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Thanks
By Kaecey McCormick
We sit on the cool rocks and watch the stars swing past the moon
kicking up the dirt, dropping pixelated tears as they go.
It's seeing this with you against the silhouette of our grief:
the burned dreams, the small mounds of dirt under too-large stones,
our fingers reaching for each other's in the dark.
Their laughter breaks through the glass of our memories,
turns our shroud to dust, tugs at our lips and pulls up the corners.
It dries our eyes with handkerchiefs sewn from patchwork dresses
dyed in kindergarten colors and the mood shifts, floats us toward the harvest moon—
raises our eyes from the dead.
I'm watching you smile as you watch their joy and a quiet thrill grabs
my throat because I know what we have though not enough is enough.
And my fingers
as they stroke the soft flesh on the inside of your arm
whisper thanks.
That Great Baseball Summer of 1982
"Break the Guinness record?"
"Who, YOU? You must be KIDDING!"
The cries of laughter
that rang through the hills of Willapa Town
that summer when the mill was down
and the woods were quiet too,
were cries of disbelief, mostly,
that any fool who sat on a stool
at the local pub could hope to rub
elbows with a Guinness award for endurance!
But the echo resounded with glee!
Almost like a guarantee
that more spirited young lads had not yet been born!
"Then we'll make it a BENEFIT game!
And YOU can have the fame!
For we KNOW what we're made of!!"
cried the boys of a feather whose days together
were previously spent
walking the tightrope in work and in play,
flirting with danger 'most every day,
(or boozing and cruising and closer to losing
sight of more tomorrows
than any day on record anyway).
So, a benefit marathon was born
in Willapa Town when the mill was down,
in that great baseball summer of 1982,
and the cries that rang through the evergreen hills
changed in tune to ones that sang
"They AREN'T kidding!" once the 300th inning began!
***
The stands were full now,
applauding the boys in the field,
and so were the skies which poured forth
their own sentiments to nourish the crops in the field,
but which did little for the boys in the field
except to build some character
by presenting yet another challenge called MUD!
Then, while the innings were changing,
and the days were turning to nights,
so too the hecklers changed,
now becoming care takers
of sprains and strains and blistered feet,
of socks, and towels, and things to eat,
while slow pitch ball became slow death for all
who couldn't sleep or cope or eat,
and who had no sight of tomorrow at all,
but were still hanging on
by the fragile threads of determination.
By the 4th day,
after 91 hours and 21 minutes
playing 552 innings of baseball,
with a final score of 365 to 283,
the wild-eyed crowd was cheering,
for the end was finally nearing,
and Willapa Town had HEROES!
(But was also fearing for their lives,
for when the umpire hollered "GAME!"
they watched the spent and the lame
fall in a heap, determined to sleep forever.)
***
Soon the cries that rang down
the evergreen hills of Willapa Town
were cries of pride that came from inside
for everyone loves a hero,
especially one who tried
to break a world's record
for the longest slow pitch game in history,
and raised $20,000 doing it!
"We BROKE the Guinness record
for the longest game—NO KIDDING!"
was the song they were singing then,
in that great baseball summer of 1982
when the mill was down, and the woods were quiet too,
and the heavens poured nourishment
on the crops in the field,
and lessons in character building
were handed down to the next generation
of spirited young lads
who would set their own records
for hanging tough
by the fragile threads of youth,
while still hoping for a glimpse
of yet another tomorrow.
Copyright 2011 by Isa "Kitty" Mady
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
It's spring at last. What a perfect time for a poem about baseball! And what better way to convey the fun and drama of that game than with one of poetry's most enduring and entertaining forms: the ballad.
It's also a great opportunity to remind readers that WinningWriters.com has an exciting new Sports Poetry and Prose Contest. So, this month, with the help of "That Great Baseball Summer of 1982" by Isa "Kitty" Mady as well as a few classics, we'll look at how vibrant sports writing is constructed.
In general, I am not a fan of the common practice in which a teacher tells a student to go off and study a famous piece. This can intimidate, squelching the creative urge with the weight of the comparison, but there is a reason teachers do this. Sometimes it is the best advice.
In this case, it serves, amongst other things, to demonstrate how perfectly Mady has married topic to form. Today the word "ballad" has come to mean a slow popular song, usually romantic. Originally, though, ballads were the fare of wandering minstrels. Literally singing for their supper, balladeers had to engross if they wanted to eat. Other than light verse, which delights with wit, there is no other poetic form intended solely to entertain. The ballad, however, does not operate by wit. Rather, its vehicle is plot.
As a plot-driven form, ballads frequently laud a single character, often a tragic hero, as in "Barbara Allen", which dates as least as far back as the 17th century, yet endures to this day as one of the most popular folk ballads in the British Isles. Notice that, just as in Mady's poem, dialogue plays a significant role. In fact, ballads are more likely to contain dialogue than any other form of poetry. At its best, this dialogue conveys regional color through accent or idiom.
Also like Mady's piece, there is a rhyme scheme. "Barbara Allen" is an example of the traditional ballad scheme of a/b/c/b, though forms vary and evolve over time.
At first glance, you might not think Mady's poem suits that description, but a little deeper analysis shows that, setting the given line breaks aside, a pattern emerges for much of the first long stanza:
The cries of laughter that rang through
the hills of Willapa Town
that summer when the mill was down
and the woods were quiet too,
were cries of
disbelief, mostly, that any fool
who sat on a stool
at the local pub could hope to rub
However, the a/b/b/a; c/d/d/c scheme soon unravels. If Mady should choose to maintain it, she will need to rework the next few lines. Line thirteen might end with "chance", for example, to form a rhyme with "endurance". Alternatively, the somewhat awkward syntax of line 10 might reconfigure to something like "winner of a Guinness" or "Guinness award", both of which offer other opportunities for rhyme.
As an example of the kind of redrafting I mean, here are a few revised lines from the end of the first stanza:
So, in that great baseball summer of '82
a benefit was born—a marathon
in Willapa town, when the mill was down
and the cries that rang through
A note here about using numbers in poems: as poetry is an oral form, numeric words must indicate how they are to be said aloud. Is $20,000 meant to be voiced as "twenty thousand dollars?" If so, write it that way. Other choices might be "twenty g" or "grand" or "thou," all of which are more colorful, fewer syllables, and offer more possibility for rhyme. Likewise, when dealing with time, one might choose "21 minutes past 91 hours," for more rhyming opportunities, or "nineteen hundred and eighty-two" to affect a folkloric tone. Many creative choices are possible.
In the second section Mady foregoes rhyme for repetition: "field" pairs with "field"; "changing" with "change"; "eat" with "eat". This is a wonderful impulse. As a second canto, it operates like the second movement in a symphony. A new timbre and tempo refreshes the reader. Also, as its subject is the numbing iteration of innings, the repetition provides a sonic counterpart. The problem is, just as in stanza one, the pattern peters out.
We might question here whether it is worth the bother to adhere to a pattern and break lines to emphasize it. In very practical terms, rebuilding a poem towards a specific scheme is difficult and, because rhyme is so noticeable, it can easily overwhelm. Today, most traditional forms have been revisited, favoring subtler rhymes.
Personally, I enjoy that Mady has embedded many of her rhymes internally. They are less predictable, keeping the poem fun to read. More importantly, their frequency and exactness create a kind of drumbeat, heightening the drama. For that reason, the scheme, whether presented internally or as end rhyme, is well worth a formal analysis that will continue and strengthen it.
Besides, with a completed scheme, "That Great Baseball Summer of 1982" would suit formal poem competitions in which, I believe, it might do well. Also, in Mady's particular case, I sense such a revision is more attainable than usual. For one thing, the scheme is already nearly intact. More importantly though, I feel there is still work to do on a more basic level that will present new possibilities. Specifically, I refer to diction.
Have a look at Franklin Pierce Adams's "A Ballad of Baseball Burdens". The first thing you might notice about it is that it is not, in fact, a ballad—a story, but rather an ode—a praise song. Adams, famous in his day for his light, witty, verse, has indulged in a bit of consonance at the expense of accuracy. Never mind. Notice instead his lively diction choices. Verbs like "swat", "biff", "clout", and "slug" are the spice that makes good sports writing tasty. Expressions from the lexicon like "jasper league" and "on the knob", not to mention the various players' names, add authenticity, perfectly setting the tone.
Now, Ms. Mady has already demonstrated that she is a natural rhymer. Redrafting with striking, active verbs, and phrases from the baseball diction family will not only give her lots of room to formalize her rhyme scheme, they will make this already fun poem an absolute pleasure to read.
That is, once she reorganizes her story a bit. Remember, first and foremost, the ballad is plot-driven; its intent, to relay a dramatic tale. As a case in point, let us refer to Ernest Lawrence Thayer's ever-popular "Casey at the Bat". (By the way, would-be sports writers, check out the great links on the left of that page. Also, there is also an awfully fun reading of the poem by James Earl Jones.)
Now "Casey at the Bat" is a masterwork, a true piece of the American canon, beloved by generations. I apologize again for comparing Mady's poem to it, but there is so much there to be enjoyed—and learned from.
Once again we have lively diction: "the former was a hoodoo and the latter was a cake." Dialogue like "We'd put up even money now" is idiomatic, contributing to the tone, a tone consistently humorous in its self-consciously heightened drama: "ten thousand eyes" vs. "five thousand tongues." I particularly admire the rare expressive use of meter in the phrase, "and a smile on Casey's face," which breaks the rhythm for a quick triplet, like a child's sudden happy skip.
But above all, what makes "Casey" succeed as a dramatic work is that it has beats. "Beats" are what fiction writers and playwrights call the movement between characters, or between character and setting—the back and forth. See how Thayer has used the movement back and forth between the playing field and the crowd to develop the crowd as if it had a singular personality?
Baseball, as a subject, lends itself naturally to beats, with pauses inherent in its nine innings, and one, two, three strikes, you're out. Take a moment to think about how the beats work in "Casey". See how they are present in every stage of the plot: the set up, the main action and the resolution?
Take note too, of where Thayer chooses to begin his story. There is some brief set-up to the action, but we are already in the game. "That Great Baseball Summer of 1982" uses a different strategy—a long preamble. It's a good choice, imbuing a quasi-folkloric tone. But what I question is whether the first lines are the place to reveal that this ballgame will be played in the hopes of a Guinness record. It might work better coming later, as a surprise. And I'm pretty sure there may be a few beats missing before that 300th inning.
The second section of Mady's poem is more directly comparable to the action in "Casey". The game is in progress. We are told (alas, not shown) that rain becomes mud. In the next beat we discover that the hecklers change. But we never knew there were hecklers in the first place—a sign that we are missing a beat.
The beats in the second section of "That Great Baseball Summer..." might possibly go something like this:
1) The hecklers begin.
2) Day turns to night.
3) The sky threatens rain.
4) The players react.
5) The crowd reacts.
6) It does rain! Boy, does it rain!
7) More hours, more minutes, more innings...
8) Could they break the record? (What record? An exciting new element!)
9) The crowd become caretakers.
And so forth. Mady is clearly a spirited storyteller. Once she takes the time to list and order all the details of her drama, I suspect the words will offer themselves.
You may be wondering where there is room in this already long piece for added beats. Actually, the poem is not overly long for a ballad at this point, though much longer and, indeed, it might strain the reader's attention. Removing some of the redundancy will open space for character development and specific detail.
Make sure every detail is actual information and new information at that. If it refers to previous information, it must develop it. Currently, the poem's third section is mostly recap. Mady has used repetition here as a type of coda. While this is a solid musical instinct, remember, codas generally modulate in key. Bear in mind too, that other great ballads like "Casey" and "Barbara Allen" resolve almost immediately after the final action, allowing their dramatic finales to linger in their impact.
And yes, I said "other great ballads". I really believe that, with revision, the addition of some entertaining and memorable details, Mady has everything she needs to craft an excellent poem. She has a charming story to tell and, apparently, an innate musicality with which to tell it. I only hope that when her skies pour "forth their own sentiments", she'll slip in a little reference to Mudville, and that, for a moment, there will be joy.
Where might a poem like "That Great Baseball Summer of 1982" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Alabama State Poetry Society Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: March 23
Prizes up to $50 in a variety of themed categories; previously published poems accepted
Writers' Workshop Annual Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: March 30
Top prize in this contest from the Writers' Workshop of Asheville, NC is your choice of a 3-night stay at their Mountain Muse B&B, or 3 free workshops, or 100 pages line-edited and revised by their editorial staff
Kay Snow Writing Awards
Postmark Deadline: April 23
Oregon's largest writers' association gives awards up to $300 in adult category, $50 in student category, for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and juvenile (a short story or article for young readers)
Senior Poets Laureate Competition
Postmark Deadline: June 30
Amy Kitchener's Angels Without Wings Foundation awards top prize of $500 for poems by US citizens (including those living abroad) who are aged 50+
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The 1619 Project at the New York Times
In 1619, the first ship of African slaves arrived at a port in the British colony of Virginia. This series of feature articles from the New York Times Magazine surveys the far-reaching legacy of black people's enslavement. These pieces aim to show how America's unique economic and political dominance was built on the wealth extracted from slaves and the racism that underpins our social structures. The full text has been made available for free on the website of the Pulitzer Center.
The 19th Wife
By David Ebershoff. This multi-layered novel intertwines the story of Brigham Young's ex-wife Ann Eliza, a real historical figure who successfully campaigned to outlaw plural marriage in the United States, with a modern-day murder mystery in a polygamist Mormon splinter group. The narrative unfolds through fictional documents—correspondence, research papers, autobiographies—suggesting that truth is subjective and many-sided.
The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction
Over 200 inventive exercises to help you break out of old patterns and discover new things about your characters. Kiteley uses word limits rather than time limits to provide discipline and focus. The prompts are grouped according to the technique they are designed to develop (timing, narrative voice, and so forth) and include brief discussions of why they work.
The Academy of American Poets
Site includes over 1,200 poems by 450 noteworthy poets, with an emphasis on American and 20th century poets. Search by poem, poet and text. Numerous audio selections. See also the Online Poetry Classroom sponsored by the Academy, with its suggested 100 Best Poems to Memorize.
The ADD Writer
In this 2020 blog post, author and writing teacher Michael Jackman shares tips for writing productively with attention deficit disorder. If daily routines and schedules don't suit the way your brain is wired, try some of his strategies for jump-starting your creative enthusiasm, such as exercise, travel, and enjoying cultural events. Above all, take the long view of your productivity and don't measure yourself against people with different needs.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
This Pulitzer-winning epic novel about the golden age of comic book superheroes is also a love song to New York City Jewish culture in the years surrounding World War II. Two boys, a visionary artist who escaped Nazi-occupied Prague and his fast-talking, closeted cousin from Brooklyn, lead the fantasy fight against Hitler by creating the Escapist, a superhero who is a cross between Harry Houdini and the Golem of Jewish legend. However, their real-world dilemmas prove resistant to magical solutions, and can only be resolved through humility, maturity, and love.
The American Aesthetic
Launched in 2014, The American Aesthetic is a quarterly online journal searching for poetry that conveys in its composition—as well as in the sound, cadence, and possibly even musicality of its words—an expression of honesty and purpose that somehow rings true. See website for free sonnet competition with small prizes.
The Art of Invisible Movement
Maggie Stiefvater is the New York Times bestselling author of the Raven Cycle series and other award-winning fantasy and magical realist novels. In this blog post, she advises fiction writers to make the same scene accomplish more than one task. For instance, a quiet, transitional scene does not have to be filler; it should reveal something important about backstory, character, or atmosphere. The key to good pacing is to use a variety of scene structures: earn those quiet moments by interspersing them with higher-energy action.
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP)
AWP's bimonthly magazine, The Writer's Chronicle, is well worth a subscription, and includes information on grants, awards and publishing opportunities. AWP members may access a special Job List of academic and non-academic jobs. Search AWP's extensive program directory for a writing program near you, and consider attending AWP's popular annual conference, a good value for its seminars, networking and readings.
The Audacity of Prose
In this 2015 essay in the online journal The Millions, Nigerian novelist Chigozie Obioma critiques the fad of literary minimalism, arguing that the glory and purpose of literature is to "magnify the ordinary" through language that rises above everyday banal usage. Obioma's debut novel The Fishermen was published in 2015 by Little, Brown.
The Bad Version
The Bad Version, a print and online journal, is produced by a group of recent Harvard grads, who met during their time at The Advocate and The Crimson. They publish essays, fiction, and poetry, and all of their published pieces have responses to them that comment on the piece, challenge it, and further its ideas. Editors say, "We picture The Bad Version as a snapshot of an ever-evolving conversation."
The Bare Life Review
Founded in 2017, The Bare Life Review is a literary biannual devoted entirely to work by immigrant and refugee authors. Though the impulse behind its creation was political—to support a population currently under attack—the journal's focus remains wholly artistic, publishing work on a wide variety of themes. Submissions are accepted August 15-November 30. Contributors must be foreign-born writers living in the US, or writers living abroad who hold refugee or asylum-seeker status. Translations are accepted. This is a paying market.
The Barricade
By Ned Condini
I would be glad to take his place
like a prince of orphans, to enjoy
my pinch of power in the royal hall.
But this elusive king leaves the door
ajar, warm coffee on the table,
the lights on & the book still open.
I lunge thinking there's the answer
& find a whiff of incense wafting
beyond the room into the dark where he vanished.
I know he will always be
millions of years away from me,
isolated on the remotest star;
yet the fact that he seems to move
when I, too, move makes me believe I'm on his track.
Fulfilling myself yet struggling
to get rid of the self that's me,
I am the Pompei man who saw
what was coming yet stretched out his hand to save
one piece at least of the barricade erected
against you, fighting you tooth and nail,
gripping the axe of his youth.
The Bean Trees
Written in 1988, the first novel by this now well-known author and activist is first of all a heartwarming and funny story about an unlikely "family of choice" formed by a single mother and her baby, a young woman fleeing her dead-end Southern town, and an abandoned Native American toddler. More ambitious than the typical "relationship novel", the story puts a human face on political issues like interracial adoption and the plight of South American refugees.
The Best American Short Stories 1999
A particularly fine installment of this annual series, the 1999 anthology includes a wide spectrum of styles and ethnic backgrounds, with emotionally compelling tales that leave the reader with much to ponder. Standouts include Nathan Englander's 'The Tumblers', which casts the shadow of the Holocaust over Yiddish folklore's mythical village of Chelm; Sheila Kohler's 'Africans', a quietly chilling account of a family's disintegration under apartheid; and Heidi Julavits' 'Marry the One Who Gets There First', an unlikely love story told through wedding-album outtakes.
The Big Book of Exit Strategies
By Jamaal May. The award-winning poet's second collection from Alice James Books explores bereavement, masculinity, risk, tenderness, gun violence, and the unacknowledged vitality of his beloved Detroit, in verse that is both muscular and musical. Nominated for the 2017 NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.
The Bind
Founded by award-winning poet Rochelle Hurt, The Bind is an online journal that reviews poetry books by women and nonbinary authors. They review chapbooks, full-length collections, hybrid works, and translations. The Bind is interested in intersectional and feminist writing. Read a 2017 interview with Hurt on Trish Hopkinson's blog. Visit their website for guidelines for pitching articles and requesting reviews.
The BitterSweet Review
Launched in London in 2022, The BitterSweet Review is a publishing platform dedicated to the advancement of queer literature and visual culture. In addition to the biannual literary journal, which is published in print and online, they offer workshops and limited-edition artwork for sale.
The Block
By Sherry Ballou Hanson
I used to be an oak
before they cut me down.
I was substantial they said.
Catholic bells pealed for generations
and stars danced in my branches
all the nights of my life
as a tree in a wood
along the Thames
but things change. One day they came
and I was hauled out dead
before the sun had set;
better to have silvered among the stumps
than do the devil's work.
I was paired with axe
and together we served the Tower
four hundred long years,
shrinking from the screams at Tyburn
and the mob at Tower Hill
until it was our turn.
The first was worst, a mess of blood,
the severed head cut loose;
we scarce could stand the shame.
When Lady Jane knelt at last,
I felt my death again, wondered
how axe and I came to this fate,
but one goes on.
When the Earl of Essex
finally bowed his head,
we prayed for a sharpened blade.
Seven times we stood to the duty.
Axe kept his shine and I my gloss
but we were hollowed out.
Scrubbed clean now we are shunned
by all except the rack and manacles.
Nights in the Tower are cold,
and life was beautiful as a tree.
This poem was published in her collection A Cab to Stonehenge (Just Write Books, 2006) and was part of the portfolio that won the 2014 Paumanok Poetry Award.
The Blue Mountain Review
Published by the Southern Collective, the Blue Mountain Review is a quarterly journal of arts and culture. They publish interviews with writers, lit mag editors, artists, and musicians, plus original poetry, fiction, and essays. See their website for the current theme for their annual poetry chapbook contest.
The Blues
By Joan Gelfand
"I think there's something in the pain of the blues, something deep, that touches something ancient in Jewish DNA." —Marshall Chess, founder of Chess Records, producer of Chicago blues.
It was news to me that Jews took up the chore of indigo
Dyeing. It was messy, a job in which no noble
Deigned to engage. Fingers, forearms, clothes,
Stained from steaming vats.
"The stench," they complained.
And, holding their noses they
Created a tone so rarified women fought for the right to buy.
A logical progression, this blue
Manufactured by Jews who, as you knew,
Never felt at home—and still don't.
This blue, encoded in the bones, was royal, leaped centuries to David's harp
His poems of yearning for God and Jonathan's forbidden love.
These blues wept and bled, crept along diaspora routes
All the way to Dylan. Today, we mourn Pittsburgh Jews.
The same hands that mixed indigo, lent a hand to suffering wanderers, immigrants,
The displaced, murdered. They recalled their own treacherous crossings.
The blues. The Shoah. Dachau, Pittsburgh.
Indigo, David, bloodlines. Lines of blood
And still, an outstretched arm, an open hand.
The Book Canopy
The Book Canopy is a monthly online book discussion group. They seek to build community among writers and readers through discussing socially relevant contemporary literature.
The Book Designer
This site, run by publishing and graphic design expert Joel Friedlander, gives resources to help self-publishing authors design professional-looking books. The site includes articles on marketing, a guide to software options, typeface suggestions, and book design templates.
The Book of Folly
The mother goddess of female confessional poets, Sexton brings back the truths that lie on the other side of madness. The sonnet sequence "Angels of the Love Affair" presents a visceral depiction of psychosis that is almost unbearably real.
The Book Rescuer
By Sue Macy, illustrated by Stacy Innerst. This inspiring picture-book biography of Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, is enhanced with Chagall-inspired paintings of Jewish history. A good story in its own right, the book can also prompt educational conversations about heritage and assimilation, for children of Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds alike.
The Bookends Review
Founded in 2012 by creative writing and composition professor Jordan Blum, The Bookends Review is an online journal publishing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, author interviews, essays, book reviews, and visual/musical works from around the world.
The Boy in the Rain
By Stephanie Cowell. In this bittersweet historical novel set in Edwardian England, a young painter and an aspiring socialist politician fall in love, but their idyll is overshadowed by the criminalization of homosexuality. This book stands out for its meditative, introspective prose and its insight into how the bonds of love are tested, broken, and re-created as two people mature.
The Bride Price
Bittersweet romance set on the American frontier tells the story of a white woman and a half-Indian soldier who hope their love is strong enough to survive prejudice and the dangers of army life. The hero's seduction of a married woman is hard to square with his generally noble character, but his displays of leadership and grace under pressure are worth emulating.
The Brown Bookshelf
This book review website is designed to raise awareness of the myriad of African-American voices writing for young readers. Their flagship initiative is 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in Picture Books, Middle Grade and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by African-Americans.
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
We are straying from poetry here, but it's worth it. This contest asks entrants to compose the opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels. Named for Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originator of Snoopy's favorite opening line, 'It was a dark and stormy night.' Entry is free. The winner receives notoriety. Read the Lyttony of Grand Prize Winners.
The Business of Art: Fair Use and Copyright Law
Postmodern art raises novel copyright questions by extensively appropriating words, images and sounds from existing works by other artists. This article from the New York Foundation for the Arts probes the boundaries of fair use.
The Business of Being a Writer
By Jane Friedman. The expert publishing blogger teaches writers about the economics of their industry in this book from the University of Chicago Press. The book is intended to help writers craft a realistic plan for earning money from their work.
The Cafe Review
Contributors have included Paul Muldoon and Taylor Mali.
The Caged Guerrilla
The Caged Guerrilla is a podcast by incarcerated writer Raheem A. Rahman about prison life, urban culture, the barriers we build for ourselves in society, and the struggle to stay free in spirit. His book of poetry and reflections by the same title is available on Amazon.
The Carcinogenic Bride
When the Big C meets the Big D, all you can do is laugh. At least, that's where poet Cindy Hochman's survival instinct takes her. Packed with more puns than a Snickers bar has peanuts, this chapbook from Thin Air Media Press brings energetic wit to bear on those modern monsters, breast cancer and divorce. To order a copy ($5.00), email Cindy at poet2680@aol.com.
The Case Against Happiness
The genially bewildered characters in this unique first collection of poetry try and fail to fit themselves into the American dream of personal satisfaction, but only because they are genuinely groping for a more substantial mode of existence that always remains just beyond the margins of thought and language. Pecqueur's wild associative leaps mirror his inability to find the coherent, contented self that the Enlightenment promised. This book won the 2005 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books.
The Center of the Universe
By P.M. Flynn
Behind,
thick stones are colder, deeper than time emptied,
poured into each moment that passes between clouds
that eventually disappear on the horizon.
Shadows on darkness fall from the mountains:
the sacred moving slower than geologists say,
as we turn to the bright autumn air.
(Clouds fall even in darkness.)
Under each rising sun, when there is no darkness; still—
they've always fallen. When there are shadows they fall again:
today; on the ground with less space for the sun or moon.
Before you left falling behind, before you left falling
from them, sounds always fell behind the horizon:
what is lowest behind each forest;
like trees circling the imperfect edges of me,
fallen;
touched.
There, I hear a voice before I was made, before midnight
when the universe of blue spaces between clouds of importance
closed; space you ran to seeking another new moon, or sun;
or sky with horizons closer to the center of the universe.
In seeking the center,
the blue spaces of universe first;
first:
there is no mountain,
then there is;
then there is no mountain.
(I've heard my heartbeat there.)
Then there is.
If there is darkness, you will know. If there is darkness
in the stillness between shadows falling across these mountains
I already know.
The Chapbook Review
The name of this monthly online journal is self-explanatory. In addition to reviews of new poetry and literary prose chapbooks, the site features critical essays and interviews with authors and publishers. Reviews display a lively voice and eclectic tastes.
The Character Therapist
Having trouble with your fictional characters' motivations? Wondering how to depict mental illness accurately? Jeannie Campbell, LMFT, will sit your imaginary friends down on the couch for a diagnosis.
The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition
Create work that meets today's professional standards with guidance on grammar, usage, formats, design and sourcing (including electronic and online sources).
The Child Finder
By Rene Denfeld. This beautifully written thriller goes deep into the minds of survivors of intergenerational trauma: some who become healers and heroes, pitted against others who pass on the evil that was done to them. In the snowbound mountain forests of the Pacific Northwest, a famed investigator with her own barely-remembered abuse history searches for a little girl who was kidnapped three years ago. Meanwhile, this resilient and imaginative child tries to maintain her sanity in captivity, by reliving her favorite fairy tale and forming a bittersweet survival bond with her captor.
The Choosing America Project
Award-winning writers and filmmakers Ricky and Lia Friesem are compiling authentic dramatic anecdotes (1,500-3,000 words) from immigrants who chose to live in America. They hope to turn some of these stories into short films that will be shown in the movies and broadcast on TV. "We are looking for those special moments, encounters, surprises, experiences, disappointments, which vividly convey what it's like to be an immigrant in America. The good, the bad, the sad, the miraculous, the joyful—every anecdote is welcome as long as it's authentic and well told." See submission guidelines on website.
The Chosen One
This chilling and all-too-real story takes place inside a fundamentalist polygamist cult in the Utah desert. Thirteen-year-old Kyra loves her extended family and tries not to question the elders' tightening grip on their lives, but when they command her to marry her 60-year-old uncle, she plans a desperate escape that could put her life at risk. Billed as a young adult novel, this book may be too disturbing for some readers in that age group.
The Clash of Life
I'm easing home across the hills and angling west to a sinking sun,
When suddenly in a clash of wills two hawks are at it, one on one,
With flashing wings and slashing bills—to fight all night for pride won't run.
They wheel and rise and go much higher, then turn and peel into a dive
That streaks the sun with a flash of fire; they swoop on up that each may strive
To make the cast they each desire—could either one remain alive?
But just as swiftly as the fight began one was struck with a telling blow
And then as vanquished turned and ran, a desperate glide to the void below
Far from the sun and the eyes of man—to the haven only darkness could bestow.
But the victor rose once more on high, to salute in triumph the fading light,
As though into the sinking sun to fly, to cut its rays with glistening might,
To stake his claim to all the sky—then turned and streaked beyond my sight.
As I turned to follow the homeward trail the red of the sun was almost done,
But that clash of hawks, one strong one frail, had asked of me would I be brave or run,
Would I in the clash of life prevail—to make my glory flash in the sinking sun.
Copyright 2006 by John R. Sabine
Critique by Jendi Reiter
I chose this month's critique poem, "The Clash of Life" by John R. Sabine, for its skillful use of rhyme and meter and its dramatic imagery. Sabine's is an old-fashioned poem, not just stylistically, but also in the boldness with which the author delineates the moral lesson that we should take from nature.
Nineteenth-century writers were especially fond of such exhortations and inspirational conclusions in their nature poetry. Examples include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Seaweed" (urging the strong-willed poet to seize and preserve fleeting moments), William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl" (the bird returning safely to its nest gives him assurance of heaven), and William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (seeing our mistreatment of animals as a sign of original sin). Emily Dickinson also frequently compared herself to small creatures such as birds, insects, or flowers, to remind herself to be content with the crumbs of happiness that God gave her. (See, for example, #230, #335, #442.)
With the decline of traditional religion among the intelligentsia, and the advent of Darwinism, this type of poem fell out of fashion because it was no longer taken for granted that nature revealed God's moral order. We see glimmerings of this doubt in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam", from which comes the famous phrase "nature red in tooth and claw", and the skeptical tone of voice had become well-established by the time of Robert Frost's "Design". However, the popularity of contemporary poets like Mary Oliver suggests that there is still an audience for optimistic, inspiring pastoral verse.
Sabine's poem displays some of the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the genre. On the plus side, humanity has always sensed that the animal world contained spiritual wisdom. Most of us have known the feeling of kinship with a creature whose struggles and passions seemed to mirror our own. This moment of recognition, similar to what we feel when a work of art touches us deeply, somehow ennobles our personal drama by suggesting that it is connected to a universal story. On the minus side, poems that draw a neat moral from nature can be unsatisfying because they leave out too much of the strangeness that makes nature so awe-inspiring. Sometimes her lessons are neither clear nor heartwarming.
"The Clash of Life" takes this very precariousness as its subject. Sabine shows us the fearful glory of the hawks' battle to the death. Nature is beautiful but also terrible. In fact, it is nature's lack of compassion for weakness that pushes these creatures to heroic extremes of strength and skill. Though the awareness of danger and uncertainty fits the modern sensibility, this poem harks back to the Victorians in its confidence that the human observer can be the master of his fate. It does not end with a message of submission to natural law or the superior sensitivity of animals, the way contemporary nature poetry often does, but with acceptance of "survival of the fittest" as a principle of self-improvement.
The lack of moral ambiguity in this poem—the defeated hawk does not get a lot of sympathy—for me makes the lesson somewhat less realistic and compelling. On the other hand, Sabine's unabashed celebration of a victorious warrior strikes a nice note of contrast to the maudlin sanctification of the underdog that afflicts much contemporary poetry about politics or the environment. Every era has its characteristic extremes.
Despite the cautionary words above, I wouldn't advise Sabine to change the poem much. My main edits would be to tighten the phrasing of some lines so that the meter flows more smoothly, because the beat plays such a key role in transmitting the energy and tension of the scene.
I was also perplexed by the phrase "to make the cast they each desire". Since the hawks are probably not auditioning for a play, I assumed they were fighting over prey, "casting" the way a fisherman casts a line. "Cast" here would mean something like aiming correctly to hit their target. The unusual use of the word makes the storyline unclear, though, and I would change it to something like "seize the prey" if that is what Sabine is trying to describe.
The template for each line of this poem is eight iambs, with the rhymes on the fourth and eighth stressed syllables of each line in the stanza—basically an ABABAB rhyme scheme without the line breaks after the A's. Omitting those line breaks emphasizes the hawks' headlong, high-pressure race to survive.
If Sabine wanted to make the meter of the first line more regular, he could eliminate the word "west" because we already know that the sun sets in the west. "Angling toward the sinking sun" would convey the same information. Since the first two stanzas follow the meter quite precisely, this change is optional. Slight variations (as in line 2, with the extra unstressed syllable in "suddenly," or the two-syllable rhymes "higher/fire/desire") help avoid a sing-song intonation.
The meter becomes more careless in the third stanza, and here I feel that editing is more necessary. Fortunately, most of the key words and phrases can be preserved. I would rewrite it along these lines:
"But swiftly as the fight began, one hawk sustained [or "was struck"] a telling blow
And then as vanquished turned and ran, a desperate glide to the void below
Far from the sun and the eyes of man—for darkness its haven to bestow."
The last line is still a bit wordy, but I like the rhetorical pattern of the first half enough to retain it. The reversed verb order in the second half is old-fashioned, but that does not seem out of place in this poem.
The first line of the final stanza could be rewritten as "the reddening day was almost done". This avoids the repetition of the word "sun" and the excessive internal rhymes using that sound. In the next line, I would tighten the meter again by omitting "of me".
I'm having a hard time with the final line, because it has 20 syllables rather than the correct 16—a bagginess that lessens its impact in a poem that just has to end with a bang—yet the phrases themselves strike just the right note, and I'm hesitant to pick them apart. "To make my glory flash in the sinking sun" has at least two too many syllables, but every word is necessary. The "sinking" sun suggests that the window of opportunity is brief, and that death overshadows even the victor. This tragic irony is essential in a poem that could otherwise feel too triumphalist. Possible rewrites are "Would I in the clash of life prevail—my glory flash in the sinking sun" or "a glorious flash in the sinking sun", but perhaps these are less satisfying in terms of meaning. Such are the tough choices that formal poetry requires! I commend Sabine for telling a compelling story in natural-sounding contemporary language, while remaining mostly within the constraints of his chosen form.
Where could a poem like "The Clash of Life" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
Prizes up to 500 pounds for poems 30 lines or less (published or unpublished), from UK-based writers' resource site; enter online only
Edgar Bowers Prize
Postmark Deadline: October 15
One of several Georgia Poetry Society contests offering $75 for unpublished poems, this prize commemorates Georgia poet Edgar Bowers (1924-2000), whose compact and rigorous formalism defined the spirit of his work
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Prizes up to $100 for poetry and prose that illuminates humanity's search for the sacred and the drive to realize one's potential; sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women (Nob Hill Branch) but open to both men and women
Other publications that might welcome a poem like "The Clash of Life" include Measure: An Annual Review of Formal Poetry (successor to The Formalist) and the e-zine The HyperTexts.
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Cloud That Contained the Lightning
By Cynthia Lowen. Elegant and unforgiving as equations, these poems hold us accountable for living in the nuclear age. Persona poems in the voice of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "the father of the atomic bomb", reveal self-serving rationalizations and belated remorse, while other poems give voice to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This collection is notable for exposing the emotional logic of scientific imperialism, rather than revisiting familiar scenes of the bomb's devastating effects. Winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Nikky Finney.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume 6: The Crime Stories
The famed writer of Westerns was also a master of the hard-boiled crime story. These action-packed noir tales are populated with treacherous dames, mobsters, prizefighters, coal miners, scam artists, and decent guys trying to survive against the odds.
The Comics Journal
An online publication from comics press Fantagraphics, The Comics Journal features in-depth history, creator interviews, and reviews of comics and graphic narratives.
The Common
The Common is affiliated with Amherst College in Massachusetts. The editorial board includes well-known authors such as Richard Wilbur, Mary Jo Salter, and Honor Moore. Editors say, "The Common publishes fiction, essays, poetry, documentary vignettes, and images that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here."
