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Here’s one from Killing Trout and Other Love Poems that I thought of on this Father’s Day. It’s fun to hear Dave read this one himself, at the end of it, he gives an incredulous, “Mom!”

My Father’s Old Camera Said…

the old camera said,
when I picked it up,
said something about

3 dozen grey sunsets,
before that, a factory
in Germany, it had

traveled, sat around
the shop, been opened
and closed like the mouth

of a horse, traded
on an impulse,
caught me, young,
leaning against the crescent moon
next to the wishing
well on Belle Isle,

caught my uncle catching
trout, my brother diapered
and crying in my old crib.

and before that, had seen my mother
nearly naked, smiling at it,
adjusting her fake fur stole.

Father’s Day
Poetry and Essay by Bruce Guernsey
Wild River Review, June 2008

For the buried, closure.
For the missing, space–
This Illinois distance
Where a man can walk forever,
Stubble and sky,
Where a house on the other side
Is ever the horizon.

Ten years ago this month—June, the month of Father’s Day—what was thought to be the remains of my father’s body were found in some woods along a ridge by a couple of hikers. He had disappeared three years before from a VA hospital in rural Pennsylvania. His Parkinson’s Disease had finally exhausted my mother, and she couldn’t keep him at home anymore. On most days, he was helpless, but every once in a while, he could with a struggle dress himself. Gaining momentum, he’d then shuffle about, gathering speed as he went, head-down and charging like the soldier he once was into enemy fire—that is, into whatever was in the way, be it a lamp or a shelf full of crystal, and down they’d come. And if a door were open, out he’d go, which is exactly what he did that day at the VA…[read the rest on Wild River Review]

Posted on WestConn MFA in Professional Writing , June 11, 2008:

“Hyperion has a terrific entry level opening, working as assistant to an executive editor (Brenda Copeland) and the associate publisher (Kristin Kiser). It’s a fine opportunity that would give the right person some real big-picture experience. A brief job description below. If you want to apply, please send an email to Brenda, with resume attached. Please feel free to forward this email. Brenda Copeland Executive Editor HYPERION 77 W. 66th Street – 11th Floor New York, NY 10023 P: 212.456-0143 [email protected]”

Job Description The editorial assistant provides editorial and administrative support to one Executive Editor and one VP/Associate Publisher. It is the responsibility of the assistant to ensure that the editor’s and AP’s offices are well-maintained, specifically: answer telephones, keep accurate files, and maintain calendars. For the editor, the assistant will also do the following: record submissions and rejections, draft rejection letters, make sure that author checks are requisitioned in accordance with contractual obligations, and make sure that fact sheets and other materials are submitted on time. For the editor, the assistant will also track book projects from the manuscript stage through to the arrival of the finished books and deal with post-production matters. He or she must look out for potential problems, keep an eye on deadlines, and keep editors, authors, and agents informed about production schedules and other significant deadlines. In addition the assistant will be called upon to read and evaluate manuscript submissions and draft promotional material such as flap copy, catalog copy, and audio copy. For the Associate Publisher, the assistant will keep lists for several seasons and update accordingly, schedule campaign meetings and assist with follow up with various departments (editorial, publicity, marketing, and sales), schedule sales meetings and assist with follow up.

Science Fiction, literature, and the haters
by Jake Seliger
Posted June 5, 2008 on The Story’s Story

Seliger’s essay begins with this question: “Why does so little science fiction rise to the standards of literary fiction?”

And explores this both from the perspective of a reader AND writer of SciFi. His experiences with rejection of his novel add to the mix of how SciFi is treated, and he comes part way through the essay to this commentary:

“It’s unfortunate that the entire genre gets tarred as junk by some critics and readers when in reality it’s not entirely junk—if it were, I wouldn’t write a long essay describing it. I have a theory as to why science fiction often gets labeled as junk: it values other qualities than aesthetic novelty/skill and deep characterization. It’s more concerned with ideas rather than how ideas are expressed, while the greatest literary fiction sees ideas and their expression as inextricably linked. At the same time, though, I think that science fiction’s defenders might bring on the literary snobs’ ire by doing things like calling them literary snobs when many aren’t actually snobs, but just have standards that science fiction too infrequently reaches in part for the reason I just stated. This is also why, I suspect, science fiction has trouble achieving the critical and academic recognition it should probably have, especially given its larger impact on the culture. I’m one of the defenders of good writing being good writing regardless of where it comes from, but the more science fiction I read, the more I realize so much of it just doesn’t have the skill in narrative, detail, character, sympathy and complexity, language, and dialog that readers of literary fiction demand. I still like a lot of science fiction, but most of it now causes me to roll my eyes and skip pages: characters have no life, the books have no lifeness, clichés abound, and strong setups devolve into variations on cowboys and indians.”

There is more, much more, to this thoughtful and well supported exploration, in which Seliger himself says he comes to no final conclusion. All the more for the readers and writers to consider.

Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. This new magazine is dedicated to publishing personal accounts of illness, fostering the humanistic practice of medicine, and encouraging health care advocacy. Patients and health professionals are invited to sign up as a friend to the magazine to receive the issues and/or to submit original creative work.

Stop by NewPages Magazine Stand to find publisher descriptions for new online issus from our sponsor magazines, and a list of new issues of other online literary magazines. If you’d like to be listed on this page, all you need to do is send me notice of your new issues online: denisehill-at-newpages.com. I’d certainly like to see more listings here to keep this feature going.

Winner of the Tupelo Press 2008 Snowbound Chapbook Award

Judge Dana Levin has selected Stacey Waite of Pittsburgh, PA as winner of the 2008 Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Her manuscript, titled “the lake has no saint,” will be published by Tupelo Press in 2010.

The runners up are:

Jamie O’Halloran of Los Angeles, CA for “The Visible Woman”
John Surowiecki of Amston, CT for “Mr. Niedzwiedzki’s Pink House”
Deb Casey of Eugene, OR for “Spit & Purr”

Other Finalists:

Lisa Beskin – Belchertown, MA, “Shadow Globe”
Remica Bingham – Norfolk, VA, “The Body Speaks”
John de Stefano – New York, NY, “From: Critical Opalescence and the Blueness of the Sky”
Mary Helen Molinary – Memphis, TN, “The Book of 8:38”
Howard Robertson – Eugene, OR, “Three Odes to Gaia”
Robin Beth Schaer – New York, NY, “Almost Tiger”
Suzume Shi – New London, CT, “Ao”
Jacob Shores-Arguello – Fayetteville, AR, “John Barleycorn Must Die”
Janet Sylvester – Kittery, Maine, “The Unbinding”

Semifinalists:

Hadara Bar-Nadav – Kansas City, MO, “Fable of Flesh”
Colin Cheney – Brooklyn, NY, “Here There Be Monsters”
Mark Conway – Avon, MN, “Dreaming Man, Face Down”
John de Stefano – New York, NY, “From: Three-Body Problems”
Joanne Diaz – Chicago, IL, “Violin”
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs – New York, NY, “Mongrel Angels”
Matthew Hittinger – Astoria, NY, “Spectacular Reflection”
Christina Hutchins – Albany, CA, “Dark Creek”
M. Smith Janson – Florence, MA, “Letter Written in this Life, Mailed from the Next”
Jesse Lee Kercheval – Madison, WI, “My Life as a Silent Movie”
Sandra Kohler – Dorchester, MA, “Final Summer”
Gary Copeland Lilley – Swannanoa, NC, “Wade In Da Wahtuh”
Matthew Lippman – Claverack, NY, “Moses”
Mike Maniquiz – Clovis, CA, “Cooking Frutti Di Mare on This Early Evening Before the
Night Falls on Kentucky Hillsides”
Mary Helen Molinary – Memphis, TN, “This Book of Sun”
Rusty Morrison – Richmond, CA, “Insolence”
Teresa Pfeifer – Chicopee, MA, “Little Matryoshka”
Joseph Radke – Milwaukee, WI, “A Source of Reasons”
Boyer Rickel – Tucson, AZ, “reliquary”
Reginald Shepherd – Pensacola, FL, “Photos of the Fallen World: Poems”
Page Hill Starzinger – New York, NY, “Black Tongue”
Barry Sternlieb – Richmond, MA, “Winter Crows”
Jonathan Weinert – Concord, MA, “Charged Particles”

The MFA Program of Warren Wilson College seeks a full-time resident Director, effective June 1, 2009.

The Department of English at Medgar Evers College invites applications for a full-time tenure-track position teaching Creative and Professional Writing. July 1.

Williams Collge Writing Coordinator, Academic Resource Center. The College is pleased to announce an opening for a full-time Writing Coordinator reporting to the Director of Academic Resources under the auspices of the office of the Dean of the College. Immediate.

Human Rights Index
The Human Rights Index, a continuing series, is prepared by the UI Center for Human Rights (UICHR) for publication in The Iowa Review three times annually.

First published in the Fall 2001 issue of the The Iowa Review, it is intended to suggest the global political/socio-economic context within which we read and write, reflecting a shared belief that human rights cannot be truly advanced without the virtues of the intuitive as well as the cognitive that are in each of us.

Each of the indexes provides a number followed by a description of the real life, human situation the number represents. For example, from the 2007-08 Winter issue, index on Indigenous Peoples:

4
Number of states (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States), each with sizable indigenous populations, that refused to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, endorsed by 143 other nations on 13 September 2007, even though the Declaration is technically non-binding (AFP 2007; OHCHR 2007)

The following are provided full-text on the UICHR site:

Winter 2007-08: Indigenous Peoples (#20)
Fall 2007: Global Climate Change (#19)
Spring 2007: Immigration (#18)
Winter 2006-07: Women and Armed Conflict (#17)
Fall 2006: HIV/AIDS in Africa (#16)
Spring 2006: Human Trafficking (#15)
Winter 2005-06: Water (#14)
Fall 2005: Disaster Relief (#13)
Spring 2005: Darfur (#12)
Winter 2004-05: The Iraq War (#11)
Fall 2004: Health Care (#10)
Spring 2004: Hunger (#9)
Winter 2003-04: Genocide (#8)
Fall 2003: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (#7)
Spring 2003: The United States (#6)
Winter 2002-03: Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Internally Displaced Persons (#5)
Fall 2002: 9/11 and the “War on Terror” (#4)
Spring 2002: Women (#3)
Winter 2001-02: Child Labor (#2)
Fall 2001: Three Generations of Human Rights (#1)

New book reviews posted on NewPages include the following titles: Lost Books of the Odyssey :: O Woolly City :: I Am Death :: Woman’s Guide to Mountain Climbing :: Bob, or Man on Boat :: Best of the Bellevue Literary Review :: A Man of Ideas :: Breaking It Down :: Translator’s Diary :: Human Mind :: Ravel :: Double Header :: Oh, Don’t Ask Why :: Proper Knowledge :: Do the Math