his doctor, my doctor, a vet. As soon as he realizes where he is, he starts to retch. I hold him. I distract him. I gently whisper calm assurances. His service dog sits near, providing comfort the best he can. Nothing, really, helps. We just wait together for the anxiety to pass…”
Fiction Contest Winner, selected Manuel Munoz
Penny Perkins’s “Car Ride Through Corn Fields (1975)”
“She is sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon. Her father is driving an scratching himself. Her mother is in the front seat next to her father, wearing sunglasses over puffy, red-stained eyes and looking straight ahead at the lonely two-lane highway that stretches out before them on the flat, Midwestern plain. She is a child, almost a teenager. She is the almost-teenager child of her parents and there is no escaping that oppressive fact. Even now, especially now, here on a teary Sunday afternoon drive.
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Musicworks Music Sampler
Keeping with its tagline, “Exploration in Sound,” Musicworks truly does provide music “for curious ears.” Based in Canada with subscription service to the US, each of the three issues per year includes a sampler CD of some truly unique music. In an almost overwhelming abundance of “new” to listen to from around the globe, Musicworks presentation is a helpful sifting of great art. Some of the tracks are available for listening on their website, but, for the truly ecclectic, two seconds into the first track on CD #119 (Jerusalem in My Heart – using buzuk, Analog Solutions Telemark synth, Oberheim two-voice synth and voice, and tape delay) should have you looking to have this publication delivered to your doorstep. As with any sampler, there may be some that don’t quite suit, but that’s what I love about samplers: the ability to try something completely new. There were a few I wouldn’t necessarily choose to listen to again – but I did enjoy them for the artistic quality and unique approach.
From their website: “For over thirty years Musicworks magazine has been dedicated to the development of new and passionate audiences for experimental music. Promoting both emerging and established experimental musicians, Musicworks features composers, improvisers, instrument designers, and artists who work in genres such as radio, electroacoustics, concert music, sound installation, and sound sculpture. This tri-annual magazine, along with its curated CDs, dynamic website and outreach programs creates an inclusive community within which to exchange and develop ideas, and tantalize curious listeners with adventurous music.”
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Trust a Librarian? Who, me?
After yet another season of school boards banning books most of them have never bothered to read for themselves (except, oddly enough, for all the naughty bits), Don Flood’s commentary in the Cape Gazette provides a thoughtful response, exemplifying the professional respect librarians (and educators) deserve:
Perhaps I’m going out on a limb here, but it is my belief that librarians don’t choose their career out of a desire to destroy the minds and corrupt the values of our nation’s youth. They become librarians because of a deep, passionate interest in reading and education, a desire to help students develop into intelligent adults who think for themselves.
Read the rest here: Districts Should Take Advantage of Librarian’s Expertise
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Summer Writing Prompts on Ploughshares
Summer-Inspired Writing Prompts posted by Anca Szilagyi on the Ploughshares Blog includes short lists of prompts for five-minute prompts (#1 List all the scary things you associate with summer.), ten-minute prompts (#5 Describe the weirdest summer camp you can imagine.), and twenty-minute or longer prompts (#2 Write a story around the ideas of ripening and rotting.). There’s still plenty of summer left to use these motivators, and bring an end to any summer writing procrastination!
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Hayden’s Ferry Publishes Online Content
Hayden’s Ferry Review says that every month, they receive hundreds of quality submissions (“ambitious, relevant, and emotionally moving”), but they are saddened by the fact that their print journal only allows for a small fraction of them to be published. In an attempt to remedy this situation, they have decided to create an online portion of their journal, for “writing that is timely, writing that excites us, writing that challenges our preconceived notions of form, writing that we just can’t wait to share with the world,” the write.
They call it “The Dock.” Here is the explanation: “A dock is a safe space to rest between journeys, and it is also a means of connection. We hope that this special section of the blog will serve both of these purposes.” Currently, there is one piece up there for July, Mark Dostert’s “The Saint of 3F,” which you can read now.
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August Broadside :: Dear Atom Bomb,
August’s Broadsided Press collaboration, “Dear Atom Bomb,” features a poem by Catherine Pierce and art by Ira Joel Haber:
“. . . In Science class movies, you puffed men like microwaved marshmallows, raked blood from their insides, and always I could feel your heat like a massive cloak around my shoulders.”
Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Sean Hill, Gabrielle Bates, Alexandra Teague, and Lori Zimmermann, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation. Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides. Broadsided Vectors can download the poem in full color or black and white and poster it around town, campus, wherever! Become a Broadsided Vector today!
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Where’d You Find That [Poetry]?
Found Poetry Review is a print publication, but you can check out some of each issue’s content online. Issue Seven is fresh and includes “1816 Was a Year of Unpredictable Weather” by Reiser Perkins, sourced from email spam:
Everything at night is a silence you pass into your mother, the same green of aspens surrounded by snow and the way light moves through a day, or a hundred days. Cold sun draws the chariot parallax with stars.
“Driving in Ablation Fog” by Sonja Johanson, sourced from The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich: “Blue leaves peel off, / we have weather / instead of wine.” “Again” by Sennah Yee, sourced from Google Search autocomplete results, four search result boxes:
And “Born. . . ” by Peter Vaentine, sourced from a New York Times crossword puzzle: “high in the crows nest up high in the smoke of the stars.” Found Poetry Review‘s website includes helpful information about types of found poetry and fair use, as well as submission advice on what types of found poetry they “rarely see done well.” Found Poetry Review‘s editors are also available to travel to schools, writing centers, literary festival, etc. to give workshops and talks on found poetry, with “discounts available if your town has a dueling piano bar.”
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Dorothy Allison :: Writing About Place is More than Just Space
“I cannot abide a story told to me by a numb, empty voice that never responds to anything that’s happening, that doesn’t express some feelings in response to what it sees. Place is not just what your feet are crossing to get to somewhere. Place is feeling, and feeling is something a character expresses. More, it is something the writer puts on the page—articulates with deliberate purpose. If you keep giving me these eyes that note all the details—if you tell me the lawn is manicured but you don’t tell me that it makes your character both deeply happy and slightly anxious—then I’m a little bit frustrated with you. I want a story that’ll pull me in. I want a story that makes me drunk. I want a story that feeds me glory. And most of all, I want a story I can trust. I want a story that is happening in a real place, which means a place that has meaning and that evokes emotions in the person who’s telling me the story. Place is emotion.”
From “Place” by Dorothy Allison, posted on the Tin House blog, originally published in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House.
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Some Literary News Links :: August 2014
The World’s 20 Most Stunning Bookstores, according Fodor’s Travel (Sorry Powell’s! But you’re on my list!)
Should Smoking be Banned From Children’s Books?
Queer Book Diorama Show opens in New York
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Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
This cover of Southern Poetry Review features Cocoon Series #115 by E. E. McCollum, an artist from Fairfax, VA that focuses on the human figure through his fine art photography.
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The cover of The Fiddlehead‘s latest issue may be mostly black, but the color of it is stunning. It’s Black Tulip by James Wilson.
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If with this cover Fence wanted to stand out in the pile of literary magazines, they certainly have. The artwork is a video still from Priapus Agonistes by Mary Reid Kelley with Patrick Kelley.
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Brevity Nonfiction Craft Essays
Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction published online regularly features insightful craft essays with each issue. With the emphasis on “brief” (under 750 words) nonfiction, the essays allow authors more word count to explore aspects of writing. The May 2014 issue includes “Can You Hear Me Now? How Reading Our Writing Aloud Informs Audiences and Ourselves” by Kate Carroll de Gutes, “The Editor at the Breakfast Table” by Charles J. Shields – a perspective on the need for writers to both seek and be receptive to feedback, and “The Nose Knows: How Smells Can Connect Us to the Past and Lead Us to the Page” by Jeremy B. Jones, in which he explores “how our awareness of the undeniable connection between scent and the past helps us to come upon essays. How might our noses get us to the page?”
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Geist Postcard Story Winners
The Summer 2014 issue of Geist magazine features the winners of the 10th Annual Geist Literary Postcard Story Contest:
First Prize
“Nettie, Rose, Daphne and Ginger” by James MacSwain
Second Prize
“Do You Have a Lighter” by Erin Kirsh
Third Prize
“Sand” by D. M. Long
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August Book Reviews on NewPages
In case you missed it last week, August’s book reviews are now up for perusing.
Nonfiction books received a lot of love this month:
“Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur is a curious history. On one hand, it tells the story of the ‘coolie’ indenturment in the British Empire (with a great introductory note about the use of the word ‘coolie’). On the other hand, it’s a story of family legacy. Coolie Woman grounds itself in the legitimacy of archival sources, interviews, and photos—its footnotes and documentation are extensive.”
In The Kama Sutra Diaries:Intimate Journeys through Modern India, “[Sally] Howard undertakes the journey through modern India to reexamine society’s tacit condoning of sexual assaults, verbal abuses, and casual groping, sometimes referred to as ‘eve-teasing,’ a uniquely Indian term that connotes anything ranging from whistles from roadside Romeos to flashing.”
“Robert Root begins Happenstance by explaining his plan for the memoir: ‘to write about one hundred days of my childhood in the next one hundred days of my age, to capture one hundred recollections of the past over one hundred days of the future.’”
In Phoning Home by Jacob M. Appel, “The essays span the writer’s professional and personal lives, each adding depth and perception to the other. Essays on Appel’s Jewish heritage and family are at once poignant, witty and insightful.”
If nonfiction isn’t your favorite, there are several other reviews to enjoy: American Innovations, fiction by Rivka Galchen; Short, an international anthology featuring short stories and other short prose forms edited by Alan Ziegler; How a Mirage Works, poetry by Beverly Burch; Medea, fiction by Richard Matturo; and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, poetry by Bianca Stone.
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Looking for Lit Mag Reviewers
NewPages has some room for a few new literary magazine reviewers. If interested, first please read the information about reviewing on our site:
and here:
Guidelines for Lit Mag Reviews
Then, if still interested, send an inquiry with a sample magazine review to Literary Magazine Review Editor Kirsten McIlvenna at kirstenmcilvenna [at] newpageswork [dot] com.
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Janice Tokar on Being a Poet: Best & Worst
Open Book Toronto: What is the best thing about being a poet….and what is the worst?
Janice Tokar: Best two things: the heightened flow state on those rare occasions when a poem catches fire and words spontaneously pour out; the creative and generous people I’ve met through writing. Worst two things: being stuck with a line mid-poem that has the exact right words but the wrong rhythm; the inevitable self-doubt and second-guessing that flutters about after I press SEND.
the rest of the interview on Open Book Toronto, “celebrating and profiles Toronto and Ontario’s non-stop literary scene, with a special focus on the books and events produced by Ontario’s independent, Canadian-owned publishers.”
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“Kudzu Review” is “Kudzu House Quarterly”
Kudzu Review has big news! Starting August 1, they changed their name to Kudzu House Quarterly (and the press to Kudzu House Press) and got a new website to go along with the revamp. Instead of a biannual publication, Kudzu House Quarterly, as the title implies, will come out with quarterly issues: “the spring equinox eChapbook (Issue 1); summer solstice creative issue (Issue 2), which is usually themed; a collection of scholarly essays in the fall (Issue 3); and a winter solstice creative issue (Issue 4) which is usually open-themed.” They also have plans for an anthology at the end of each year. The site is brand new, so not everything is up and running yet, but you can check it out here.
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A&U America’s AIDS Magazine Seeks Submissions
As a national, nonprofit HIV/AIDS magazine, the mission of Art & Understanding is to collect, archive, publish and distribute the growing body of art, activism, and current events emanating from the AIDS pandemic. It was created for the HIV-affected community. The editors are interested in publishing articles about AIDS-related advocacy, treatment and care, community-based organizations and campaigns, and artists and creative writers responding to the pandemic. The editors are looking for writers of all serostatuses to help use showcase a wide range of perspectives about living with HIV/AIDS. A&U publishes feature articles, viewpoint/essays, reviews, and literary submissions – poetry, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, as well as visual works. For more information, visit the A&U submissions guidelines page.
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August Broadsided :: Dear Atom Bomb,
August’s Broadsided Press collaboration, “Dear Atom Bomb,” features a poem by Catherine Pierce and art by Ira Joel Haber:
“. . . In Science class movies, you puffed men like microwaved marshmallows, raked blood from their insides, and always I could feel your heat like a massive cloak around my shoulders.”
Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Sean Hill, Gabrielle Bates, Alexandra Teague, and Lori Zimmermann, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.
Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.
Broadsided Vectors can download the poem in full color or black and white and poster it around town, campus, wherever! Become a Broadsided Vector today!
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Driven to Abstraction
Waldrop, co-founder and publisher of Burning Deck Books, an extraordinary translator, and an accomplished poet whose work I have always found utterly breathtaking, just keeps getting better. I admire Waldrop’s lyrical stamina—she sustains long series of related poems with impeccable control over every syllable, there is nothing superfluous, careless, or casual—and her ability to ground the abstract and abstract from the grounded, from the world of objects and circumstances (driven, as she is, to abstraction). Continue reading “Driven to Abstraction”