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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!

In Memoriam :: Grant Burns

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the loss of one of our dearest friends here at NewPages: Grant Burns, a university librarian, better known to our readers as Uncle Frank in his regular column of socio-political commentary.

His articles were fiercely poignant, politically charged, and steeped with emotion and intellect. Had we not lost Grant a few years back, I’m sure he’d still be writing for NewPages today and as fiery as ever about what’s now going on in politics and around the world – most especially this last campaign bout. Reading back through his archived columns is a sharp reminder of pains suffered these past eight years, and brings a twinge of remorse that Grant could not have been here to witness the end of the Bush regime.

His guiding words are sorely missed, as is the kind character of the man behind them.

New Names at Tupelo Press

Tupelo Press has announced that Jim Schley of South Strafford, Vermont, has been hired as Managing Editor. Cassandra Cleghorn of Williamstown, Massachusetts, will become Associate Editor for Poetry and Nonfiction, and Grace Dane Mazur of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will become Fiction Editor.

Jewish Fiction Writers’ Conference

If you write adult fiction for the Jewish market, this conference is for you. Meet and network with top publishing professionals, including publicist Shira Dicker (Shira Dicker Media International), writer Erika Dreifus (The Practicing Writer), literary agent David Forrer (Inkwell Management), publicity direc-tor/acquiring editor Cary Goldstein (Warner Twelve), author Jeffrey Hantover, editor Lara Heimert (Basic Books), editorial director Altie Karper (Schocken Books/Random House), author Binnie Kirshenbaum (Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts), author Liel Leibovitz, publisher Elisabeth Scharlatt (Algonquin Books) and author Darin Strauss. Whether you are a new author or have already been published, meet experts who can help you get your work into print. Call 212.415.5544 or email library-at-92Y.org for information.

Sunday, March 15, 2009, 9:00am-5:00pm
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
New York, NY

CFS :: Shenandoah Celebrates Flannery O’Connor

Shenandoah announces the celebration of the journal’s 60th anniversary with a special issue centering on the works of Flannery O’Connor. The editor seeks essays, poems, short stories, reviews, photographs and other artwork about, related to or in honor of the fiction and life of Ms. O’Connor.

Deadline: October 1, 2009

A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the best O’Connor-related work published in the issue, which is planned for fall 2010. See website for complete details.

Perennial Poetry Postcard Project

Okay, so you’ve gone and done it. You have made the New Years Resolution to write more, to be diligent, to keep to a schedule, yadda yadda. Alrighty then, this is just the kick in the pants you need: The Prerennial Poetry Postcard Project from Concrete Wolf Press. Add your name to the list of over a hundred others, and then each week, you send a postcard poem to the next person down on the list from your name. In return, the bottom of the list goes to the top of the list, so you will receive poems as well.

This is organized by Paul Nelson and Lana Ayers (Concrete Wolf), the same people who created the August Poetry Postcard Project, which entails writing and sending a poem a day for the month of August. I participated in this last year, and HIGHLY recommend it! I’ll admit – I didn’t always send a poem a day, but I did make up for it when I could, and finished out the month on time.

As for the Prerennial Project – I guess we’ll see how it goes! Won’t you join me?

Narrative Fall Fiction Contest Winners

Narrative Magazine announced the winners and finalists of their Fall Fiction Contest:

FIRST PRIZE
Jackie Thomas-Kennedy “You Cannot Lie about a Mountain”

SECOND PRIZE
Richard Bausch “Reverend Thornhill’s Wife”

THIRD PRIZE
Russell Working “Evil Onions”

FINALISTS
Nathaniel Bellows “Forgiveness”
Patricia Engel “The Bridge”
Peter Fromm “Peas”
Abby Frucht “The Dead Car”
Alicia Gifford “Afterlife”
Laura Marello “First Love”
Jerry D. Mathes II “Red Flag Warning”
Viet Thanh Nyugen “Arthur Arellano”
Jason Magabo Perez “Megastardom
Ron Tanner “Art Lesson”

The Third-Person Story Contest, with a First Prize of $3,000, a Second Prize of $1,500, a Third Prize of $750, and ten finalists receiving $100 each, is open to fiction and nonfiction entries from all writers.

Entry deadline: March 31

Glimmer Train Family Matters Winners :: 2008

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories of their October Family Matters competition.

First place: Karen Outen of Upper Marlboro, MD, wins $1200 for “Inside the Universe of His Parents”. Her story will be published in the Spring 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in February 2010.

Second place: Dana Kinstler of Tivoli, NY, wins $500 for “Eclipse”. Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing her prize to $700.

Third place: Luke Fiske of Cold Spring, NY, wins $300 for “Beautiful Jewish Women Will Sleep with You for Free”.

This quarterly competition is open to all writers for stories about family, with a word count range of 500-12,000.

Also: Fiction Open competition (deadline soon approaching! January 2)
Glimmer Train hosts this competition quarterly, and first place is $2000 plus publication in the journal. It’s open to all writers, no theme restrictions, and word count range is 2000-20,000.

Writing Institute :: Juniper at UMass

Juniper Summer Writing Institute
& The Institute for Young Writers
University of Massachusetts Amherst
June 21-27, 2009
The University of Massachusetts MFA Program, one of the nation’s oldest and finest creative writing programs, invites you to the beautiful Pioneer Valley for a week of intensive writing workshops, craft sessions, readings, Q&As, and manuscript consultations. Faculty include: James Tate, Lydia Davis, Mark Doty, Charles d’Ambrosio, Dara Wier, Noy Holland, Matthew Zapruder, Paul Lisicky, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Holly Black, Lisa Olstein, Kelly Link, Alex Phillips, Chris Bachelder, Arisa White, and Shauna Seliy.

New Lit on the Block :: The Chaffey Review

The Chaffey Review is dedicated to the promotion of literary arts and is published annually by the students and faculty of Chaffey College. The editorial collective culls from the creative writing and journalism programs, providing effectual experience for students to learn about the publishing industry.

The inaugural issue includes a piece given to the journal by David Foster Wallace before his death. The editorial for the journal includes the details of Michelle Dowd’s meeting with Wallace and a dedication of the journal in his memory.

Also included in this issue are works of fiction by John McIntyre, Chelsea Redford, S.D. Asher, and Breinne Morasse, poetry by D.M. Shepherd, Chase Pielak, Brian McConnell, Robert Piluso, and Eleanor Paynter, and creative non-fiction by Renee Summerfield, Sandy Harber, and Angela Bartlett – as well as many other authors.

The Chaffey Review accepts poems, short stories, and creative non-fiction. From the numerous submissions we receive, we accept only the finest, regardless of genre, selections filled with style and surprise, that pay attention to craft, language, and the story well told.

Grace Paley Fans

Grace Paley fans, you’ll want to pick up a copy of the most recent Massachusetts Review (or better yet, subscribe!). The entire issue is devoted to Paley and includes works by Mark Doty, Janet Kauffman, Terry Gross, Naomi Shihab Nye, William O’Rourke, and of course many selections by Grace Paley as well as contributions from her daughter, Nora Paley. Eight pages of Paley’s manuscript are included, complete with her handwritten notes.

In Memoriam :: Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, universally acclaimed as one of the greatest British playwrights of his generation, has died.

The Nobel Prize winner lost his battle with cancer on Christmas Eve, his agent confirmed. He was 78.

Pinter, who also enjoyed success as a screenwriter for film and television, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, being hailed by the awarding committee as “the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century”.

Read more on The Times website.

Awards :: New Letters Readers Awards

Announcing Winners of the 2008 New Letters Readers Awards, distinguished by readers from volume 74, issues 1, 2, 3, and 4:

Winning Poem: “Hangman,” by Jennifer Maier

Winning Essays (a tie): “How to Succeed in Po Biz,” by Kim Addonizio, and “Mrs. Wright’s Bookshop,” by Thomas Larson

Winning Story: “Two Studies in Entropy,” by Sara Pritchard

Essay Runner-Up: “Authority,” by Kelly Cherry
Poetry Runner-Up: “Ultrasound,” by Kristin Berger

Honorable Mentions:
In Fiction: “Intercourse: Couples in Six Short Stories,” by Robert Olen Butler; “In Africa,” by Edward Hoagland; “Mixed Breeding,” by Scott Solomon; “Honesty,” by Ellen Wilbur; “Black Step,” by Daniel Woodrell.

In Poetry: “Blue Room,” by Peter Balakian; The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, Cantos I-V, a new translation, by Mary Jo Bang; “Once Out of Nature,” for Jim Simmerman 1952-2006, by Mark Irwin; “some other god,” by Michael Joyce; “The Palmer Method,” by William Trowbridge.

In the Essay: “Why I Write Now,” by Kelly Cherry.

Other Writers Distinguished by Our Readers:
Willis Barnstone, Beverly Blasingame, Deborah Bogen, Catherine Browder, Patricia Clark, Desmond Egan, Nathan Englander, B.H. Fairchild, Inge Genefke, Robert Gibb, Albert Goldbarth, M. Nasorri Pavone, David Ray, Adrienne Su, Melvin B. Tolson, David Wagoner, Nancy White, Anne-E. Wood.

storySouth Change of Guard

storySouth‘s new publisher will be Spring Garden Press in Greensboro, North Carolina. storySouth‘s new editor is Terry Kennedy, the Associate Director of the MFA Writing Program at UNCG Greensboro and the editor of Spring Garden Press. Joining him as fiction editor is Drew Perry, a UNCG alum who teaches fiction writing at Elon University. Julie Funderburk, who previously served as one of storySouth‘s associate editors, will be the poetry editor, while Andrew Saulters, who created the websites for the UNCG MFA Program, The Greensboro Review, and Spring Garden Press, will be storySouth‘s new designer.

Jason Sanford, founding editor and former publisher, will continue to run the magazine’s Million Writers Award, but otherwise all the current storySouth editors will be fading into the journal’s background.

In Memoriam :: Ian MacMillan

MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing recently bid farewell to Ian MacMillan, who served as its fiction editor for many years. A recipient of the Hawaii Award for Literature, the Elliott Cades Award for Literature, and numerous other prizes and distinctions, Ian passed away on 18 December after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Ian was also a professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i, where he taught creative writing since 1966. His first book, Light and Power (University of Missouri Press, 1980), won the Associated Writing Programs Award. He has published four books set in Hawai‘i: a novel entitled The Red Wind (Mutual Publishing, 1998); and three story collections from Anoai Press, Exiles from Time (1998), Squid-Eye (1999), and Ullambana (2002). He also published a trilogy of novels set in World War II: Proud Monster (North Point Press, 1987), Orbit of Darkness (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), and Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising (Steerforth Press, 1999, Penguin Books, 2000), which won the 2000 PEN-USA-West Fiction Award. He made over a hundred appearances in such literary and commercial magazines as Paris Review, Iowa Review, Gettysburg Review, and MANOA and appeared in such anthologies as The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best of Triquarterly. For his work as a writer and teacher, he received the 1992 Hawai‘i Award for Literature, the highest literary honor in the state.

POWDER (book trailer Nov. 2008)

Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq
An interesting look at the latest in book marketing – the book trailer. Powder is now available from Kore Press – with a unique online feature: “Send a Copy to Your Congressmember.” You click and pay, and Kore will ship it directly to your favorite or least favorite senator. House Members and Military Generals will soon be added.

Cave Wall Updates

Rhett Iseman Trull, Editor of Cave Wall tells me they are now able to take online orders for subscriptions. REMEMBER: Lit mag subscriptions make great holiday gifts! Order online now and let your recipient know they can expect their gift throughout the new year!

ArtBistro :: Artist Community Online

ArtBistro brings members of the visual art community together to network, advance careers, and to foster a community with exclusive benefits where information about artists and designers is provided by artists and designers. Included on the site: News, Portfolios, Videos, Jobs, Education, and more – free sign-up required to access some content.

Conference & CFP :: African American Literature

Celebrating African American Literature: The Novel Since 1988
Penn State U
Oct 23 – 24, 2009

This conference will cover contemporary novelists and their novels produced and published since 1988. The meeting is designed to attract scholars and educators from a variety of fields, including American and African American literary studies, cultural studies, rhetoric, African American studies, and ethnic studies.

CFP: paper, panel, and roundtable proposals on theoretical, critical, or pedagogical approaches to works produced since 1988. Especially interested in proposals that address the work of featured novelists Alice Randall and Mat Johnson. Proposals focusing on satire, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, or any of the topics listed below are also welcomed. Selected essays will once again be edited for publication. Deadline: Feb 5

Kore Press Award Announced

Kore Press First Book Award
Judged by Patricia Smith

Congratulations to Heather Cousins of the University of Georgia, winner of the Kore Press 2009 First Book Award for her poetry collection Something in the Potato Room.

1st runner-up
Mortal Geography by Alexandra Teague
Oakland, CA

2nd runner-up
Threshold by Jennifer Richter
Corvalis, OR

3rd runner-up
American Elegy by Elisa Pulido
San Juan Capistrano, CA

Settling on War and Peace

The most recent issue of New England Review includes in its Readers Notebook feature an essay by Michael R. Katz, “War and Peace in Our Time.” This essay is also generously provided online, full-text. In it, Katz comments on why the resurgence of interest in Tolstoy’s work, focusing on the three most recently published translations and the controversy surrounding each. Katz’s survey, which he humbly calls a “brief comparison,” is indeed thorough and provides a final recommendation, which is worth the full read of his commentary to understand.

Jobs :: Various

Gettysburg College Department of English Emerging Writer Lecturer. One-year appointment, beginning August 2009, for a creative writer who plans a career that involves college-level teaching, to teach three courses per semester, including Introduction to Creative Writing and an advanced course in the writer’s genre, as well as to assist with departmental writing activities. Mentorship for teaching and assistance in professional development provided.

The DePauw University English Department and its distinguished Creative Writing Program invite poets to apply for one-semester appointment in fall or spring of 2009-2010 as the Mary Field Distinguished Visiting Writer.

Normandale Community College Faculty in English Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing. Cyndee Robinson, Human Resources. January 15, 2009

Composition and Professional Writing, American University of Sharjah. Dean William Heidcamp at cashr-at-aus.edu

In Memoriam :: Dorothy Sterling


Kid’s literature luminary Sterling dies at age 95
By Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times

Dorothy Sterling, a significant figure in 20th century children’s literature for her well-researched portrayals of historical black Americans written decades before multiculturalism became mainstream, died Dec. 1 at her home in Wellfleet, Mass. She was 95.

A self-described accidental historian, Sterling wrote more than 35 books, among the best known of which is “Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman.” Published in 1954 and still in print, it was one of the first full-length biographies of a historic black figure written for children.

The author drew attention to more obscure but important figures in “Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls” (1958), the first children’s biography of the slave who captured a Confederate gunboat during the Civil War. “The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany” (1971) helped stir interest in the little-known abolitionist, Harvard-educated physician and early proponent of black nationalism…[read the rest here]

Rain Taxi Online Auction

There’s still time left support Rain Taxi and get your bids in on signed first editions, gorgeous broadsides, rare chapbooks, seminal graphic novels, quirky collectible books, handcrafted items, and more! M.T. Anderson, John Ashbery, Paul Auster, Charles Bernstein, Robert Bly, Paul Bowles, Stephen Colbert, Samuel R. Delany, Neil Gaiman, Patricia Hampl, Richard Hell, Jaime Hernandez, Garrison Keillor, Jonathan Lethem, David Markson, Henry Miller, Rick Moody, Barack Obama, Ron Padgett, Jerome Rothenberg, Joe Sacco, Arthur Sze, Jeff Vandermeer, Anne Waldman, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, and Marjorie Welish are just some of the authors whose works you’ll find. To see the full listings, go to Rain Taxi’s online benefit auction.

Symposium & CFP :: Stepping Out

Stepping Out: Academics, Civic Engagement, and Activism

Miami’s English Graduate and Adjunct Association’s Symposium
The sixth annual symposium will be held Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

In a time of war and economic crisis, when people are suffering both locally and globally, what is the role of the academic and of higher education? The academy at large has been accused of living an insular existence, speaking only within disciplinary boundaries and rarely reaching the minds and bodies of those not admitted to higher education’s spaces. With this call, we hope to challenge the claim that the academy exists only for the academy’s sake as well as encourage collaboration and community-building across disciplinary and geographic divides that artificially mark sites of education.

CFP – See website. Deadline: Feb 15

Conference & CFP :: Waiting Time

Waiting Time
New York University
Department of Comparative Literature
Graduate Student Conference
April 17-19, 2009

Keynote Speaker: Marshall Berman

What are we waiting for? What awaits us? While often dismissed as a period of wastefulness or lost time, waiting may also intensify experience and become a condition in which to consider questions of modernity, aesthetic process, politics, erotics and the tempos of everyday life.

Amid other theorizations of time, history and eventfulness, waiting offers a thematic axis around which conversation among scholars from a wide range of disciplines and critical perspectives can emerge. How can we unsettle the received divide between waiting and action? Or given this divide, how can we re-think the relationship between the two? Beyond (in)activity, how might waiting also be conceived of as a mode of attention or practice?

CFP
Possible paper topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

-Messianism & eschatology
-Event & revolution
-Fidelity & trust
-Designing patience: waiting rooms, drawing rooms, prisons, train stations
-Style and technique: the pause (in music and beyond), rest, suspense, seriality
-Waiting Faster: technologies of convenience, speed, acceleration
-Bureaucracy: legal process, immigration, the post, (un)employment, drudgery
-Sickness & convalescence
-Ennui, anxiety, boredom, killing time
-Erotics of waiting: desire and deferral, chastity, courtly love, chivalric romance, sexual suspense
-Gestation, inspiration, latency
-Hope, fate, & inevitability
-Progress, process, & telos
-Revenge & ressentiment
-Waiting nations: birth, belatedness, & modernization
-Military strategy: ambush attack
-Immigration & exile

Please send a 300-word paper abstracts due January 20, 2009 via email to WaitingTime.Spring2009_at_gmail.com.

Jobs :: Normandale CC

Message from Kris Bigalk@Normandale CC:

I wanted to let you know about three positions that are opening up at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota this year, in the event that you or someone you know is looking for a full-time teaching position. We are hiring a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing (a one-year appointment) and three unlimited full-time English generalist positions.

Our AFA in Creative Writing program is growing, and we are adding a Certificate in Creative Writing program this spring; currently, we offer at least one section of five or more different creative writing courses each semester,including Intro to Creative Writing, Poetry Writing, Fiction Writing, Play and Screen Writing, and Memoir/Creative Nonfiction Writing, and serve over 400 students per year in creative writing courses alone. Our other English offerings are also robust, and include several levels of composition, as well as a variety of literature courses. Normandale’s enrollment is around 10,000 students per year.

For more information on necessary qualifications, please see the links below. The application deadline is January 15, so act fast. Feel free to forward this to others, or to e-mail Kris with any questions – Kris.Bigalk-at-normandale.edu

Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing

Three Unlimited Full-time English Positions

Every Best of 2008

Looking for the “Best of 2008” book lists? Look no further, as Largehearted Boy has gone obsessive in collecting them all! I don’t have an exact count, but I’d say he’s got over 200 online sources on that list – and growing.

Largehearted Boy is a music blog featuring daily free and legal music downloads as well as news from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture. LB has run best-of music lists, but this year is “aggregating 2008 year-end online book lists in this post and updating the list daily as new lists are added.” He welcomes you to send along a link to lists not on his, well, list.

Girls Write Now :: Maude Newton

Thanks to Maude Newton for posting her support for Girls Write Now on her blog, along with a video of one of writers from the program reading. Newton just joined the board of directors with Girls Write Now, a mentor writing program in New York city for young girls at risk. If you visit the video on YouTube, there are many other clips there from this same reading. But, if after watching Emily’s clip, My Name is Not My Sky – you aren’t in some way compelled to support this program (not just monetarily), or find ways to get involved with young writers, well, I just gotta wonder…

Conference & CFP :: Navigating the Body

Navigating the Body
Spaces, Mapping, and Embodiment
University of Virginia Department of English
Graduate-Student Conference
March 20-22, 2009

The Graduate English Student Association at the University of Virginia is hosting a Spring conference on “Spaces, Mapping, and Embodiment.” This conference is intended to cross several periods and disciplines within the humanities, and to engage with recently opened critical conversations on such issues as: theories and forms of cultural, literary and literary-historical mapping; history and historiography; sexuality and gender; the designation and re-designation of national, political, and cultural spaces; and embodied and performative modes of history and memory.

CFP Deadline: Jan 23

AWP Student Volunteers

For students interested in attending the AWP in Chicago (February 11-14, 2009) who are also trying to save some cash, volunteer for one four-hour shift in exchange for your reg fee. For more info, click here – soon, while shifts are still available.

Fellowship :: Black Mountain

Black Mountain offers nine-month fellowships to published writers and public intellectuals. The program accepts applications from novelists, poets, playwrights, historians, political scientists, independent scholars, and anyone else whose work is meant for a general, educated lay audience. Black Mountain awards three to five fellowships each year to outstanding writers who have published at least one critically acclaimed book before the time of application. Foreign nationals conversant in English are welcome to apply. There are no degree requirements. Fellows receive a $50,000 stipend, an office, a computer, and access to UNLV’s Lied Library. They remain in residence at BMI for the duration of the fellowship term (approximately August 24, 2009 to May 14, 2010) and work daily at the BMI offices. Application deadline: February 1, 2009.

Fellowships :: Terra Foundation

For the ninth consecutive year, the Terra Foundation for American Art is offering ten summer fellowships to artists and scholars from the United States and Europe. These fellowships are awarded to doctoral students engaged in research on American art and to artists who have completed their studies at masters level (or the equivalent). Each Terra Summer Fellow is provided with lodging and study or studio space, daily lunches and a program consisting of independent study, meetings and seminars. During their eight-week stay, senior artists and scholars are in residence to mentor the fellows and to pursue their own work. As Giverny is located less than an hour from Paris, fellows have easy access to the limitless cultural and academic resources of the French capital. Deadline January 15, 2009.

Residency :: Hambidge

The Hambidge Residency Program provides setting, solitude and time for creative individuals working in a wide variety of creative disciplines: visual arts, design, music, dance, writing. Fellowships are offered for two to eight week residencies, year round, except for the month of January. Fellows enjoy the gift of life without every-day distractions, in individual cottage/studios. These sanctuaries are scattered across our 600 acre setting of mountain forests, streams, waterfalls, hiking trails and wildflower meadows in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

Application Deadlines:
January 15, 2009 for May thru August
April 15, 2009 for September thru November
September 15, 2009 for December thru April, 2010

Dream People – 2008

The Dream People is one of those online anomalies that is simply laugh-out-loud funny and it knows it. Not that this is a bad thing. The apex of this journal’s mission is to perplex, astound and cause general hilarity at the antics that take place in its various fantastical fictional narratives, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, micro-criticism, reviews, flash interviews and even artwork. In this satirical and ghostly world, what is real is dressed up in metaphorical and allegorical costumes sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, for the readers to deconstruct and find whatever meaning that they are searching for. Continue reading “Dream People – 2008”

Ecotone – Spring 2008

Ecotone: eco from Greek oikos (a house or dwelling) + tone from tonos (tension). All Ecotone’s writing is true to this theme, in one way or another. This issue opens with a creative nonfiction piece by the editor, David Gessner, in which he recounts his own experience in an ecotone, a transitional place between two communities, as well as a place of danger. Jessica Bane Robert’s memoir, “Dark on the Inside,” about living in the Maine woods with alcoholic parents, is full of both natural beauty and sadness. And Michael Pollan’s lighter “Dream Pond” demonstrates how hubris leads to humiliation, then eventually knowledge and appreciation. This essay follows an engaging interview with Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and, most recently, In Defense of Food. Continue reading “Ecotone – Spring 2008”

eratio – 2008

Eratio states that it “publishes poetry in the postmodern idioms with an emphasis on the intransitive,” which I take to mean that the poetry submissions it accepts are not conventional and are experimental with a focus or sentence structure that disconnects from the norm of verb/direct object relationship of sentence construction. A journal that insists upon a literary affectation of this kind could lend itself to stilted prose that sounds as if it removes certain language constraints just to be different. However, in this situation, it shows both the reader and the writer of poetry what possibilities it offers in tone and voice and overall flow of the poems. Continue reading “eratio – 2008”

Free Verse – Spring 2008

Free Verse is an experimental poetry forum for poets that do not follow the normal tenets of form and structure, reveling instead in modern and post-modern tendencies to deconstruct the sentence or line and turn it on its head so that the meaning seems like a coded message scattered in the form of extreme line breaks or unconventional prose-like formations. Rhyme and meter are not ignored here entirely, they are just pushed aside for new and tantalizing artistic configurations that stray from structural traditions, if not always-topical ones. Continue reading “Free Verse – Spring 2008”

Gowanus – Winter 2009

It has been said that Americans don’t read enough foreign literature, and I am inclined to agree with this statement, given that most people in the United States can identify Ernest Hemingway and Huckleberry Finn readily enough, but not Leo Tolstoy or Madame Bovary. What a shame. Gowanus, a resolutely international online literary journal, attempts to broaden one’s horizons. They state they are “interested in what concerns human beings in Delhi, Bridgetown and Soweto as well as in Chicago, Dublin and Tokyo.” Judging from their archives, they have effectively been doing so since 1997. Continue reading “Gowanus – Winter 2009”