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The Complete Review
Reviews for over 900 books new and old. Concise and opinionated. Good at calling attention to obscure but worthy books. Genres include poetry. We also enjoy their blog, the Literary Saloon.
The Cow
The Cow is like putting Western Literature through a sausage-making machine. The Cow is about being a girl and also a person. Is it possible? "Alimenting the world perpetuates it. Duh. Plus 'the world' is itself a food." The integrated self equals sanity and civilization (whose machinery creates the slaughterhouse), yet the body is constantly disintegrating, eating and being eaten, being penetrated and giving birth. With manic humor and desperate honesty, Reines finds hope by facing the extremes of embodiment without judgment or disgust. Winner of the 2006 Alberta Prize from FENCE Books.
The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
Edited by Diane Lockward. This anthology, suitable for both individual and classroom use, features craft essays and exercises for poets of all skill levels. It includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 well-known American poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate. Volume II is also available. Lockward is the editor of Terrapin Books, an independent publisher of poetry collections and anthologies.
The Creative Independent
The Creative Independent is an ever-expanding resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people. The website features brief interviews and essays by writers and artists in various disciplines, on topics ranging from starting a business to coping with adversity.
The Cresset
Accepts submissions of poetry, essays and book reviews.
The Crossing
I am drawn to such tales:
St. Kenneth and the Gulls
who found him floating
in a creel in the Bristol Channel
only a few days old, abandoned
by his Welsh father-prince.
Who knows why.
E-e-e-e-e wailed the hungry babe,
Creee-e-e cried the wheeling saviour birds.
See how pink he is, they marveled—
as sweet as a scallop,
his eyes pieces of sky.
They carried him to their aerie
perched in craggy cliffs, pulled downy feathers
from their own breasts for a nest—
no cold stones for this orphan.
A forest doe came every morning
to feed him with her milk.
An angel offered a cup.
He grew strong and kind and joyful
happy to share in mercy
as it moved throughout the world;
revered by all the local peasants.
Is this what it takes to be loved?
To be a wild-child sailor
without words or compass,
bereft of motherlove and mothernest?
Father, where were you during my rough channel crossing?
Did you not see my infant face in your face?
Did you not hear my howls?
Copyright 2010 by Sandy Longley
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
If you are fortunate enough to have taken a class in writing poetry, you may have encountered a two-part assignment that I call "a fold". First, write a poem that describes a journey you've taken in the last day or so, say, a walk or a drive. Then, write a second poem of the same length about something very different, perhaps a second narrative or something more abstract; for example, your response to a particular color. The instructor will then ask you to start with line one of the first poem and couple it with line one of the second, and so on until the end—in other words, to fold one poem into the other. The final step is to shape the sloppy result of this hammered-together draft by adding or removing words, shifting or cutting lines, etc.
The point of this exercise is to demonstrate the potential motion of a poem, the way it zigs and zags the reader's attention over two or more elements, bringing them together and creating a greater and unique whole. Many would argue that this dynamic (the fancy word for it is "dialectic", in the sense of "tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements") is the essential quality of poetry—what makes it a poem, as opposed to prose presented in broken lines. Its simplest manifestation is the metaphor. However, as the exercise I have just described teaches us, there are more ways to create this tension. The lesson demonstrates something else as well: the linking of two disparate concepts may not always be the product of insight and inspiration. It can be achieved through craft.
This is relevant to us here at Critique Corner, because it means that dialectic tension can be strengthened in the process of revision. The trick is recognizing which of our early drafts might profit from "folding".
I believe that Sandy Longley's "The Crossing" is one such piece. It is constructed using "bookends". That is, the first element, the authorial voice, appears in the first line and returns in the final seven, basically introducing the poem's second element and then neatly summing why the two are relevant to each other. The strength of this draft is in the depiction of the legend. It is creative, sensual, and succinct in its telling. The choices of diction, in particular, are excellent.
However, in my opinion, the structure, with its introduction and summation, are ultimately too conclusive. They direct the reader to a single, unambiguous reading. And since the "address" of this poem—the person or people to which a poem intentionally speaks—is to the poet's father, the reader is cut out of the communication. As readers, we are now more voyeurs than participants.
What would happen if the two elements of this poem were folded together? To demonstrate, I'll show two possible arrangements with the folded material in bold type. Caveat: the results are rough and incomplete. To smooth them, as described in the first paragraph of this essay, my personal style and diction choices would surely be introduced. It is not the place of someone offering suggestions toward to revision to re-write anyone else's poem. Rather, these are intended as jumping-off points the poet may choose to work from.
That said, revision one:
THE CROSSING
St. Kenneth and the Gulls
who found him floating
in a creel in the Bristol Channel
I am drawn to such tales
E-e-e-e-e wailed the hungry babe,
Creee-e-e cried the wheeling saviour birds.
See how pink he is, they marveled—
as sweet as a scallop,
his eyes pieces of sky.
Is this what it takes to be loved?
To be a wild-child sailor
without words or compass,
bereft of motherlove and mothernest?
only a few days old, abandoned
by his Welsh father-prince.
Who knows why.
They carried him to their aerie
perched in craggy cliffs, pulled downy feathers
from their own breasts for a nest—
Father, where were you during
my rough channel crossing?
no cold stones for this orphan.
A forest doe came every morning
to feed him with her milk.
An angel offered a cup.
He grew strong and kind and joyful
happy to share in mercy
as it moved throughout the world;
revered by all the local peasants.
Did you not see my infant face in your face?
Did you not hear my howls?
I have experimented with opening the poem on the subject of St. Kenneth as opposed to the subject of the author. This gives the reader an opportunity to locate whatever associations he or she might have either with St. Kenneth or the image of a babe afloat in a fishing basket with no intervention from the author. As soon as the author enters, the topic of this poem is narrowed. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but just when to direct this focus is something the poet can and should control. Notice too that, because the questions now occupy new positions, the referents in the lines "bereft of motherlove and mothernest/ only a few days old" and "this orphan" are now somewhat conflated. Are they intended to be about St. Kenneth or the author? Since this association is largely the point of the poem, the slight tension that always results from conflation is expressive.
Let's take this technique a little farther:
THE CROSSING
E-e-e-e-e wailed the hungry babe,
Creee-e-e cried the wheeling saviour birds.
See how pink he is, they marveled—
as sweet as a scallop,
his eyes pieces of sky.
I am drawn to such tales:
St. Kenneth and the Gulls
who found him floating
in a creel in the Bristol Channel
Is this what it takes to be loved?
To be a wild-child sailor
without words or compass,
bereft of motherlove and mothernest?
only a few days old, abandoned
by his Welsh father-prince.
Who knows why.
Did you not see my infant face in your face?
Did you not hear my howls?
They carried him to their aerie
perched in craggy cliffs, pulled downy feathers
from their own breasts for a nest—
Father, where were you during
my rough channel crossing?
no cold stones for this orphan.
He grew strong and kind and joyful
happy to share in mercy
as it moved throughout the world;
revered by all the local peasants.
A forest doe came every morning
to feed him with her milk.
An angel offered a cup.
In this more radical experiment, I have started the poem with its most original lines, a technique always worthwhile to consider in revision. (See Critique Corner, January 2010.)
When a narrative begins in medias res, the background is always spooned in later, frequently in disjunctive bits. This opens the structure of the narrative and gives both author and reader greater freedom. I took advantage of the slight shift to authorial voice in the words "who knows why" to turn the poem radically to the subject of the author. Notice that, as readers, we have no problem following the narrative even with these turnings. We don't yet know who the "you" is in those lines—it could be St. Kenneth, for example, or the reader—but that question is resolved in just a few lines. In the meantime, it creates an interesting suspense.
One problem a poet must always grapple with when reworking the structure of a poem is the final line. Although I personally found the questions addressed to "Father" too directive, ending with the simple conclusion of the St. Kenneth legend fell flat. It is always an interesting option to end the poem with a new image. The line "an angel offered a cup" leads me as a reader to ask what would have been the fate of the author had a cup been offered to her. What would have been my fate had a cup been offered to me? And how very sad for both of us that no such cup was forthcoming. It is an image of lack and longing—universal feelings that give the reader a chance to respond to something about him- or herself, not just to something about the speaker of the poem.
The fascinating part of all this jiggering is that Longley's original intent—an entreaty to her father—is never lost. Rather, shadings of that intent are layered on as we all learn about St. Kenneth and ask ourselves what it takes to be loved.
Using the folding technique has, I believe, enriched "The Crossing". In other instances the same technique can actually create multiple concurrent meanings. This is what is known as "complexity". Let me be clear: complexity is not obscurity. It does not refer to poems that use a sort of personal code or otherwise do not permit readers to parse them. In fact, the opposite. Complexity invites the reader to derive his or her own meanings in addition to the author's initial intent. It opens a poem and invites participation, keeping the poem interesting throughout several readings. And perhaps most relevant to us here at Winning Writers, it is probably the quality that most often moves a poem into the second round of a contest.
Where could a poem like "The Crossing" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by September 1
Top prize of $1,000 from this literary journal based in Western Massachusetts; enter online only
Sacramento Poetry Center Annual Contest
Entries must be received by September 15
Local poetry society offers prizes up to $100 and a reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center in California
James Hearst Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: October 31
North American Review, a venerable journal that favors accessible narrative free verse, offers prizes up to $1,000 plus publication for winners and finalists
National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: October 31
The Poetry Society (UK) offers top prize of 5,000 pounds for unpublished poems by authors aged 17+; online entries accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Curator Magazine
The Curator is a literary journal that explores the meaning and matters of the heart and spirit reflected in cultural objects, experiences, and the arts. Their site publishes at least one piece of prose (including creative nonfiction essays, reviews and interviews) and one poem each week. Editors say, "We curate writing about art intersecting with humanity. Aesthetically, we desire to showcase a diverse range of voices, artforms, and styles, but we do not accept academic essays. We do publish personal essays, interviews, reviews, reported stories, and memoir with a tie to an artwork, piece of music, or an everyday object." Submit 1-3 poems, or an essay pitch of 150-250 words, via their online form.
The Dead Alive and Busy
These carefully structured poems, tinged with classical allusions, honor the sick and dying with the poet's patient vigil and unflinching observation of the body's joys and failures. Winner of the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Award.
The Dial
Subtitled "the world's little magazine," The Dial was founded in 2022 to create an international dialogue among writers and journalists on themes of social change. Editors say, "Our pieces will be topical and of-the-moment, but not pegged to the day's news. We aspire to convey the contradictions, sorrows, and comedies of the contemporary moment, to write the present in order to create a future." They publish essays, reporting, and poetry.
The Difficult Farm
By Heather Christle. The haunted-looking one-eared rabbit on the cover is an apt mascot for these poems, whose randomness can be both sinister and humorous. The title carries echoes of "the funny farm", slang for an asylum, the place where persons deemed "difficult" are shut away, laughed at for the nonsense they speak. But is it nonsense? Christle's poems are held together by tone rather than logic. They have the cadence and momentum of building an argument, but are composed of non sequiturs. But the individual observations within that stream of consciousness often ring so true that you may find yourself nodding along. The speakers of these poems are eager for connection through talk, while recognizing that we mostly use language for social glue rather than sincere information exchange. So why not serve up a "radiant salad" of words?
The Difficulties
By Ruth Hill
The difficulties in trying to save
your enemies' children
—the innocents, collateral damage—
is that they belong so thoroughly
to your enemies
Handing candy to them in the refugee camps
you see it in their eyes
they have already learned to throw stones
waggle their tongues at you like wild turkeys
to repeat the irrational rationale
of why you are their enemy—'infidel'—
your food and your kindnesses,
their rightful plunder
This poem won an honorable mention in the 2013 Poets for Human Rights contest.
The Disappeared
By Norbert Hirschhorn
What makes us human is soil.
Even landfill of bones, shredded jeans;
mass graves paved over for parking.
What makes us human are portraits
—graduation, weddings—
mounted in house shrines and on fliers, Have You Seen?
Names inscribed around memorial pools
or incised on granite. Names waiting,
waiting for that slide of DNA, or any piece of flesh—
for the haunted to be put to rest.
What makes us human is soil.
To stare into a hole in the ground,
fill with the deceased, throw earth down,
place a stone. Bread. Salt.
For Fouad Mohammed Fouad
The Divine Salt
The spirit of St. Francis of Assisi presides over these plain-spoken poems, written from the perspective of a mental hospital orderly. Blair's kind and understated voice is a refreshing contrast to the melodramatic tone of much poetry about mental illness.
The Dos Passos Review
Seeks literary prose or poetry that demonstrates characteristics found in the work of John Dos Passos, such as an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes; an innovative quality; and a range of literary forms, especially in the genres of fiction and creative nonfiction. Reading periods are April 1-July 31 for Fall Issue, February 1- March 30 for Spring Issue.
The Drum
Published 10 times a year, The Drum is an online literary journal that features short fiction, essays, novel excerpts, and interviews, exclusively in audio form. Featured authors have included Susan Orlean and Lydia Millet.
The Egret Tree, South of Haifa
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
The Egret Tree, South of Haifa
Bloomed feathers whiting away
Days over fish ponds
(Meant to feed a small country).
Our bus chugged along;
You coiled sleep
Where suitcases and boxes overflowed;
Leftover lunch at sixty kilometers.
Toward Yerushalyim,
Thousands years' more history,
Than dreams could conjure,
Walked among lanes.
Only the shirut driver knows
Dismembered babies paid hard
Currency for vacationers' safety;
The desert's mystery's more than sand.
This poem is reprinted from Ms. Greenberg's new collection Citrus-Inspired Ceramics (Aldrich Press, 2013). It originally appeared in Scribblers on the Roof, June 2010.
The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity
Provocative, elegant memoir explores gay male desire, the mythic allure of doomed love, and the creative tensions of a life divided between incompatible worlds. Mendelsohn is a classics professor at Princeton, and some of his most interesting reflections involve the application of Greek myths to modern homosexual culture, and the contrast with his family-oriented Jewish heritage.
The Emily Chesley Reading Circle
Where a number of odd ducks gather to celebrate the work of Emily Chesley, Dr. Maximilian Tundra and their Victorian familiars. Don't miss their annual contest of speculative poetry and short fiction.
The Essay as Experiment
In this Poets & Writers Craft Capsule from 2023, Christine Imperial (Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues, Mad Creek Books) suggests returning to the literal meaning of "essay" as "an attempt," embracing disjunction and uncertainty in our writing process instead of forcing the narrative into the neat mainstream comprehensibility we learned in school.
The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories
The often absurd and exaggerated premises of these witty tales heighten our compassion for the hapless protagonists who seek love and sex in urban America, but rarely hang on to either one for long. Almond chronicles life's freakshow in the same spirit as Flannery O'Connor's grotesque: to shock us into solidarity with one another and compassion for our abnormal secret selves.
The Eyes
By Harry Bauld
Neue Gallery, Self Portraits, June 2019
Most of these Germans
scare the paint out of you, Felix Nussbaum
in the camp, a few bones
in the background and
another figure struggling up
from voiding in a trash can,
the sky dark with its human smoke.
Everyone's looking at you
except Max Beckmann. Otto Dix's
gaze is all Aryan accusation
but you do not confess. And he is
no Nazi. That is just you
soiling yourself. Your daughters
are Jewish. Keep repeating. Lovis Corinth
gives himself in the mirror another
mirror. Does he even have a good side?
Do we any longer?
Kirchner's garish
complementaries look forward—
to what, in that Germany? Always now
it seems we look at art and it looks back
at us on trial. Your daughters
are Jewish. Your gorge rises
against history. You are not getting anywhere
that way, seen and seeing and stuck. Enough.
Can't you take it? The gallery empties you
onto the same hot and sunny avenue
where the president says he can
shoot someone and not lose a vote.
The Fairy Tale Review
Distinguished contributors include Marina Warner, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Cate Marvin, Joyelle McSweeney and Donna Tartt.
The Fallen
By Mark Fleisher
The government gave him a marble tombstone,
his widow a perfectly folded flag,
the raven-haired little girl,
the handsome little boy tugging at his tie
memories wrapped in wondering tears
staining their innocent smiles
He died in the desert,
metal shards leaving little trace,
an explosive device, the captain said,
just blew off his face
He died in a rice paddy,
face down in the filthy muck,
a sniper's bullet in his brain,
a run of lousy luck
He died on a mountain top,
a screaming artillery round
sent shrapnel into his body
defending a piece of worthless ground
He died at thirty thousand feet,
his plane blown from the sky,
didn't have time to parachute,
didn't have time to ask God why
He died aboard a destroyer,
a torpedo ran hot and true,
struck his boat amidships
bloodying the ocean once blue
She died in a prison camp,
serving proudly as a nurse,
comforting the dead and dying
damn wars—the devil's curse
He died in a foxhole,
fell upon an enemy grenade,
a posthumous medal for bravery,
war, you see, is no charade
He died some years later,
lungs shriveled by poison gas,
just a simple country boy
not of the privileged class
Gold stars affixed to windows
made dark by clouds of grief,
the agony of time passing
offers little respite or relief
The government gave them marble tombstones,
their kin perfectly folded flags,
and the little girls and the little boys
will always remember memories of a time
they will come to understand
The Family Poet
Hundreds of family-friendly humorous rhyming poems, written and illustrated by R. Wayne Edwards.
The Fear of Monkeys
The Fear of Monkeys is a literary e-zine for political and socially conscious writing. Editors say, "Its purpose is to provide an empty vessel into which we might pour the otherwise marginalized voices of those concerned with political and social responsibility." Previously published work accepted.
The Feast: Prose Poem Sequences
A modern-day Jonah leads us from the belly of the whale into surreal cityscapes, sinister carnivals, and intersections with the world of Greek myths. Winner of the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award for best poetry book by a Missouri writer.
The Fifth Dimension
By Mary K. O'Melveny
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
...Leonard Cohen
As I was talking to my friend, he broke
down in tears, recalling anew, that his
wife had recently died. Is gone. Today,
some telemarketer asked to speak to
my long dead mother. For one tiny tick
of a clock, I almost handed her the phone.
How do we navigate shape-shifting grief
and still make coffee in the morning,
exchange words with neighbors about the
sorry state of our televised world or look out
our windows to gauge if promised rain
might fade to something akin to mist?
Surely, it is in those split seconds when
memory's failure blots out bereavement,
when we step forward into some state of
transcendental mercy when yesterday
is restored. A slant of sunlight on snow.
Before the unthinkable had time
to be thought. Before we had to
don mourning garments or speak in past
tenses. Our ground solidifies.
A conversation continues. A smile
returns. We want to stay there,
liberated from known dimensions.
The Fight Journal
By John W. Evans. The Bible may say that love keeps no record of wrongs, but when love sours, every memory becomes an entry in a ledger of unpayable claims. This painfully honest chapbook depicts competing narratives and raw emotions in the wake of an unwanted divorce. When all the blame has been divided up, and everyone has switched sides as many times as possible, love's persistence and its failures are still both mysteries to be accepted rather than understood. Winner of the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Contest.
The Fisherman
By John Langan. Steeped in the history and geography of upstate New York, this literary novel of cosmic horror draws on influences from the Book of Job to Moby-Dick and H.P. Lovecraft. A widower who turns to fishing as solace is drawn into a centuries-old pattern of bereaved men tearing the veil between worlds to reunite with some simulacrum of what they have lost. More than a monster story, though full of satisfying scares, this tale-within-a-tale leaves us chilled by fears of the uncanny existence that may await us after death.
The Flarf Files
"Flarf" is a collaborative poetic technique that creates nonsensical poems from the results of odd Google keyword searches, Internet chat-room lingo, and the "corrosive, cute, or cloying, awfulness" of the amateur poetry that is popular in online forums. Begun as a spoof of Poetry.com's low standards, the Flarf "movement" also satirizes how so-called "mainstream" poetry is actually produced by and for an irrelevant elite class, while the poetry that most people read is the (generally bad) amateur poetry circulated between individuals and posted on the Internet. For more on the latter point, see the related website http://mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com/.
The Fortunes of Formalism
Poet and critic David Yezzi makes the case for mastery of verse forms and prosody as essential to the education of a poet, and gives a historical perspective on formalism's loss of status.
The Fox Woman
She lives in the urban park, the fox,
The little vixen, with no shelter for her head
Under the sooty trees, in the scraggy grass,
The daily roar of a great city in her ears,
And the shouting of boys flinging cans in the dark.
She feeds from the boxes discarded around, finds
Scraps of food, laps pink-tongued from puddles,
And sleeps curled up, thick tail over her nose,
Her coat ruffled by wind and wet in the dark,
At the side of a bench with her old name carved.
Think fox, and you think thick red fur, bright eyes,
But she is dull and matted, and somewhere she knows
That once she was loved, but it comes and goes.
At times she feels that her hair was long and groomed,
That her eyes, once blue, shone from out a smooth white face,
That her teeth, now stale-breathed fangs, were even,
And smiled at crowds as she swanned serene.
But her foxy brain blurs and the memories fade,
Glimmers come seldom as she sinks with age.
What was it that passed, in a cast-off life,
That caused her to sink and die, fighting for breath
In the bright waters of a far-off land?
She remembers being pushed and thrown through stars
From across the world on the racing jet stream,
Impelled tumbling and breathless, to find her home,
Falling into this forlorn beast with the russet fur,
Hair the same shade as hers. They set this bench
As memorial for a dead girl, her friends,
And here she will live until one morning,
One of too many mornings of winter chill
Will leave her stiff and gone, again.
Davies says of the origin of this poem: "I read a short article in The Sunday Times about a young woman, a minor celebrity, who died in a boating accident in South America on holiday. Her friends erected a bench in the park opposite her home as a memorial, and suddenly a little vixen has taken up residence next to the bench. Could it be?"
Copyright 2008 by Liz Davies
Critique by Jendi Reiter
The human being who is also an animal figures prominently in fairy tales and ghost stories worldwide. Male shape-shifters are often princes in disguise, needing a woman's civilizing love to scrub off their beast nature. Animal-women tend to appear more seductive or sinister, as in the legend of the Selkie, or Korean folktales of fox-demons disguised as beautiful girls. Mystery both allures and frightens us. One way to express our anxieties about the elusive, emotional feminine is to depict a woman who is literally a fox, a cat or a bird—a stealthy predator yet also a fragile, delicate creature compared to man.
Like a small animal, a woman is vulnerable to falling through the cracks of urban life, as Liz Davies' poem "The Fox Woman" illustrates. Whereas the image of a man going feral suggests aggression and inspires fear, a woman in the same plight can inspire the reader's sympathy, even admiration for her ruined beauty.
Davies' successful strategy in this poem is to first build our rapport with the main character as a fox, letting us feel what she feels, through direct sensory description without commentary. We barely register the shift from a naturalistic depiction to an anthropomorphized one ("somewhere she knows/That once she was loved, but it comes and goes") because we have already made the imaginative leap of seeing the world through a fox's eyes.
This in turn generates empathy for the woman for whom the fox is a metaphor, the one with matted hair and gaps in her memory, who sleeps on park benches. She is not one of us humans, so we walk past her, or worse ("the shouting of boys flinging cans in the dark"). But an animal consciousness is easier to fall into than we'd like to admit; we've done it just by reading this poem.
Davies suggests that the hardscrabble little fox may be the spirit of a young woman who suffered a premature accidental death. Here, the kinship of human and animal speaks to our common vulnerability to forces we cannot comprehend. The fox is making her way through a harsh city environment that is not designed for her, from which she snatches crumbs of sustenance, and whose larger patterns her brain is not equipped to perceive. Is that really so different from how human beings feel, in the face of the mysteries of life and death?
Superimposed on the image of the fox is the alternate future of this unnamed "minor celebrity". One can picture her as an old woman, losing her grasp on the glittering memories that make up her identity: "At times she feels that her hair was long and groomed,/That her eyes, once blue, shone from out a smooth white face".
Her fate, whichever way it plays out, seems unfair. She was a beautiful girl, loved by her friends: why has she been reborn as a vagrant animal? Is there a message that she has been sent back to communicate—perhaps the message of compassion for derelict creatures as well as glamorous ones? This beautiful, thought-provoking poem leaves the answer shrouded in mystery, perhaps to be worked out in the fox-woman's next reincarnation.
Readers interested in comparing tales of animal shape-shifters from many cultures will enjoy the complete searchable text of Andrew Lang's classic Fairy Books anthologies, available here.
Where could a poem like "The Fox Woman" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
TallGrass Writers' Guild Poetry & Prose Contest
Postmark Deadline: February 28
$500 apiece for poetry and prose (stories and essays compete together) plus Outrider Press anthology publication; 2008 theme is "Wild Things"; maximum 28 lines per poem
Writecorner Press Annual Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: February 28
Writers' resource site offers top prize of $500 and online publication for poems up to 40 lines
Poetry International Prize
Online Submissions Deadline: April 30
Literary journal of San Diego State University offers $1,000 for unpublished poems
Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: March 17
Prestigious $1,000 award for unpublished poems; read past winners online
This poem and critique appeared in the February 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Free Dictionary
Comprehensive general-interest and specialized dictionaries (e.g. medical, legal) plus a thesaurus and encyclopedia. Convenient cross-links help you bone up on a subject quickly. Culture and Fine Arts section includes introductions to poetry, literature, theater and the classics.
The Fries Test: On Disability Representation in Our Culture
Kenny Fries is a poet, memoir writer, and editor of the anthology Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. In this essay on Medium, he proposes guidelines for adequate and respectful disability representation in literature, similar to the well-known Bechdel Test for women characters. "Does a work have more than one disabled character? Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character? Is the character's disability not eradicated either by curing or killing?" Novelist Nicola Griffiths is compiling a list on her website based on readers' suggestions. As she notes in a 2018 New York Times editorial, since a quarter of the US population has some sort of disability, we should be able to name over a million non-ableist narratives—but instead, there are fewer than a hundred qualifying books on her list.
The Frugal Editor
Book-promotion expert Carolyn Howard-Johnson offers tips for perfecting your business letters, query letters, book manuscripts, and book proposals. Readers of this award-winning blog are encouraged to submit questions that may be answered on the site.
The Gallaghers of Derry
By C.L. Nehmer
May 21, 1932
Mr. Gallagher's cattle feel it first—
a red buzzing that cracks open the sky,
a great shadow gliding across their hides
like a ghost. It brings the children
running. The farmhands, too, are curious,
first to greet the curly-haired woman
all streaked with gasoline and go get it
come from America,
come from America, alone,
inquiring of the nearest line
to telephone her husband.
Mrs. Gallagher prepares a stew,
lays out clothing, fresh sheets,
demands nothing of this sensible
stranger, only wonders at how she came,
through the banshee storm of lightning, the ceiling
of low-hanging fog, to be vested
in Ireland's rolling green.
The Garden
Blooms the sunrise as the foliage
The will of dawn. Salmon mist
Ochreous with affliction, its colors
Coalesce into infinity.
The whole day is without serenade or sorrow
The black bird
Beats its wings against the fence
Then off like a spear
The flowers are without fragrance
There are only these poppies, blood red
and rose
Swarmed by baby's breath.
The sun blooms, beats high above me
The distance of night is done for
Caught between these two realms, I turn away
Into the startling darkness of the day.
Copyright 2007 by Joleen Leo
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Joleen Leo's "The Garden", shows one way to make a familiar poetic subject fresh and interesting again. Gardens feature prominently in the Western artistic vocabulary, starting with the Bible. Like art itself, the garden represents the harmonious coexistence of the given and the manufactured, deriving its vitality and surprise from the independent workings of nature, but paradoxically finding its truest essence by being set apart from nature, forced into a human-made form.
In medieval art, the garden was a symbol of purity and tranquility; in the Bible, it represented a safe homeland as opposed to the physical and spiritual alienation of the wilderness. Now that the greatest encroachment on our peace typically comes not from nature but from human activity, the wildness of gardens, rather than their controlled aspect, attracts us as a source of renewal in our sterile post-industrial environment.
Leo's garden scene is unsettling, juxtaposing moments of expectant stillness with flashes of energy, even violence. Her fractured syntax jolts the reader into a mode of consciousness where one must process intense sensations without the comforting distance of a narrative framework. Imagine the more commonplace ways that this scene could have been described: the sun rises on some rather common varieties of flowers, and a blackbird flies away. Safe, predictable, ignored on our front lawns every day.
Leo employs several techniques to infuse these small incidents with dramatic tension, thereby telling us that they are worth studying. Like the atom that contains the potential for a bomb, every bird or flower, if seen correctly, pulses with an unbelievable force of pure being.
Consider the opening lines "Blooms the sunrise as the foliage/The will of dawn." Beginning with a verb creates a mood of action, and also suspense because the normal word order is reversed. We look for a subject with which to identify. "The will of dawn" personifies the sunrise—it has a will, a consciousness. Humanity is not the primary or only actor here. Sun and foliage both bloom; does the latter, too, have a will? The possibility is thrilling and disturbing.
The phrases "Salmon mist/Ochreous with affliction" and "The day is without serenade or sorrow" suggest that great emotions are at stake, but in a way that is a mystery to us. "The black bird//Beats its wings against the fence/Then off like a spear". The joyful violence of this image reminded me of D.H. Lawrence's poems in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1922), such as "Almond Blossom", where he describes the buds emerging on the tree as "Strange storming up from the dense under-earth/Along the iron, to the living steel/In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow".
Some of Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems (e.g. "Tulips", "Poppies in July") perform a similar reversal of our expectations of the pastoral. I thought of Plath when reading Leo's lines "The flowers are without fragrance/There are only these poppies, blood red/and rose//Swarmed by baby's breath." They share the same fascination with uncontrolled fertility (as in Plath's bee poems), the innocent turned suddenly threatening, a too-vibrant life coexisting with a chill waxwork beauty (flowers without fragrance).
I was conflicted about the introduction of a first-person voice in the final four lines. A personal element can draw the reader further into the scene, helping to explain its importance. I've read a lot of beginning writers' poems that present a well-realized description of a landscape, but nothing else, no characters or connection to human themes, and these often leave me feeling flat. It would be wrong to object to non sequiturs in a poem whose style is defined by paradox and surprise, but I did wonder whether the self-identified narrator's storyline or concerns were really the same as those explored in the preceding lines. What are "these two realms"? This reference seems to assume a clarity of argument that the poem has so far avoided, indeed gained its unique power from avoiding. I did love the last line, with its echoes of Henry Vaughan's "deep and dazzling darkness". I could feel the temporary blindness of walking into a shaded room after being out in the garden under the blooming, beating sun.
Where could a poem like "The Garden" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
JBWB Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by June 30
British writer Jacqui Bennett's website offers quarterly prizes of 100 pounds for poems up to 30 lines; online entry/payment accepted
Erskine J. Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: January 1
$200 prize for unpublished poems from the journal Smartish Pace; online entries accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Girls Club
Winner of the Bywater Prize for lesbian fiction, this enjoyable and honest first novel follows three young working-class Catholic sisters as they navigate women's changing social roles in the 1970s. Cora Rose, the protagonist, comes to embrace the aspects of herself that she once struggled to hide: her chronic illness and her desire for other women. In prose that is electric with wit and longing, Bellerose shows how the ones who drive us crazy are the ones we can't live without.
The Glass Violin
This Australian poet truly does see the universe in a grain of sand—as well as in a tram ticket, a Caesarian scar, the names of Australian military operations, a shabby bear in the Soviet zoo, a wren visiting a dead friend's garden, and myriad other small details of modern life that she turns into windows on the human condition, in verses both whimsical and profound.
The Godawful Sonnet Generator
Award-winning poet F.J. Bergmann created this random sonnet generator by writing a dozen cliche-ridden sonnets with the same end-rhymes, which the computer program reshuffles to produce over 15 billion unique, dreadful poems. Submit one to your favorite vanity contest today!
The Great American Poetry Show
Hardcover poetry anthology is open year-round to submissions of poems in English on any subject and in any style, length and number. Submit by mail or email. Each anthology contains about 100 poems; publication schedule is about 2 years between volumes. Simultaneous submissions and previously published poems are welcome. Response time is usually 1-3 months. Each contributor receives one free copy of the volume in which his/her work appears. See website for table of contents and contributors' list from Volume 1. Site also has an extensive directory of poetry links.
The Great First Impression Book Proposal
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of five how-to books for writers, including 'The Frugal Book Promoter', has condensed her expertise into 'The Great First Impression Book Proposal: Everything You Need to Know About Selling Your Book in 20 Minutes'. Check out other useful resources on her website.
The Greensboro Review
The literary journal of the University of North Carolina Greensboro. They accept submissions of unpublished fiction (maximum 25 double-spaced pages) and poetry (maximum 10 single-spaced pages per submission). Online entries are accepted through Submishmash. Deadlines are February 15 and September 15 annually; late entries will be held for the next issue. They also offer the annual Robert Watson Literary Prizes in fiction and poetry.
The Haiku Society of America
Large collection of award-winning haiku. Calendar of haiku-related contests. Quarterly newsletter reports on national and international events.
The Handy, Uncapped Pen
Founded by Jennifer Ruth Jackson, The Handy, Uncapped Pen is a blog and online community for neurodivergent and disabled writers. The site includes interviews, resources, mentorship opportunities, and articles on current issues in the literary community. They pay $3 for guest posts.
The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong
Engaging history of cultural and philosophical prescriptions for a happy life, which have differed widely from one era to the next. Hecht suggests that historical perspective itself brings happiness by giving us self-awareness and the ability to try new options outside our culture's standards of value. The wit and geniality she displayed in her prizewinning poetry collection The Next Ancient World lend credibility to her advice on the good life (or rather, lives).
The Hard Season
By Kathleen Lynch
Rain-glutted, the stream
splays to the base
of the retaining wall.
Good. Now you have reason
to pray. Of all the birds
watching from winter-stripped
trees, vultures
are kindest, killing nothing.
This is a true
measure of things.
Don't hold back now, have
chocolate, throw extra
kindling on, even though
skies urge cover & hoarding.
When mice pitter in
for crumbs, compliment
their small feet and fitting
ways. When your mouth
houses a curse, swallow,
think how you once
had no words at all
yet managed
your hungers. Everything
that comes, passes.
Everything that passes
rakes its fingers through
and passes.
The Hat City after Men Stopped Wearing Hats
Rich with local detail, these elegiac poems capture a working-class Polish-American boyhood in the 1960s, and pay tribute to neighborhood characters who are lovingly individuated yet acquire universal resonance from the way the poet brings their ordinary lives to light. The mood of aging and decline is leavened by a sense that love is as real as pain. This book won the 2006 Word Works Washington Prize.
The Healing Muse
Explores themes of medicine, illness, disability, healing, and more. This annual literary journal is published by the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at Upstate Medical University, a branch of the SUNY system. They accept unpublished fiction, poetry, narratives, essays, memoirs and visual art.
The Help
In 1962, the civil rights movement has barely touched the ladies of Jackson, Mississippi, who continue to treat their African-American maids like dirt—that is, until one misfit heiress with journalistic ambitions convinces the longsuffering housekeepers and nannies to share their anonymous testimonies in a book that will scandalize the community. Though the novel's neat happy ending could be considered too "Hollywood", this tale of interracial friendship is inspiring and enjoyable.
