Resources
From Category:
Romantic
By Johnmichael Simon
Mister J.P. Hornbill, ninety fast approaching,
reading glasses unreliable as foglamps blinking,
has taken to watching movies from some wondrously
benevolent provider of purloined celluloid, streaming
down to his rusting yet still functioning computer
And like the zipped-up overcoated teenage dreamer
he never has relinquished, chooses Romance as his
favorite genre and watches, eyes misting up his specs,
how in script after metropolitan script, the camera focuses
on yet another pair of star-crossed strangers
Young and good looking, bumping unexpectedly, yet
also quite predictably, into each other, locking eyes
for a short magnetic moment, exchanging a word or two
on this or that, and having kindled in us a spark
That Mister J.P. Hornbill (like hundreds of other
lonely viewers) hopes, fondly imagines, nay is certain,
will within the next two hours become a flame, consuming
time and space, surviving improbable adventures,
partings and re-meetings, losses, tragedies and with
a quite implausible belief in destiny, burn on to help them
find each other once more in scene after scene then part
again, until the final minutes and that inevitable, arms around
each other, lips and tongues entwined, ecstatic moment,
after which the actors' names and all the other collaborators
in this great pretense appear in black and white across the screen
Mister J.P. Hornbill takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes,
prepares for bed. Somewhere, in a dream perhaps, he knows
he'll meet her. Maybe she's not far away now, closing her
computer, brushing her teeth, filling her hot water bottle.
Possibly they'll meet soon he thinks, sit in the back row
munching popcorn look at each other sideways, smile
and exchange a word or two, as strangers sometimes do
Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending
In this 2016 article from The Atlantic, health and psychology editor Julie Beck discusses findings that the romantic comedy trope of persistent pursuit makes both men and women more likely to believe that stalking behaviors are an acceptable part of romance. Writers of romance novels, particularly heterosexual romance, should take care not to normalize behavior that would be threatening in real life.
Roots
Masterful saga of seven generations of an African-American family, beginning with Haley's Gambian ancestor who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 18th century. Haley's fictionalized re-creation of their lives is rich with drama, humor, tragedy, political outrage, and love that defies the odds.
Ropeless
Ropeless is a comic, poignant story about an old-fashioned Jewish mama, her mentally disabled son, and a dutiful daughter learning to follow her dreams. Told from multiple first-person perspectives, every character's voice is pitch-perfect. Koretsky is the winner of a dozen literary awards and has received three Pushcart Prize nominations. Fans of Wally Lamb will enjoy this new author.
Rose Alley Press
This small press has a special interest in publishing verse that is attentive to meter and rhyme. Editor David Horowitz has also written several useful guides to marketing your poetry book, available here.
Ross Gay: “Cousin Drowses on the Flight to Kuwait”
Listen to a podcast of the author reading this war poem at the Poets & Writers Magazine website.
Roster Forever
Spring-sets punctuated with toxic bliss
urban upheavals echoing
chants of social miscarriages
leaving bitter/sweet rhythms to plume
like afros from swaying heads
of '60's hippies uncharted
oomps uncharacterized in free meters
thunder out poignant lyricism
soaked in copper tunes
of hydraulic blues to pump
bruised hearts of a people
an audience witness to archetypes
of inner rebellions awash
with anger primed fists rise high
in a singular movement to rattle
against worn out songs of Congress
only to stamp out idle anger
with purpose and causation
garbed in canvas cargos
and a nearly wild top
a trombonist blows life
onto the backs of bold
crisp notes freshly baked
from the morning high
in tune with a common voice
drum beats swell
charging the multitude
flooding a mesmerized crowd
bitten by inequity and frustration
for one last time
vocalized in every guitar riff
ripping chords of rising up
moving
speaking as one
fighting forward
not within
on the play-list for today
a tide of change
one voice one struggle
a wall of sound
[Author's Note: "A spring-set is the list of songs a band will perform at a particular event. Play-list is similar, but a bit more strict—the music played in this list will be performed in a planned arrangement and not often deviated from. Yet, there is always tolerance for flexibility in either list."]
Copyright 2009 by Ryan K. Sauers
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Roster Forever" by Ryan K. Sauers, employs the freewheeling rhythms of jazz and blues to convey the energy of people seeking social change. These improvisational musical styles befit a moment when values are in flux and established political procedures are overwhelmed by a popular uprising.
The poem's title sounds like a rallying cry, as well as an invitation to imagine an ideal society. "Forever" is such a utopian word. With its suggestion of heaven on earth, it sanctifies a temporal political movement by connecting it to timeless values—justice, of course, as well as the beauty and creativity represented by music. "Forever" also holds out the dangerously simple and seductive promise that the problem of injustice could be permanently solved. If only...
Sauers' vibrant and action-packed imagery honors both the light and dark sides of the revolutionary impulse, the thrilling creative ferment as well as its potential to boil over into chaos. We see this duality from the outset in phrases like "toxic bliss" and "bitter/sweet rhythms". The author's lively verb choices convey a passion that pushes beyond conventional speech, finding release in the musical sounds of "oomp" and "plume" and "rattle", in the way that music has always brought into focus and made bearable the overflowing emotions of oppressed people.
Poetry on political themes must find a way to address specific events without seeming dated or flatly journalistic, a feat that Sauers accomplishes. There are enough details to situate us in the 1960s counterculture, an allusion that enriches our experience of the poem with our own brightly colored memories (or fantasies) of that time. However, Sauers' main subject is not the era's specific controversies but the element that maintains its hold on our imaginations: the genuine and spontaneous hope for a better world, one where art and justice could be intimately connected.
The phrase "worn out songs of Congress" exemplifies one successful strategy for addressing current events in a lyric poem, namely, to include them in a magical-realist rather than a naturalistic storyline. Bureaucracy, the antithesis of song, is "co-opted" (to use a good old counterculture word) into an alternative scheme of meaning. Music is the true language, and political doubletalk is judged and rejected according to its higher standard.
The drug scene makes an appearance too, in language that deftly connects the consciousness-transcending effects of music, drugs, and mass uprising (what could be called, in less flattering terms, the "mob mentality"): "a trombonist blows life/onto the backs of bold/crisp notes freshly baked/from the morning high". The people are "moving/speaking as one/fighting forward/not within". Will they be able to distinguish between unity and unreflective conformity? The poem leaves them on the cusp of change, with a predominant mood of optimism. And yet, the title suggests, it is the "roster" that has lasted "forever"—the change itself, or only the music that carries forward the dream of change? Perhaps that question is the poem's invitation to today's activists to keep the song going.
Where could a poem like "Roster Forever" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry 2009 International Poetry Competition (Atlanta Review)
Postmark Deadline: May 8
Highly competitive award offers $2,009 for unpublished poems, plus publication for up to 20 runners-up
Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Unique prize offers awards up to $100 plus opportunity to have your poem presented as an interpretive dance at festival in San Francisco
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Route 66 Blues
By David Olsen
Outside Tucumcari the road is straight and flat.
I fix the needle on 65 and drive west. The cool
desert night lingers into the dawn, so I roll down
the side window and rest my arm on the ledge,
as Dad used to do. My contrail of dust swirls
through roadside sagebrush and tumbleweeds.
The radio station fades to static, so I tune to another
with the same twang of heartbreak and regret.
News breaks seem irrelevant here. It starts to get hot,
so I crank up the window, thank the Almighty for A/C.
Most of the time, there's no car ahead or behind.
Just me. I could acquire the habit of solitude here.
Beside the road there's a pickup truck with no tires;
it just sits there, corroding itself to a rusted hulk.
Road signs are perforated with bullet holes.
A faded billboard hypes nutritious Wonder Bread.
The sign for a store has a four-digit phone number.
I'll need gas soon, but the first station I come to
has old glass-top pumps and ethyl posted at 35.9¢.
Ahead there's a diner and gas. After I fill up,
I wipe bug splats off the windshield and grille.
A sign in the window of the diner says Lucky Lager,
and I'm thirsty. Hungry, too. The dyed-blond gal
behind the counter is 40-something, has a smoky voice.
She passes my order of burger and fries to the cook,
opens a beer, slides a bottle of ketchup along the counter,
and says to call her Lil. I leave a good tip, and drive on.
Before the interstate, this land had no limits, but now
everything has moved on into the salmon sunset.
After a while I come to a motel with peeling paint
and no cars in the court. A flickering neon sign
says Vacancy. I pull in. My sciatica's acting up.
I'm not as young as I used to be, but then,
neither is anything else. Time to call it a day.
Rowena Macdonald on Dialogue
Rowena Macdonald is the author of The Threat Level Remains Severe (Aardvark Bureau), a comedic thriller about British politics. In this 2017 essay from Glimmer Train Bulletin, she shares useful tips for writing natural-sounding fictional dialogue.
Royalty Free Music by Bensound
Bensound offers a wide variety of short instrumental music tracks in styles such as acoustic, electronic, pop, jazz, and world music. The clips are free to use as background for YouTube and social media videos, such as book trailers. More extensive broadcast uses require a paid license.
Rupert Brooke
One of the great soldier-poets of World War I, Brooke was a romantic figure and socialist activist whose social circle included E.M. Forster, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Unlike contemporaries who emphasized the horrors of modern warfare, Brooke wrote of patriotic idealism and comradeship in the face of death. He served in the Navy during WWI and died in 1915, at the age of 28, while stationed in Greece.
Russell Edson
A quirky and memorable poet; one of Jendi Reiter's favorites. See selected poems on Web Del Sol.
sad boy/detective
By Sam Sax. In this innovative, sensual chapbook about a possibly-neurodivergent queer boy's coming of age, the central metaphor of "the boy detective" expresses the protagonist's separateness from, and scandalous curiosity about, human bodies and the social world they inhabit. Phenomena that everyone around him take for granted are a fascinating mystery to him. The sadness comes from the paradox that as he tries to get under the world's skin and see what it's made of, he pushes it farther away, because his probing has violated social conventions. Winner of the Spring 2014 Black River Chapbook Competition from Black Lawrence Press.
Saeed Jones
Pushcart-nominated poet Saeed Jones, author of the chapbook When the Only Light is Fire (Sibling Rivalry Press), blogs about writing and contemporary culture.
Safekeeping
By Jessamyn Hope. This many-layered debut novel, set on a kibbutz (Israeli commune) in 1994, brings together an unlikely community of troubled souls whose fates intersect in surprising ways. At the heart of the story is a priceless brooch crafted by a medieval Jewish goldsmith, preserved by his descendants through centuries of anti-Semitic massacres and international migration. Adam, a drug addict from Manhattan, seeks to atone for the damage he has done to his family, by bringing the brooch to the mysterious woman his late grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz. His arrival stirs up painful memories for the kibbutz founder, who sacrificed her personal happiness to a utopian project that is now in danger of being disbanded. Meanwhile, his fellow volunteers are on their own desperate quests for redemption and freedom, which sometimes help and sometimes hinder Adam's mission. The novel raises profound questions about the trade-offs between individual fulfillment and collective survival.
Safer Society Press
Founded in 1982, Safer Society Press is a nonprofit press dedicated to providing resources for the prevention and treatment of sexual abuse. Their titles include fiction for youth and adults, and memoirs by abuse survivors, as well as scholarly books and clinical pamphlets.
Sage Cohen: 2 Keys to Unlock Your Momentum
In this guest post on publishing industry expert Jane Friedman's blog, poet and writing coach Sage Cohen helps writers navigate the floods of contradictory advice. The first step is to know and accept your unique work style, then stop telling yourself unfriendly things about how you "should" have a different process.
Said and Done
The stories in this collection from Black Lawrence Press explore the nuances of feeling and the power dynamics of intimate moments between family members, lovers, and strangers, in a way that is deeply insightful without over-explaining. Morrison's vision of human nature contains shades of Shirley Jackson and Flannery O'Connor, though written in a more restrained style. These stories always leave the reader with the sense that there is more to the characters than the chosen anecdote can reveal.
Saint X
By Caroline Cabrera. Winner of the Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press, this poetry collection creatively explores the traumas and strengths of emerging womanhood by "answering" questions from a science textbook in ambiguous and offbeat ways. Later poems about religion shed light on the initially cryptic title, positioning the book as a kind of talkback to the catechism format. The mystery of "X" is an experience to savor, not an equation to solve.
Saison Poetry Library
SPL is the major British library for modern and contemporary poetry and is funded by the Arts Council England. Visit the Competitions page for listings of British poetry contests, updated monthly.
Saison Poetry Library
Located at the Southbank Centre, the Saison Poetry Library is the most comprehensive and accessible collection of poetry from 1912 in Britain. It is the major library for modern and contemporary poetry and is funded by the Arts Council England. Visit the Competitions page for listings of British poetry contests, updated monthly.
Salmon Publishing
One of Ireland's leading poetry publishers, Salmon is a standard-bearer in publishing work by women and promoting writers who are outside the literary mainstream.
Sampsonia Way
Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh celebrating literary free expression and supporting persecuted poets and novelists worldwide. Each issue contains author interviews, critical essays, and excerpts from literature from many countries. Featured authors have included Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emmanuel, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Nancy Krygowski.
Samson’s Saga
By Helen Bar-Lev
Delilah wondered if all Hebrews were such gentle lovers
as she clipped his curls and left them lying on the ground
like so many question marks, slipped out of the room,
nodded to the waiting soldiers
musing if she would miss Samson,
surely the best tryst she'd ever known,
but she pocketed the pouch of payment
and vowed to forget him
What they didn't tell her
was that they would bind him, blind him,
a bit too cruel she winced, braiding her hair,
admiring her image in the waters of the Jordan,
applying more kohl to intensify her eyes,
consoling herself with another swig of the finest mandrake wine
Samson mused too as he begged for food
and listened to gossip as passersby spat on him;
so weak was he that two men had to help him home
but ever so slowly his hair was growing;
he wound a turban around his head
so that no one would notice and continued to beg
while at home he lifted weights and envisioned revenge
Meanwhile a feast was planned to celebrate his defeat;
all the populace entered the temple,
tingling with pagan anticipation
of the humiliation spectacle
A shackled Samson stumbled into the temple
and fumbled for the pillars he remembered
from the time when his eyes could see both light and night
and the beauty of Delilah whose betrayal had brought him
here to these pillars and whose jasmine perfume wafted
through the room, firing him with the passion to push and push,
harder, harder, a labour of anger
as the temple collapsed, burying them all
And then he could see again
Sapling: The Writer’s Guide to the Small Press Industry
Black Lawrence Press publishes this weekly e-newsletter for writers. Each issue includes profiles of a currently-open contest and a recommended literary journal, an interview with a writer or editor on a career-related topic, a readers' Q&A, and recent successes for subscribers. Subscriptions are $50/year. Selections from back issues can be read for free on their archive page.
Save the Short Story
Site devoted to preserving and expanding the market for literary short fiction has links to dozens of literary journals publishing this genre, and to websites featuring modern masters of the form.
Saving Grace
There's a pretty little girl
up in Michigan
living under snowy skies...
I haven't seen her, but I know
snow
snow
snowy blanket pulled over her head
tucked into her icy ladle
over her
pour
baby poor
baby
pour out your soul
each night (to stay whole)
drink in the finger of light
from the southern skies
when their eyes are heavy closed
waxen your skies with crayola color blues
rainbows for your eyes
white-light blessed blinders 'round your sight
look straight ahead
baby more
baby more
than blinding snow
you haven't seen it
but you'll know
If your daddy falls too hard
dreams on ice behind the bar
granddaddy puts your soul on tap
drip drip
baby
pour and pour more
baby...
he'll sell it to the devil, sweet baby E
he'll drain your love, like he drained me
pay no mind to what he's undone
three women's souls they breathe as one
close your eyes and dream
you'll see me, I'm the one
in the finger of light from the southern sun
brush the grit from your heart
each night before bed
fill your head with shades of red
and blue
and green
bloodline flows between
blessed with His Grace
even stronger unseen
sweet, sweet baby E
There's a pretty little girl living under dreary skies
I haven't seen her but I know
the weatherman predicted snow
heavy
heavy snow
Copyright 2004 by Laurie J. Ward
Critique by Jendi Reiter
We welcome back Laurie J. Ward to the critique corner this month with "Saving Grace". We critiqued her poem "Blackened" in our November 2003 issue.
Ward here lends her compassionate voice to a child in danger of becoming a lost soul, in a ballad whose bluesy rhythm spirals upward like cigarette smoke in a late-night bar. The skillful syncopation of "poor/baby pour/baby" conveys a whole world in four words. We've been here before, this archetypal jazz club where a lonely little girl seeks consolation and escape in a drink. The line plays off the two meanings of "baby," a child and a sexy woman, and suggests how easily the distance between them is erased. This may not be what Ward intended, but the repeated phrase "baby E" also made me think of the drug Ecstasy, an ironic counterpart to the spiritual transcendence that the narrator holds out to the child.
Water imagery both benign and sinister—flowing, pouring, or falling as snow—gives this poem thematic continuity. Lines such as "If your daddy falls too hard/dreams on ice behind the bar/granddaddy puts your soul on tap" and "he'll drain your love like he drained me" warn of a life force dripping away, because the girl's family is exploitative or indifferent. But Ward juxtaposes other flowing imagery that refreshes, like light pouring from heaven: "drink in the finger of light/from the southern skies," and later in the poem, "fill your head with shades of red/and blue/and green/bloodline flows between/blessed with His Grace/even stronger unseen".
Between these opposing moods falls the snow, more ambiguous in its effects. The "heavy snow" at the beginning and end of the poem seems to represent the inertia that weighs on the child, as she tries to see beyond the hopeless and loveless life of her family. She risks being smothered by the weight of those dysfunctional traditions.
Yet the snow, like a childhood home, is also cozy and familiar: "snowy blanket pulled over her head/tucked into her icy ladle". The unusual image of a girl tucked into a ladle segues into the phrase "ladle/over her/pour", as if to say that the warmth of family security is inseparable from the icy shock of poured liquor that taints the scene. The odd structure of the sentence replicates the impossibility of integrating these aspects of her loved ones into a comprehensible whole.
The snow also resembles the "cloud of unknowing" that the mystic must penetrate to see God. The narrator asks the child to have faith in what lies beyond the curtain of white, just as the narrator herself tries to have faith that the child can sense her prayers and kinship: "I haven't seen her but I know". The poem effectively employs paradoxes of seeing/not-seeing to suggest that by closing her eyes to the sterile life around her, the girl can see the love and hope that are truly real: "white-light blessed blinders 'round your sight". She is the one who sees the light from the sky "when their eyes are heavy closed".
Where could a poem like "Saving Grace" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: September 30
Sponsored by well-regarded publisher Red Hen Press; formerly known as the Red Hen Press Poetry Award
James Hearst Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Sponsored by North American Review, the oldest literary journal in America; "Saving Grace" fits their style and subject matter
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Poetry and prose contest for "personal writings that illumine the search for the sacred and the spirit"
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Savvy Authors
This multi-author blog shares opportunities and advice for writing genre and commercial fiction. Online workshops are also available.
Scattered Risks
Like a modern St. Francis, this poet is a sister to all the beasts and plants that grace her southwestern landscape, and unfailingly finds the perfectly textured and surprising words to bring them to life for the reader. Uschuk is a prophet of the wilderness that we are fast destroying; few poems pass without a reminder of the human warfare and greed that lurk at Eden's edge. She invites us to feel the "velvet shoulders" of the bat rays in the aquarium's touch pool, then to question our right to have "these benign inmates confined to concrete/ entertaining us with their lives." Totemic illustrations by James G. Davis enhance this volume from Wings Press, Texas' oldest small press.
Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
This memoir of mental illness stands out for its lyricism, humility, tenderness, and deeply sane sense of humor about how the author and his family have romanticized their affliction. Lovelace is a poet and the son of a notable evangelical theologian. Both of his parents are bipolar, as are the author and his brother. With refreshing honesty, he traces mania's connection to spiritual and artistic creativity, yet concludes that the private ecstasies of madness lead to incoherence, not a deeper truth.
Science Fiction Poetry Association
SFPA publishes the literary journal Star*Line. Their website has many useful links to journals specializing in SF poetry, anthologies, and individual author websites, as well as a free contest with small cash prizes.
Scott Woods Makes Lists: Black Children’s Picture Books
Scott Woods Makes Lists is a librarian's blog about African-Americans in popular culture, literature, and current events. This list and its 2016 precursor recommend children's picture books with black protagonists "that aren't about boycotts, buses or basketball". Woods says he wanted to showcase stories outside the familiar civil rights narrative, "featuring Black children doing what all children do: play, make up stories, learn life lessons, and dream."
Scraps Journal
Scraps is an online journal that "showcases the abandoned work of writers and artists," defined as work that the creator has indefinitely shelved after receiving several rejection letters from traditional publications. Editors say, "These pieces should be complete and polished, and mostly competent, but not quite good enough." Along with a short piece of abandoned work, you should submit a sample of rejection letters and a brief reflection (750 words) on what you think went wrong with the work. The editors will remix the rejection letters to create a new collaborative piece of art, such as graphics or illustrations, erasure poetry, essays, music, or bibliomancy.
Screech Poetry Magazine UK Forum
Created in 2017 by poet Sue Benjamin, Screech Poetry Magazine UK Forum is a free online community for poets of all experience levels. Topic threads include love, politics, humor, erotica, and verse for children. Free themed contests offer prizes of Amazon UK book tokens (gift certificates), usually 15-25 pounds.
Screen Door Review
Screen Door Review's subtitle is "Literary Voices of the Queer South". Launching in Spring 2018, this quarterly online journal accepts submissions year-round of unpublished poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and comics. Editors say, "The purpose of the magazine is to provide a platform of expression to those whose identities—at least in part—derive from the complicated relationship between queer person and place. Specifically, queer person and the South. The topics of your work do not have to be queer or southern in theme, but we do ask that you as a contributor belong to the queer community and also identify as southern."
ScreenplaySubs
Compatible with Chrome or Firefox, ScreenplaySubs is a browser extension that lets you stream the screenplay alongside the Netflix film you're watching. It's a real-time way for budding dramatists to learn how the printed page is translated into acting and directing. Good for viewers who like closed-captioning, too.
Scribe & Quill
This free monthly ezine for writers suggests contests and markets, publicizes the successes of its readers. The motivational articles are particularly valuable.
Scribe Guide to Getting on Bestselling Book Lists
Tucker Max is the co-founder of Scribe Media (formerly Book in a Box), a writing coach and ghostwriting service for business professionals. In this article from their website, he explains the metrics behind newspapers' and online retailers' bestseller lists, and the reasons why getting on the list is not a cost-effective goal for most authors.
Scribendi
Scribendi provides a wide variety of proofreading and copyediting services for literary manuscripts, personal and business documents, and academic writing. Pricing is per word. They can also help write a query letter, synopsis, and outline for authors of fiction and nonfiction books who are shopping their manuscripts to agents. Specialty services include religious editing and proofreading for hymns, sermons, inspirational blog posts, and academic theological works.
Sea Constellations of the Northern Sky Offer No Consolation
Astride whale roads with barques poorly equipped,
scrawny sages descry immense high blue
circling views, decanting nature into
canticles of land, or sea, or air that
congeal at polar meridian to
northern marine lung of hibernal hue.
Bulleting sky in starry satellite,
Cetus congregates to fangles shapely
arrayed in a sea of constellations.
"Listen to the Logos as blue merges into white then black and magnitude dims."
The sages pray and contemplate Jonah.
Jonah, insignificant spume, blindly
susurrates hymns in asterisms of
autumnal tone. Held in aquamarine
cinctures, unrequited songs burst in pared
watery syllables. Belched onto strange
shores, harps unstrung, speaking in partial tongues,
finding empty habitation and no
relief, they turn to baboon-watch a squall:
scrying the altitude for another sign to gather around.
Copyright 2012 by Rich Hoeckh; contact the author at richh1095@yahoo.com
Critique by Laura Cherry
Don't these lines just cry out to be read aloud? Rich Hoeckh's poem "Sea Constellations of the Northern Sky Offer No Consolation" plays a complex music starting with its title and sings sweetly through its last line.
The conceit of the poem—a group of seafaring (then shipwrecked) prophets look to the elements for divine communication—is conveyed through goofily archaic diction ("barques poorly equipped", "decanting nature into / canticles of land or sea", "scrying the altitude") and a veritable thesaurus of synonyms. In this poem, the important thematic elements are the sea ("whale roads", "northern marine lung", "aquamarine cinctures"), songs (hymns, canticles, "pared / watery syllables"), and constellations (asterisms, "starry satellite", "fangles shapely / arrayed"). The songs are a plea for a sign, and the sea and constellations provide the only available answer. The poet chooses a nonce form of nine-line stanzas, each followed by a longer single line that summarizes or concludes the preceding stanza.
What truly draws me into this poem, though, is its music. In calling a poem musical, or referring to its music, I mean everything that goes into its sound: its rhythm, meter, and the sounds of the words themselves, its chewy or hushed consonants, the way it clacks and swishes and pings.
When we think of poetry as music, we may first think of songs and song lyrics, whose primary sound strategy is usually rhyme. However, poems can make use of a whole range of less showy techniques for subtler and more nuanced effects. Just for starters, these can include consonance (the repeated use of the same consonant), assonance (repeated use of vowel sounds), alliteration (the repetition of initial sounds in the words of a poem), and sibilance (perhaps most easily described as repeated hissing sounds).
Check out the sibilance in this fragment, for example:
Scrawny sages descry immense high blue
circling views, decanting nature into
canticles of land, or sea, or air
The "s" and "z" sounds are carried throughout the poem and evoke the sounds of sea and air. These soft sounds are contrasted with harder clicking sounds like those in "canticles", "congeal", "congregates", "constellations", and "contemplate". These two strands of sound provide counterpoint for each other, and keep the poem lively and fun to read aloud. The strands come together at times, particularly in the later lines of the poem, in phrases like "harps unstrung, speaking in partial tongues" and in words like "scrying" and "squall".
Sound-play like this has a rich precedence, of course, and I'm glad to have a reason to mention some of my favorite sound-intensive poems. For superb canonical examples, see Dylan Thomas, "I See the Boys of Summer"; Sylvia Plath, "Dream with Clam-Diggers"; Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"; or Wallace Stevens, "Sea Surface Full of Clouds". For a more contemporary example, take a look at Sarah Hannah, "The Colors Are Off This Season".
A different matter altogether, worthy of a full discussion of its own, is slam poetry, written not just to be spoken aloud but performed and judged by the audience. See, for instance, "Hip-Hop Ghazal" by Patricia Smith, whose work is rooted in slam poetry. (To learn more about writing in the ghazal form, see our August 2012 critique.)
Having discussed what I see as the main strength of Hoeckh's poem, how would I critique it for revision? I'd first assess it for technique. There are small moments here that throw me out of the world of the poem, disrupting its thrall.
"Baboon-watch" is one of those for me, standing out in both diction (plain) and sound (that lengthy "oo"). The baboon image does not fit easily into the tapestry that has been woven of sage-sky-sea-stars, and while diversity can be refreshing, the uniqueness of this particular image gives it more weight than I suspect it is intended to have.
Also, that archaic diction, while providing a wild ride, can be hard to follow: "blindly / susurrates hymns in asterisms of / autumnal tone" sounds magnificent, but comes close to breaking the poem's tenuous thread of sense. Also, a number of the line breaks in the poem fall after prepositions like "to", "into", and "of", which hobbles the line as a sense unit and squanders multiple opportunities for more interesting enjambment. I'd encourage the poet to take more care in crafting those breaks.
The second area I'd assess is my emotional connection to the poem as a reader. There are many poems I admire simply for their mastery of technique. However, the poems that mean the most to me are the ones that grab me and shake me viscerally. Plath is far better known for her poems of rage and despair and love (as well as technical mastery) in Ariel (see "Lady Lazarus") than for her earlier, more apprentice poems in which she employed that same mastery but kept a respectful distance from her subject matter (see "Parliament Hill Fields").
This poem keeps its characters and action miles further than arm's length. We do not enter into the experience of the sages, nor really care whether they are sailing or capsized, as long as their exploits are described charmingly—as they are. The poem's words and manner draw us in, not its subject matter.
I mention this particularly because I have noticed a trend in the poems submitted to this column for critique: those that are well executed technically are often either light or emotionally distant or careful. They are well constructed, but do not take any sort of emotional risk, presumably for fear of being charged with sentimentality. Beginning poets should indeed take care to avoid melodrama, but it seems important to me to point out that beautiful sounds and precise construction are not necessarily ends in themselves. I'd recommend to any poet that at some point, you take the risk and leap into the fiery emotional core of your poem. To give pleasure in its reading is enough for a single poem to do, and it is a significant thing to do, but it is not all that poetry can do.
Where might a poem like "Sea Constellations of the Northern Sky Offer No Consolation" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Abilene Writers Guild Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Texas writers' group gives prizes up to $100 in a number of genres including rhymed and unrhymed poetry, short stories, articles, children's literature, and novel excerpts
Perform Poetry Magazine Competition
Entries must be received by November 30
British magazine with an interest in spoken-word and performable poetry awards 100 pounds for an unpublished poem on the theme of "seasons"; enter online
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
National League of American Pen Women contest awards $100 prizes for poetry, stories, prose poems, personal essays, humor, and literature for young adults; open to both men and women; previously published works accepted
Cecil Hemley Memorial Award
Postmark Deadline: December 22
Free contest open to members of the Poetry Society of America (we recommend joining) awards $500 for a lyric poem that addresses a philosophical or epistemological concern
Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: December 31
Prizes up to $1,000 and anthology publication for unpublished poems, from an independent small press in Connecticut whose motto is "Delight, entertain and educate"; enter by mail or online
This poem and critique appeared in the November 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Sean Patrick Hill
Mr. Hill's poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, High Desert Journal, and the Zoland Poetry Annual.
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