Resources
From Category:
The Opposite of People
By Patrick Ryan Frank. Blank verse and loosely structured sonnets eloquently explore the yearnings we express through TV and movie archetypes. Sincerity and contrivance are not opposites here. The comedian, the stunt man, the late-night movie monster, and the bad-news blonde take their turns revealing the existential paradox of film: how it underscores the passage of time by freezing it on the screen, a fixed point against which we measure our real lives racing past like "a car with its brake lines cut". Frank's blend of wry conversational tone and formal meter harks back to W.H. Auden, but his aesthetic lineage is more Disney than Brueghel: "About violence they were never wrong,/the old cartoons."
The Over-manipulation Problem
May Peterson is an editor, writing consultant, and author of the fantasy novel Lord of the Last Heartbeat (Carina Press, 2019). In this writing advice post from her blog, she cautions against the self-doubt that leads writers to revise too much. Rather than think of early drafts as problems to be fixed, learn to appreciate your strengths at every stage, while being aware that your work will change and grow. "We all need to strive, but we all need to accept, too, and it's the latter part writers often have trouble with...What I encourage writers to do is to cultivate trust in their writing. Not just their skills, or their voice, but what their writing is about for them. The things they like about their own writing, just as it is."
The Owl Question
Lyrical imagery full of personal wisdom characterizes this winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award. Shearin can be bluntly honest about our flaws and disappointments without sounding cynical. "My mother once explained:/ we can't all be beautiful; even a gaunt field/ feels the cold kiss of morning."
The Passive Voice
Intellectual property lawyer David Vandagriff (a/k/a "Passive Guy") blogs about trends in self-publishing and traditional publishing. His posts on publishing contract terms and pitfalls are especially valuable.
The Pedestal Magazine
Online journal of poetry, fiction, reviews, and artwork, edited by poet and songwriter John Amen. They also accept submissions of "slam" poetry performances (send as MP3 files). Contributors have included Jim Redmond, Nathan Leslie, Arlene Ang, JoSelle Vanderhooft, and Linda Leedy Schneider.
The Perch Journal
Literary journal The Perch is a project of the psychiatry program at the Yale School of Medicine. They publish creative writing and artwork on themes relating to mental health. Eligible genres include poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, visual art, music, and academic work that is accessible to a general audience. See website for themed submission calls.
The Pillow Book
By Jee Leong Koh. The design of this illustrated Japanese-English edition has a studied casualness that suits these subtle, charming poems. Koh writes of male-male eroticism without the gritty explicitness or florid imagery that often prevail in this genre. Everything is enjoyed in moderation yet savored to the fullest. Literary sketches of his native Singapore combine the sensory immediacy of childhood memories with an expatriate's wry detachment.
The Poem I Wish I Had Read
This YouTube channel, curated by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, features acclaimed contemporary poets reading and discussing poems that they wish they would have encountered as a teenager. The Poetry Center created this video series as an outreach project to spark high school students' interest in poetry.
The Poem Tree
This outstanding site reprints contemporary and traditional poetry, with an emphasis on formal (metered) verse. Essays like this one by Richard Moore show the punch that rhythm can put into a line. If you're a published poet, consider submitting your work to the site. See the FAQ for details.
The Poetess in America, an essay by Annie Finch
A well-researched defense of poets who fell out of fashion with the rise of literary modernism. Finch, an acclaimed formalist poet, is critical of modern poetry's emphasis on originality and linguistic complexity. Room should be made for poetry that expresses a community's values in accessible and heartfelt language. Poetesses like Teasdale and Millay "offer a valuable strategy of renewal for poets in the twenty-first century, particularly for women poets who need a new way to connect with pre-twentieth century poetic traditions."
The Poetic Voice
Poetry podcast from educational publisher Houghton Mifflin features contemporary poets such as Donald Hall, Alan Shapiro and Natasha Trethewey reading and discussing their work.
The Poetry Kit
Links to poetry resources around the English-speaking world. Especially strong on UK sites.
The Poetry of Derrick Brown
Juxtaposed concepts are startling yet so right. ("I feel like a cloud she says/ and i know this is true/ for i know the terrible things that go on inside of clouds.") Even if you have too many books, buy his.
The Poetry Society
Publishes Poetry Review and Poetry News, and sponsors Britain's longest running poetry competition.
The Poetry Society of America
Membership not only lets you enter PSA's quality contests for free, you also get free or discounted admission to readings and seminars, and a subscription to the Poetry Society's magazine, Crossroads. Excellent value. Sign up through PSA's website. Also at the site, do visit the Resource page (free to all) with towers of links to quality poetry journals, festivals, websites, publishers, MFA programs, bookstores and literary organizations.
The Poetry Zone
Website features poems by teens and pre-teens. Good quality. Submit free. Also hosts regular poetry competitions. Winners receive books and other prizes.
The Poisonwood Bible
In this novel, a dangerously naive American missionary family is swept up into the turmoil of the Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960. Each of the multiple narrators speaks with a poetry all her own, and voices a different way to make sense of this clash of cultures. Despite the violence and injustice that the family witnesses, and in which they become complicit, the world they inhabit is anything but meaningless, though it may be a meaning that does not have the white race, or even the human race, at the center. Kingsolver combines a prophet's rage with a mystic's delight in small miracles such as the jungle's fertile ecosystem and the generosity of starving villagers.
The Politics of Empathy
In this 2015 essay from Solstice Lit Mag, poet Jennifer Jean shares the ethical principles that guided her when writing persona poems in the voices of sex-trafficking survivors. What is the boundary between empathy and appropriation? Consent from subjects, an intent to heal and inspire, and feedback from the community are key considerations.
The Popsicle Planet
Gears shift, thin wheels sip asphalt
as I ride through soda-water
evening air. A flash of orange leaps out
at my periphery, a sizzling circle
wavering towards the dirt.
It takes my eyes, tricks them
with feverish brightness
like a sickness I somehow wish to catch
and suddenly the bicycle
is not merely going, but hunting,
its toothy metal is bored with
the blue glass twilight,
those abandoned barns which tilt
as arrogant antique lampshades
(the stuff which has already touched its frame:
stone, cool, clear, and moon).
It drinks the small streets of the Midwest suppertime
taut rubber whispery, clinging but smooth,
as the hot candy filters
quick through tree tops
and its elusive flavor
is close to dissolution.
But I find the spot
where it oozes completely; sagging,
so pregnant it could split,
its trembling vicious gas scrapes and shines
the dull rock of this town.
I think it is unfathomably huge
But the Universe is even much larger still.
Riding back there is fire
smeared like butter
on the pedals.
Copyright 2006 by Katherine Fleissner
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Katherine Fleissner's "The Popsicle Planet," dazzled me with its playful blurring of sensory boundaries. The 19th-century Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud once described his innovative poetic method as an "immense and rational derangement of all the senses," exemplified in poems like "Vowels" (Les Voyelles) where each vowel-sound is associated with a color. Similarly, Fleissner's unusual verb choices (a bicycle that drinks) and comparisons (fire "smeared like butter") merge seemingly incompatible physical states to produce a mystical vision, pregnant with meaning and intensity. The gentle surrealism of this poem also invites comparisons to the Beatles' famous psychedelic ballad "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
The first line immediately signals that the author is taking us on a ride through a world that is more dynamic and unpredictable than what our ordinary vision perceives. The bicycle has become a living creature that "sips asphalt" as the normally solid surface of the road takes on a liquid quality. What does it mean for the air to be like soda-water? Perhaps it is sweet, or moist, or effervescent with energy. This intriguing image further blurs the lines between solid, liquid, and gas. Meanwhile, the delicacy of "sips" sets a benign mood. Although the barriers of perception are dissolving, there is still a feeling of safety and control. Soda-water suggests innocence, a drink for children instead of a liqueur.
The tension rises with the lines "a feverish brightness/like a sickness I somehow wish to catch", and the bicycle is now hunting like a "toothy" animal. Crossing over into this new realm of experience could be dangerous, but the alternative may be stagnation and a different form of unreality. In contrast to the hot colors of the "sizzling circle" and "feverish brightness", the world we leave behind is sunk in a cool "blue glass twilight", exhausted as a junked lampshade with no more lightbulb. This quiet, washed-out dimension has its own subtle beauty (as found in the totemic recitation of "stone, cool, clear, and moon"), but is incomplete without the energy that the bicycle's quest represents.
The journey culminates with an almost sexual bursting-forth of something from the earth—something that oozes and trembles, "shines/the dull rock of this town" into life. What does the "it" refer to in the phrase "the spot/where it oozes completely"? In the preceding sentence, "it" was the bicycle, so this line confused me momentarily. Here, the speaker is probably talking about the "hot candy" that drips and dissolves through the treetops in the previous stanza. What's great about this image is that the candy, or oozing substance, is not a metaphor for anything; it's not simply that the sunset clouds are like candy, for instance. Instead, it feels as if the speaker has stumbled upon the source of the undifferentiated proto-matter out of which all these other things are made—what Hinduism might call Brahman, or the underlying essence of the material universe.
I would cut the lines "I think it is unfathomably huge/But the Universe is even much larger still." In a poem that accomplishes its goals through sensation rather than analysis and comparison, this sentence seems out of place and redundant. It spells out a message that is already conveyed more effectively through images alone. Capitalizing "Universe" also shades into New Age sentimentality, that self-consciously prophetic tone that can ruin a poem about a profound subject.
The final lines are striking and memorable. The subject of "Riding back there" is ambiguous—is the fire riding, or is the speaker saying that riding her bicycle is like being on fire? The double meaning makes it more interesting. Starting the line with "Riding" plunges the reader into the experience right away, without the interference of a narrator, underscoring that the goal of this journey was to erase the boundary between the speaker and her surroundings. "Fire/smeared like butter/on the pedals" is wonderfully bizarre, yet entirely appropriate as an image of the richness and creative energy that now clings to her every movement.
Where could a poem like "The Popsicle Planet" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Greg Grummer Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: December 1
Competitive award from Phoebe, the literary journal of George Mason University, offers $1,000 for unpublished poems (1-4 poems, 10 pages total); brief, imagistic work does well here
Lyric Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: December 15
Members-only contest from the Poetry Society of America (we recommend joining) offers $500 for lyric poems up to 50 lines
This poem and critique appeared in the November 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
The Position
Witty novel chronicles the romantic travails of the authors of a 1970s sex manual and their four children, who are first mortified by their parents' unabashed passion, then wounded and disillusioned by their divorce. Wolitzer treats her characters' failings tenderly, managing both nostalgia for the Free Love generation's idealism and clear-sighted compassion for the Generation X'ers living in the wreckage of sexual utopia. The style is so light and clever that one realizes only later how many deep truths have been communicated.
The Post Office Poems
This blog is an interactive, ongoing poetry project highlighting Fall City, Washington, and the Snoqualmie Valley, written by an anonymous author and posted weekly on the bulletin board at the Fall City Post Office.
The Practicing Writer
Very useful free monthly e-newsletter for writers of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, featuring articles, interviews, contests, calls for submissions, and more. Editor Erika Dreifus (Ed.M., M.F.A., Ph.D.) is a Massachusetts-based writer and writing instructor with many publication credits, who serves as contributing editor of The Chattahoochee Review. Dreifus says, "Our mission is to support the craft and business of excellent writing."
The Prince and the Dressmaker
By Jen Wang. In this perfectly heartwarming graphic novel, set in "Paris at the dawn of the modern age", a special friendship blossoms between a cross-dressing teenage prince and the working-class seamstress who guards his secret. By day, Prince Sebastian dodges his parents' efforts to set him up with eligible young ladies, while by night, he dazzles as fashion icon Lady Crystallia. Meanwhile, Frances wonders how she can achieve her dreams of success as a fashion designer without exposing her royal client's secret. All ends happily in a tale that is suitable for both YA and adult readers.
The Prophets
By Robert Jones Jr. Set on a Mississippi plantation, this devastating yet life-affirming novel centers on the forbidden love of two young Black enslaved men. Multiple perspectives reveal how sexual violation and erotic entanglement give the lie to the brutally maintained separation of Black and white, as well as the complex uses of Christianity to comfort the oppressed while muting their rebellion. Interspersed with the deadly despair of the plantation scenes are hopeful visions of pre-colonizer African cultures that respected queer identities, a legacy that finds expression in the main characters' pure bond.
The Punji Pit
Well-crafted poetry by Vietnam veteran John A. Moller recounts the experiences of the New Zealanders who fought in that war. We especially liked 'A Gunner Goes Home'.
The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database
Split This Rock, an organization of progressive poets for social justice, curates this searchable database of over 600 contemporary poems by authors such as Richard Blanco, Eduardo Corral, Aracelis Girmay, and Michal 'MJ' Jones.
The Queen of Egypt
By Geoffrey Heptonstall
Flamingos may be glimpsed in flight
through the waters of distant lagoons.
They make waves that stir desire
for elegant company at court.
Men are easily persuaded,
my lord, by feathers, jewels and eyes
till they are possessed by their passion.
I am amused to be thought divine
when secretly stained with intimate blood.
And I raise my skirts to shit.
[Men are shocked to hear this.]
Yet still a moth to a candle flies,
eager wings approaching the flame.
Life so fragile soon passes,
and no-one mourns what is gone.
When the wind parts the curtains
the world reveals its curiosity.
Someone looks in to see my life.
The Question Authority
By Rachel Cline. This slim, incisive, timely novel of the #MeToo Movement explores the long aftermath of a popular teacher's serial predation on tween girls in a 1970s Brooklyn private school. Two middle-aged women, once childhood best friends, find themselves on opposite sides of another sexual misconduct case because of the different psychological strategies they employed to cope with their victimization. The Question Authority fearlessly examines the gray areas of consent, understanding that young women routinely overestimate how much choice and objectivity they could really bring to a relationship with an older male mentor.
The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind
Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, & Max King Cap, eds. An essential anthology of poetics and politics in the 21st century, this essay collection from Fence Books grew out of Rankine's "Open Letter" blog that solicited personal meditations on race and the creative imagination. Contributors include poets Francisco Aragón, Dan Beachy-Quick, Jericho Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, Danielle Pafunda, Evie Shockley, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and many more, plus contemporary artwork selected by Max King Cap. The writers span a variety of ethnic backgrounds, points of view, and aesthetics, united by honest self-examination and political insightfulness.
The Racket Journal
The Racket is a reading series and weekly online literary journal based in San Francisco. They accept poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and artwork. Written submissions should be 750 words maximum. Browse their archive to get a sense of their aesthetic.
The Radiant
Austere moments of beauty illuminate this collection whose theme is finding peace in the midst of suffering. Though battered by a lover's betrayal and the onset of multiple sclerosis, the speaker of these poems is renewed by the transcendent qualities of nature and her own courage in seeing clearly. Winner of the 2003 Levis Poetry Prize from Four Way Books.
The Rainbow Letters
The Rainbow Letters was started by adult children of gay and lesbian parents as an online forum to share their stories and make connections to others with similar backgrounds. Their mission has now expanded to publish letters written by anyone from the LGBTQ community around the topic of family. This project is intended to help as many people as possible express themselves and feel seen, heard and valued by their peers and society at large.
The Raw Art Review
The Raw Art Review: A Journal of Storm and Urge publishes poetry, flash prose, and artwork that convey passion with strong original imagery. Launched in 2018, the journal publishes quarterly. There are periodic contests for online features, chapbook and full-length poetry manuscripts, and story collections.
The Reader Teacher
Scott Evans a/k/a "Mr. E", an elementary school teacher in Wales, reviews and recommends children's books for parents and teachers on his site The Reader Teacher. His main focus is middle-grade fiction (ages 8-12).
The Real Politics of Lipstick
Winner of the 2010 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Competition, this collection of prose poems and flash fictions is indeed about the "realpolitik" of our sexuality as it collides with poverty and loss and makes a beautiful explosion. Dead fathers return as jaunty ghosts, budding teenagers remind mothers of the sexy stockings they renounced, tough girls find power in submission and abandonment. This is the honky-tonk woman as sacred prostitute, speaking in tongues as men "plowed away the weight of hard hurt lives" in union with her body but not, perhaps, her elusive soul. Small typeface makes the page look less inviting, but close reading will be rewarded.
The Reanimation Library
Unique online archive of quirky diagrams and illustrations from outdated reference books, which the library makes available for writers and visual artists to appropriate in their own work (within the bounds of copyright law). Interested in tennis manuals from 1948? How about 'Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit'? For those with an offbeat sense of humor, the possibilities are endless. The library was started in 2002 by Andrew Beccone, contributing editor of the literary journal jubilat.
The Rebis
The Rebis is a print journal celebrating the connections among Tarot, art, and creative writing. Each issue so far has had a theme based on one of the Major Arcana cards. Check website for submission periods. Editors say, "The Rebis commits to amplifying and centering underrepresented voices, paying artists and writers fairly for their work, and redistributing profits to social justice causes."
The Reformatory
By Tananarive Due. This gripping ghost story was inspired by a real-life ancestor of the author's, who died in a reformatory in the Jim Crow South. "Haints" are the least of Robbie Stephens' problems when he's sent to a sadistic juvenile prison for a trumped-up offense against a white boy in the rural Florida of 1950. The town's white power brokers want to use him as a pawn to bring his father out of hiding; Klansmen and police alike are gunning for Robert Senior because of his work organizing millworkers and registering Black voters. Meanwhile, Robbie's teenage sister and her 80-year-old godmother are discovering that even NAACP lawyers aren't a match for the racist judicial system. Freeing Robbie will require supernatural intervention.
The Rejection Survival Guide
Novelist and nonfiction writer Daniella Levy shares advice on this blog about staying hopeful and self-affirming in the face of the rejections that all writers experience. Her "Creative Resilience Manifesto" reads, in part: "I cultivate hope. I refrain from the use of prophylactic pessimism to numb myself to disappointment. I invite myself to feel everything." Levy is the author of By Light of Hidden Candles (Kasva Press), a historical novel about Spanish Jews during the 16th-century Inquisition.
The Rest of the Iceberg
This chart from education blog Janine's Music Room will be useful for writers who want to create accurate, well-rounded characters from a culture other than their own, as well as teachers with a diverse classroom population. Beyond surface differences like folklore, clothing, and holidays, consider cultural distinctives such as body language, manners, concepts of justice, family roles, notions of modesty, and sense of humor.
The Right Stuff
No one understands the American alpha male like Wolfe, who brings his boisterous journalistic voice to the story of the first astronauts. Published in 1979, this book has aged well, and reads now as a commentary on the brevity of fame as well as an incomparable glimpse into the Cold War zeitgeist.
The River in the City
By Paul Martin
How strange to see the river here
in the city, far from the green
country of long summers and swimming.
If only I could reach down
and touch it, let it shape
itself around my wrist
so as to remember me
as it moves under the dark bridge
past the looming blast furnaces.
Reprinted from Floating on the Lehigh (Grayson Books, forthcoming 2015); originally published in Southern Poetry Review
The Romance Novelist’s Guide to Hot Consent
In this article on the feminist sexuality website Jezebel, six successful romance writers discuss the importance of building consent into your scenes of seduction and intimacy, and how to write it in a way that feels natural and appealing. This piece is a must-read for fiction authors in all genres.
The Savvy Self-Publisher
At the website of Poets & Writers magazine, publishing veteran Debra Englander has interviewed numerous self-published authors about their experiences creating and marketing their books. Each interview is supplemented with expert opinions about the success of the author's self-publishing plan, adding up to a valuable case study on all aspects of self-publishing.
The School Magazine
A project of the New South Wales Department of Education (Australia), the School Magazine publishes poems, stories, articles, and plays that have literary and academic merit for elementary-school readers, typically ages 8-12. The four magazines under their publishing umbrella, each for a different age group, are titled Countdown, Blast Off, Orbit, and Touchdown. This is a paying market. See website for their values and content suggestions.
The School Reading List
The School Reading List is a UK-based resource site that recommends books, magazines, and newspapers for children and young adults, sorted by grade level. For British students, there are also resources for taking school entrance exams.
The Sea Letter
Launched in 2018, The Sea Letter is a print and online journal that publishes poetry, short fiction, chapters of longer works, and original photography and art. Submissions are accepted year-round. Payment is $50 for poetry and short fiction, $25 for art.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
By Deesha Philyaw. These bittersweet stories immerse the reader in the lives of Black women struggling against patriarchy and hypocrisy. Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and secret queer lovers weigh the risks of authentic intimacy versus passing on patterns of repression to the next generation in order to keep them safe. Philyaw's debut book was a National Book Award finalist and a PEN/Faulkner Prize winner.
The Self Publisher
The Self Publisher is the writing resource site of novelist and writing coach C.S. Lakin. Her blog features useful articles on such topics as copyrighting your work, building an author website, how to price your books, and getting Amazon reviews.
the Shade Journal
In July 2016, queer black poet Luther X. Hughes transformed his blog into an online literary journal, with this mission statement: "the Shade Journal is an online poetry journal focused on the empowerment of queer people of color (QPOC); publishing poems that inspires, devastates, and howls–work that challenges form and upsets the canon, but understands its rigorous and traditional roots. the Shade Journal believes there is something divine about being a queer person of color in a world designed to destroy these bodies." Follow on Twitter @ShadePoetry.
