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The Wishing Tomb
Winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Award in Poetry, this exquisite collection surveys the cultural history of New Orleans over three centuries, in poems that quiver and shake with music and surge with the violence of floods. End-notes provide background on the incidents that inspired each poem.
The Witch Boy
By Molly Knox Ostertag. This lovely middle-grade graphic novel features a youth whose magical skills transgress the gender roles of his community. All the girls in Aster’s extended family are supposed to become witches, and the boys, animal shapeshifters who defend them from evil spirits. However, Aster’s passion is for witchery. With the help of Charlie, a non-magical girl from the neighboring suburb, he uses his forbidden talent to fight a monster in a way that only he can. Charlie, who has two (off-page) dads, is uniquely sympathetic to Aster’s dilemma because she’s a female athlete struggling for equal opportunities at her school. Both children are people of color, and Aster’s extended family includes a variety of ethnicities. The artwork, in cozy earth tones, is clear and expressive, and not too scary for younger readers.
The World’s Wife
The wives of mythic figures get their say at last.
The Wrestler’s Cruel Study
By Stephen Dobyns. Poet and noir mystery novelist Dobyns branches out into philosophical farce in this ensemble-cast comedy set in early 1990s New York City, where wrestling matches re-enact early Christian disputes about the nature of evil, and anyone's life might unwittingly mimic a Grimm's fairy tale. What holds this capacious story together is the idea that truth is only manifested through artifical personae and constructed narratives—what wrestlers call their Gimmicks—and if there is free will, it consists of noticing your Gimmick and maybe choosing a different one.
The Write Life
The Write Life is a one-stop shop for information on how to make a living as a writer. Their annual "100 Best Websites for Writers" list showcases their favorite resources for freelancing, book marketing, blogging, literary craft advice, and inspiration for the long haul.
The Write Life’s 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2019
The Write Life, a writing resource site, compiles this annual list of their favorite websites in 10 categories: freelancing, inspiration, writing tools, blogging, creativity and craft, editing, podcasts, marketing and platform building, writing communities, and publishing.
The Writer Magazine
In print since 1887.
The Writer Magazine: Essays About Writing
The Writer Magazine is a well-established guide to writing, editing, and marketing your work. This page on their website collects links to their past articles with inspirational tips for writers. Topics include finding the heart of your story, balancing writing and parenting, and resisting negativity from your inner critic.
The Writer’s Almanac
A daily program of poetry and history hosted by Garrison Keillor, suffused with his characteristic nostalgia and humor. Each day presents a pithy new poem and recalls birthdays of famous writers and artists, unusual holidays and resonant historical events. Rich food for a literary mind. Sign up to receive the Almanac each morning by email. The website archives past issues.
The Writer’s Hotel at The New Guard
The Writer's Hotel is the teaching and editorial arm of the literary journal, The New Guard. The Writer's Hotel hosts a writing conference in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry each June at a "floating campus" in Midtown Manhattan between three hotels with a literary history: The Library, The Algonquin, and The Bryant Park Hotel. The conference includes virtual pre-study with Editors Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven and on-site workshops, lectures, agent speed dating, literary events, and student readings in the city at KGB Bar Lit, The Bowery, and Book Culture. Via The Writer's Hotel, TWH editors also offer a year-long course called "Private Study", which functions much like a low-residency creative writing course.
The Writer’s Workout
Launched in 2014, The Writer's Workout is a resource site with features including a discussion forum, submission calls, prompts, a newsletter, and a literary journal called WayWords. For $1/month you can use their Achievement Tracker to organize your submissions and drafts. The site's editors say, "It's designed and tested to help you measure all your literary progress: the Achievement Tracker shows your total word count, competition wins, reading, editing, publications, and more throughout the year as well as your daily and monthly average word count. Seeing these totals and averages helps you develop constructive writing habits, encourages you to try different things, and provides a clear visual of your growth."
The Writers’ Union of Canada: Awards & Competitions
Canadian writers should take note of these quality fiction and nonfiction contests. Prizes are awarded for individual pieces, collections, writing for children and short-shorts.
The Year of Yellow Butterflies (The Blog)
This site is the blog companion to Joanna Fuhrman's book The Year of Yellow Butterflies (Hanging Loose Press, 2015), a collection of poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. Readers who wish to contribute their own prose-poems beginning "It was the year of..." may submit them through the blog contact form along with a short bio. Contributors to the site have included Maria Garcia Teutsch, Susan Lewis, Maureen Thorson, and a 5-year-old named Ian.
theNewerYork
tNY is interested in new, forgotten, and experimental literary forms of short fiction: aphorisms, flash-fiction, user's manuals, surveys, lists, punctuationless stories, upside down stories, inside out stories, lipograms, faux press releases, fake book reviews, dialogues, scriptcerpts, epigrams, and other absurdities. They publish an annual chapbook-sized anthology, as well as the Electric Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, a somewhat searchable online collection of unusual flash prose and artwork.
There must be a way to listen
By Laurie Klein
like a small body of water,
reflective face, upturned: benign,
an entity of acceptance.
Water embraces the sunken. The near-dying
as well as the thriving stir, like plants
practicing grace as they lean on the current.
Let me be a haven, where shared sediments
settle. Where buoyancy reasserts itself.
Where you will beckon the weathered vessel,
and I will coax the reluctant toe.
We'll soften the chipped margins of shells,
castoffs, the chronically stony. Encompassed,
eased, the survivor rises
the way a trout breaks from silence, to surface,
old hooks and lines ingrown, jaws half-trussed—
wounds revealed, by one seeking a witness.
What was it the risen one said? Hark.
Flow and do likewise.
They Remember War
Writecorner Press editor Robert B. Gentry interviewed residents of the Oak Hammock retirement community at the University of Florida in Gainesville who were veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Their oral histories are collected on this page on Writecorner's website.
Thief in the Interior
By Phillip B. Williams. This debut collection from Alice James Books is a formally innovative, visceral and intense collection of poems through which the American tradition of violence against gay and black male bodies runs like a blood-red thread. From concrete poetry collages to experimental sonnets, Williams makes us contemplate murder as a twisted outburst of intimacy across caste lines, and love as a battle cry. Winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Thirst
By Tricia McCallum
The sun was hotter.
You can tell.
Look at us squinting against it in photos then.
Everything washed out by the glare,
cheekbones, jawlines,
all detail surrendered.
Dazzled,
we could be anybody.
The gardens, look, they're parched.
It hurt to walk on the grass.
We lay in scorched backyards
slathering butter on our chests,
chain-smoking, eating fluorescent cheesies,
swilling bright red soda.
Everyone burned raw.
And we knew
nothing could go wrong.
Our lives lay ahead of us.
Men were above us,
landing on the moon.
This poem is reprinted from The Music of Leaving (Demeter Press, 2014). It was first published at Goodreads.com as the winner of their December 2011 poetry contest.
This Book Is Anti-Racist
By Tiffany Jewell. This social justice handbook for middle-grade and young adult readers offers tools for understanding your identity and social position, unlearning myths of American history, affirming yourself in a prejudiced world, and using your privileges to disrupt racism. Upbeat, energetic illustrations by Aurelia Durand create a mood of hope and momentum for dealing with tough truths. Jewell's background in Montessori education is reflected in her trusting and empowering young people to make mature moral choices.
This Gardener’s Impossible Dream
Light verse from the Georgia Poetry Society's former vice president, featuring both original works and translations of French poems by La Fontaine, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud.
This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon
This luminous collection of linked stories takes the risk of positing a universe where tragedy and confusion do not get the last word. The narrator's acerbic wit and unsparing assessments of human nature, particularly her own, earn credibility for the moments of grace that always break in to redeem her family's love-hate relationships.
This Time Last Year
By Pamela Sumners
This time last year a neighbor who always lingers
to talk asked me if we'd noticed the silence of the
chimney swifts and the nighthawks lately. I had not.
This year, with no hum of traffic, with just the shrieks
of little girls in their speckled-egg Easter leggings
tramping the fenced back yard, I do breathe in the full
orchestral range of the birds: the grackles with their
puffed-out pipe whistle plunging so rapidly deep
into a guttural caw, the chimney swifts' high-toned
chattering, able to call out while still on the wing,
foraging my deck for seeds, battling each other but
sharing with the sparrows. Their claws unfit for perching,
swifts lurch straightaway and bathe by doing a water glide
in flight, their pond in this case a blue plastic wading pool
we keep for the dogs. The swifts cling to the mortar joists
to roost overnight or for nesting, remembering the caves,
the sheer, creviced rock faces jutting over rivers,
the hollowed-out trees where their ancestors foraged. This
is a neighborhood of old trees, of houses with chimneys,
of Olmsted parks and meet-me-in-St. Louis wrought-iron
pickets, a perfect place for the little smudge-gray flyer,
with its cigar-shaped silhouette in flight and its fluid
sweep. They greet the surging dawn like fish singing
into the reef. Sometimes they've been seen in small flocks
funneling themselves into the flues like infinitesimal
tornados. They memory-hoard the dark, the cavernous
seclusion of primordial home, love their splendid isolation
in a way that the tenders of lawns, peddlers of provender,
the neighbor instinctually leaning over the fence to you, cannot.
They do not know that the chimney owners are living through
a goddamn featherstroke of history, now nesting with them, awake.
Thistlefoot
By GennaRose Nethercott. In this extraordinary work of Jewish magical realism, the American great-great-grandchildren of legendary Eastern European witch Baba Yaga inherit her chicken-legged hut, and find themselves tasked with laying the ghosts of the pogroms to rest. The story is undergirded by a traditionally Jewish vision of death and the afterlife, in which being remembered by your descendants is the most important form of immortality. The Yaga descendants, whose magical powers have their hidden roots in Jewish survival skills, must do battle with the personification of genocidal forces that would erase not only a marginalized people but even the memory of their existence. And there is a traveling puppet show, and a monster-hunting band of queer rock musicians, and a lesbian romance with an animated graveyard statue. What more could you ask for?
Thoughts on Structure
In this 2011 essay from the Ploughshares blog, poet and writing professor Weston Cutter urges writers of free verse to give more conscious thought to the reasons for their structural choices. Visual components such as stanza breaks, line breaks, and margins should be chosen to enhance the meaning and sound of the poem.
Three Declarations
1.
How we position ourselves
for our inner audience:
you the reconciler, I the fighter
who besets you and is embraced
finally, all I've ever wanted
from anger. You see honesty
in me—after water, it alone
saves us. I will always be
the rattlesnake sidewinding
your desert, the wash flooded,
then dry, the acid pool that burns
you down to life's essentials.
Come closer, I say. Wash your hands.
2.
Our story truly began when you plucked me
too young to bloom from a dry bed—tequila spines
drawing your blood. You anchored a desert
garden with me: evening primrose, the invader,
ice plant with its jelly bean leaves, pink pussytoes
for gossip—even yucca, that loner, as a sentinel.
And always, the romance of the yucca moth.
Dizzy with love, you would divide me, sink me
in pots for others to plant, in all 200 countries.
But I say, don't return me to any bed but yours,
keep me where light is a scar. Sun-lover,
I need to burn in summer. Your hands
make my home, my rebirth. Come now. Dig.
3.
You, the bight of refuge
at the base of a canyon,
scatter of pebbles in front
the seep chill on my back
and then it comes: rills
sinuous down a pommel
of sunset stone
I climb up your black lip
slip into the cut wall that holds
me as rain lathers down
sandstone my bed and water
my lit curtain I open
my mouth to you
Copyright 2004 by Beth Partin
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Beth Partin's "Three Declarations", traces the many facets of a romantic relationship by recasting them as features of the southwestern desert landscape. The three sections represent a journey from tension and mistrust to openness and sensual communion, where images of water serve as signs of the relationship's renewal. This emotional movement is paralleled by a change in diction from one section to the next. The abstract language of the opening lines yields to a more physical narrative about a garden, which in turn dissolves into the run-on lines depicting the couple's passion at the end.
The relationship described by the poem is complex and not always easy to characterize. In what sense is the speaker like a rattlesnake, a wash both flooded and dry, an acid pool? These natural phenomena seem to have little in common. All three, however, disrupt the calm sameness of the desert with their mutability and their dangerous potential, just as the narrator wants to provoke her lover into a passionate response. Like flood waters, anger is not solely to be feared, as it is also a source of regeneration. The pitch-perfect last line of the first stanza works as both a tender invitation and a threat. Wash your hands, dear...in "the acid pool that burns/you down to life's essentials."
In the second stanza, the tables are turned, as the speaker's lover now tries to change her. She describes herself as a plant in a garden that he planned, a place of beauty and diversity that nonetheless chafes her with its limits. "Our story truly began when you plucked me/too young to bloom from a dry bed—tequila spines/drawing your blood." These lines reveal a wealth of mixed feelings: the spiny plant fights back against the gardener's act of mastery, yet the plant has been rescued from a "dry bed" (double entendre surely intended) where it could not bloom.
This stanza is filled with far more affection and fruitfulness than the previous one. Replacing the antagonism is understanding of the other person's motives: "Dizzy with love, you would divide me, sink me/in pots for others to plant, all 200 countries./But I say, don't return me to any bed but yours". What is going on in this stanza? I'm guessing that the narrator is upset by how her lover objectifies her, perhaps shows her off to other men, like his prize flower. Though she knows he's acting out of love and pride in her, she'd rather be treated like a person.
The last lines of the stanza move the couple toward reconciliation. "Come now. Dig." echoes the distancing, challenging "Come closer." of the first stanza, but now the speaker is open to being molded and changed herself, as well as changing the other person.
The first two stanzas could be seen as a back-and-forth struggle for control of the relationship, with the parties swapping the active and passive roles, whereas in the third stanza they have moved beyond the boundary fights. The couple's separate identities wash away in an ecstasy of rain that refreshes and perhaps reshapes the canyon stones. The musical third stanza is full of "S" and "L" sounds and other soft consonants that mimic the sounds of the rushing water and falling pebbles ("rills/sinuous down a pommel/of sunset stone").
"Three Declarations" is a well-crafted and lyrical poem that could be submitted to prestigious literary journals. It might work better with a different title, though. What are the three declarations? The first stanza's "Come closer." and the second's "Come now. Dig." are likely candidates, except that there is no parallel ending for the third stanza (nor should there be—the current ending is just right). Calling the stanzas themselves "declarations" doesn't give us much useful information about them. The restrained, unsentimental tone of the title "Three Declarations" is preferable to one that gives away too much about the poem (e.g. "Our Marriage"), but I would prefer something with a little more personality.
Where could a poem like "Three Declarations" be submitted? The following journals and contests may be of interest:
Texas Review
This journal favors conversational narrative free verse; see website for submission guidelines
Atlanta Review 2004 International Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: May 10
See sample work on the website of this acclaimed journal
Alligator Juniper's National Writing Contest
Postmark Deadline: October 1
Handsomely produced journal from Prescott College in Arizona offers $1,000 awards for poetry, fiction and essays
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Three Percent
A project of the University of Rochester's publishing house Open Letter Books, Three Percent is a resource for international literature. Their blog features reviews of world literature in translation. They also offer the Best Translated Book Award with sponsorship from Amazon.com.
Three Poems
# 1
if i put the pen in the flame
the damn thing will melt
dropping black ink
into the yellow heat
so small but so hot
capable of major injury and harm
but will i be careless
I don't think I choose that kind of pain
written in my blood
with spilt black ink
bubbling and cooking my flesh
damn pen
# 2
time to clean out the closet
the dust and unused books of directions
the funny photographs with the finger
in front of the lens
the lost pasta box with one strand
of thin spaghetti remaining
the birthday hat
converted to new year's eve
in two thousand and five
i sneeze and curse the dirt
my fingertips begin their
transformation to grey
i cough and wipe my nose
on my dusty sleeve
memories spill to the floor
winding up in the tall green trash
making room for more
to touch and discard
time to clean out the closet
# 3
a positive note
sprayed the air
printed in the smallest type
but the message is clear
brightly fortissimo
shattering the gloom like glasses
plastered over the hillsides
lowsides and inbetween
bringing that unmistakable something
so usually unseen
not hiding but waiting
Copyright 2010 by Tim Young
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
Last month in Critique Corner, we considered a technique for adding complexity to a poem, not to obscure it, but rather to open it to multiple interpretations and invite the reader's participation. This month, I'd like to take the discussion farther with an already quite complex piece: "Three Poems" from New York rocker Tim Young.
Notice that the diction and grammar of "Three Poems" is spare and plain. Nothing is incomprehensible or evasive. Indeed, the first abstract concept does not occur until more than halfway through, with the phrase "memories spill to the floor". Moreover, this is not a poem that expounds upon grand concepts. It is not about Justice, Eternal Love, or the Glory of God. Rather, "Three Poems" focuses on accessible—mundane, actually—objects and circumstances.
So, one might ask, why might this poem be considered complex? It has to do with the relationship of the narrator to the objects, as well as the relationship of the objects to one another. It has to do with the tone of each individual section, or "canto", particularly in its shifts from canto to canto. Above all, it has to do with the fact that these relationships are neither explicit nor justified. Young leaves it to the reader to make of these lines what he or she will.
Why is he telling me about a pen and what does the pen have to do with the closet? How do either relate to the final canto, whatever it is about? The key, as I suggested above, is to attend to their tone.
With the line "I don't think I choose that kind of pain" Young signals to the reader that he has at least actively considered hurting himself. Notice that he has capitalized the personal pronoun in this line—the only place in the poem in which he does so. Do "i" and "I" represent two separate psyches? The Id and Ego? As a reader, I can only wonder, and be intrigued—that, and troubled. Without saying "I am in pain" Young conveys a very real sense of emotional distress. I don't know why and I don't need to. Enough room is left for the reader to relate his or her own experience to that of the narrator.
I particularly admire the psychological observation found in the final line of that canto. Here, the internal pain of the speaker is transferred to the object in two deft words.
In the second canto, with its focus on tangible, even slightly silly artifacts, and its emphasis on physical action, the tone lightens considerably. One is relieved that our narrator has put aside his self-mutilating musings for what seems like some overdue tidying up. One can, of course, read "closet" as "closet", but just as easily it can be read as "the subconscious" or "the past", be it a specific time or event, or a more general sense of personal history. All these readings work. This is the point of complexity: multiple readings can be simultaneously true.
Again, I don't know what is inspiring our narrator's mania; I don't need to. Instead, I am led to recall some time when I manifested a similar psychological state with a similar physical response. Or, if not me personally, then someone I know, because this is a common human process. Complexity renders our poems more universal by making room for the reader's own experience to become relevant to their interpretations.
With the third canto, a very different tone is introduced: ecstasy, the dazzling aftermath of pain's release. The opening lines operate as extended synesthesia, conflating music with substance with text and again with music. As a device, synesthesia is always arresting; at some level one must stop and say, "Wait. Did I read that correctly?" In so doing, it has a way of waking a reader up. Interestingly, synesthesia is most frequently associated with the French Symbolists, known for encoding internal states with ordinary objects, as this poem does. Here, Young prolongs this state of heightened sensual awareness over five lines to suggest that the formerly dampened spirits of our narrator have been enlivened—some sort of passage has been completed.
This can only mean it's time for song, as the poem gives over to pure musicality, riffing through lines six through ten. To end, a coda, a restatement of the same idea that completes the second canto: The time to clean out closets will come again, and, if we live, again and again.
Thus, the pen, on some level, indicates the acknowledgment of pain; the closet, psychological processing which leads to emotional catharsis. With no knowledge of the particulars or instructions towards response, poet and reader together make a complete and satisfying journey.
Which is not to say this poem is complete or has fully met its potential. I assume, as I do with all pieces submitted to Critique Corner, that this is a draft. To revise, I suggest that throughout, the author simply demand more from himself. Mr. Young is a songwriter, so I would remind him that in a song you have the rhythm, melody and chords to give valence and energy to the lyrics. All you have with a poem is its language.
"Thin spaghetti." That would be as opposed to fat? Demand sharper or fresher images. The line "capable of major injury and harm" is a good example. Young means "capable of causing..." Dropping the "causing" probably elides well in a song, but here, it just strains the syntax. On the other hand, restoring an extra verb there leaves us with the most pedestrian of prose.
Fortunately, poetry is made out of images and "major injury" and "harm" just cry out to be images. They don't have to be metaphors which might pull us out of the dramatic pen/flame scenario, but perhaps something sensual within the moment, or specific and within the realm of possibility.
Make sure every line says something, and that it says it succinctly, unless you are adding words because of rhythm.
A quick scanning of the left side of the poem suggests that line breaks might be reconsidered to fall less predictably and elicit more tension across lines. Certainly, this triptych deserves a more evocative title.
So, it needs a red-penning, but please, Mr. Young, nowhere near fire! Still, taken together, "Three Poems" nicely demonstrates one of the important differences between poetry and prose: the associations a poem suggests are as significant to interpretation as its specifics.
Where could a poem like "Three Poems" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Kit Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by September 30
The Poetry Kit, a UK-based site with listings of markets and contests for writers, offers 100 pounds and web publication for poems of any length; fee is a pay-as-you-wish donation
Reuben Rose Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 10
Long-running international contest from Voices Israel offers prizes up to $750 and anthology publication for unpublished poems
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Three-Petaled Love Ghazal
All Other Loves
The Infant Warrior sings in every tongue, inflames all other loves.
Beware ravishings of the swaddled One who contains all other loves.
When did my desire turn on me with its green hunger, its hollow teeth?
My craving craves me back: pinched and jealous god who slays all other loves.
Poplars glint and shimmy in their spangled chorus line. They shiver, swept
by gusty fingers of a flirting sylph who disdains all other loves.
I abandon my mandrake garden. Now cankered roots poison the ground.
Juicy djinn's eggs, stolen for my silver bowl, red-stain all other loves.
Moses said. Moses said. He's dead. All the Earth is Egypt in the egg.
O Exodus hatched from the plagues of those gods, unchain all other loves.
Language ladled into Karen like alphabet soup from deep Word wells:
bright clad children queue to crazy-quilt the looped refrain, "all other loves".
At Center
This day is the end of my life: boundary enclosing the center.
All my days sigh, fall in spent rings around me, exposing the center.
Hankerings crowd my heart at cross purposes to draw and quarter me.
Warring loves clash! Which contentious itch is this bulldozing the center?
Your Spirit in me waits; crouches low like a pilot light: patient fire,
while each ignited cell in me, a hearth and pyre—glows at the center.
Such insatiable satiation! Can't say no to the rhumba urge.
Weight, mass and swivel merge—with gravity presupposing a center!
Listen, heart: who deep-carved into you these toxic runes and puzzling wounds?
Hold still for the ghazaling therapist who's diagnosing the center.
If you're reading this, it means I've died. In lieu of tears, Karen sends you
colors full of joy till in time all arrive, disclosing the center.
Arrive at Love
Inching, inching down to the well far beneath the fog, I strive to love.
Crouched light on its lip till you tell me to tip and I nose-dive to love.
A filmier face leans out of yours; it winks and scolds me: "You're dead, dear!"
snaps back as I slip slow through the narrows of the night, deprived of love.
Once said, these words are in the way: snapshots stalling a silent movie.
Words of all my yesterdays lie yellow-edged in the archives of love.
The city sings: a thin-skinned orange; juicy sharp high C inside. Wait.
Six wafer moons pass; peel back rind of the unexpected life I love.
Hidden to elude pursuit, I hang this hasty bamboo curtain and
peek quick-eyed at you from between the slats till I can survive your love.
Karen, pivot here on the hinge Contingency. Simplify to this:
you do not reduce to one, but us. Hinge on this kiss; arrive at love.
Copyright 2012 by Karen Winterburn
Critique by Laura Cherry
As forms go, as with Olympic sports, each has a different level of difficulty. Fledgling poets might, for example, start exploring the world of form by trying out the haiku or the rondeau; some time later, they might move to the sonnet or villanelle. This is not to say that it is easy to write a superb haiku or rondeau, but that it is possible to learn the very clear tenets of these forms and to create satisfying versions fairly soon. The more difficult the form, the harder it is to execute it in a way that will add something new, surprising, and lasting. Practice, diligence, and lavish amounts of reading are needed to progress in trickier, more demanding forms.
Somewhere far away up the ladder of difficulty, hanging out on a rung near the sestina, is the ghazal, a Near Eastern form which until recently was not widely known in the West and which still remains relatively obscure here. The ghazal (you will impress your poet friends if you know to pronounce it "huzzle") dates back to seventh-century Arabia; famous ghazal practitioners included the Persian poets Rumi and Hafiz. There has been passionate debate (fascinating for poetry geeks) about how to translate the usage of this form from its traditional Arabic or Persian into English. My own understanding is indebted to Agha Shahid Ali, a skilled writer of English ghazals who worked to bring the form to greater prominence in the West. Unlike some other definitions of the ghazal, Shahid's English interpretation of the form has a number of quite strict rules that must be followed.
To simplify to the core components: Firstly, ghazals have "timeless" subjects such as romantic love and mysticism. The ghazal form itself is made up of a series of long-lined couplets (at least five but no more than fifteen); the lines' meter is unspecified but should be roughly consistent. The same word (or phrase) is used as a refrain to end both lines of the first couplet and the second line of the remaining couplets. And finally, the poet's name appears as a "signature" in the last couplet. Simple, right? The trick here is to do something far-reaching and unexpected and mind-blowing with all that repetition, within the expansive space of those long, leggy lines. What does this look like in practice? Take a look at Shahid's untitled ghazal for an allusive, elegant example. Or you might check out Karen Winterburn's series of ghazals under its umbrella title "Three-Petaled Love Ghazal". In fact, let's look at Winterburn's approach to the core components of the ghazal to see how she handles them.
For her subject and theme, Winterburn gets extra points from the judges by choosing romantic and religious love, interwoven, or an eroticized version of religious love. This plunges directly to the heart of the ghazal's traditional intention, with the Western twist of incorporating Christianity as the religion of concern. There is something audacious yet entirely fitting in this choice, and Winterburn executes it with confidence.
Winterburn uses the requisite long-lined couplets, in a neat arrangement of six per ghazal. With her end words, Winterburn achieves a higher level of difficulty by not just incorporating the same end word or phrase into each couplet, but prefacing it with a refrain that rhymes but does not repeat—a feature of the Arabic ghazal that is not always used in English. For example, the refrains in the first ghazal, "All Other Loves", include:
contains all other loves
slays all other loves
disdains all other loves
unchain all other loves
Winterburn's rhymes are mostly true rhymes, though occasionally she will use assonant rhyme (as in "slays all other loves") or another variant. Winterburn also includes her signature at the end of each ghazal, first referring to herself as poet ("Language ladled into Karen"), then addressing the beloved ("In lieu of tears, Karen sends you / colors full of joy"), and finally addressing herself directly ("Karen, pivot here on the hinge Contingency").
It's also instructive to look at Winterburn's titles. Ghazals in their original form are not titled. Shahid, in his English ghazals, tends to use a ghazal's refrain word or phrase as its title, at least in a collection of ghazals where differentiation is useful. Winterburn uses this same convention for her individual ghazals, while giving the sequence an overarching title that evokes the Trinity and introduces the poem's romantic elements.
Of course, you can put together a perfect form without bringing a poem to life. Winterburn's poem is not empty form, but uses the ghazal as a structure or strategy for ranging widely across her theme. With each refrain, she pushes the poem in a slightly different direction. From the start, the "Infant Warrior", a symbol for Jesus, is seen as containing "all other loves", some of which include erotic desire, cravings, and stolen treasure ("juicy djinn's eggs"). The poem's images are wild, complex, ecstatic, and despairing.
In the first ghazal as throughout the poem, the language is a delight, full of deft assurance and lively music. A sentence like "Poplars glint and shimmy in their spangled chorus line" creates pops and spangles in the mouth if read aloud, even as it draws a vivid, glimmering picture of that row of trees. The last couplet of this ghazal describes the process of assembling the ghazal itself: "crazy-quilt the looped refrain, 'all other loves'". In the second ghazal, "At Center", the poet dies a symbolic death, drawn and quartered by conflicting desires, which are alternately warm, patient, satiating, enlivening, puzzling, and joyful. Each stanza's refrain works to bring its pinwheeling emotions and images back to the theme. Fittingly, the refrain "at the center" gives the poem its heart.
The third ghazal, "Arrive at Love", serves as a culmination of the sequence, the poet's arrival at what has been yearned for. In this ghazal, the images and lines become especially hermetic and surreal, as if following a private code: "A filmier face leans out of yours; it winks and scolds me, 'You're dead, dear!'" Here again, the form is followed precisely. The end refrain, used to explore the theme, never becomes tedious.
However, I find this last ghazal more striking than satisfying. The last six couplets are well executed but resist interpretation or a sense of what is being arrived at, and with whom. Is this an ecstatic spiritual moment? A long-delayed acceptance of the earthly beloved? A post-mortem reflection on the life of the senses? Deprivation, pursuit, and hiding are all elements of the plot, but it is not clear what it means to transcend these for the indicated arrival. I'd very much like to feel, with the speaker of the poem, what is going on in this final acceptance, the "nose-dive to love."
Does Winterburn stick the landing? I enjoy the last couplet, its provocative pivot on the hinge of a kiss, and the lovestruck reduction not "to one, but us". I just wish I understood more clearly what has led up to it.
Here is a note from the author on writing ghazals: "When I saw I needed a whole lot of images that needn't be related or unified or developed, I mined my old 'dead' poems—some even from high school (many moons ago!) in which I might have had a couple of good images but the poem itself never went anywhere. It's fun to collect all those and recycle them." Note the discovery that Winterburn quietly makes about the assortment of images her poem requires in order to develop breadth and range to counter the repetition. This is a key pleasure of form, if you can manage it: to discover and learn from the poem itself what it needs to sing.
For extra ghazal enjoyment, find Agha Shahid Ali's collection Call Me Ishmael Tonight or his anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English.
Happy ghazaling!
Where might a poem like "Three-Petaled Love Ghazal" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize for Fiction, Essays & Poetry
Postmark Deadline: October 1
The Missouri Review awards $5,000 in each genre; online entry accepted; suites of thematically related poems have done well in this contest
Joy Harjo Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: October 10
Colorado-based journal Cutthroat offers this contest named for a well-known Native American poet and activist, with prizes up to $1,250; online entry accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders
By Joy Ladin. Lyrically written, introspective, and mystical, this soul-searching and honest memoir explores the freedom, costs, and responsibilities of becoming your true self. Poet and English professor Joy Ladin describes how she became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish college, Yeshiva University in New York City. Through the silent suffering of growing up as the wrong gender, and the breakup of her marriage and family when she came out, Ladin drew strength from her deep connection to the enigmatic but ever-present God of the Torah, and she developed creative interpretations of Jewish tradition to make space for queer flourishing.
Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature
Interfaith journal of spiritual literature; editorial board includes several prominent writers.
Till We Have Faces
In this fantasy novel loosely based on the myth of Cupid and Psyche, an unloved queen recounts her grievances against the gods, only to discover the struggle between selfish and unselfish love in her own soul. This is Lewis' most "feminist" book, showing a remarkable grasp of women's experiences in a male-dominated society.
Tim Weed’s Storycraft Blog
Tim Weed is an award-winning novelist, lecturer, and travel-writing program director. His "Storycraft" blog analyzes great novels and short stories from a craft perspective to help aspiring fiction writers. Featured authors include Tolkien, Hemingway, Steinbeck, James Joyce, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, John Le Carré, Donna Tartt, Ray Bradbury, Phillip Pullman, Peter Carey, Leslie Marmon Silko, and many others. There are also more general posts on the importance of narrative in the modern age, what literature can do that film cannot, the archetypal Shadow in fiction, the art of the scene, and more.
Timothy Steele
Dr. Steele is a professor emeritus of English at California State University, Los Angeles. See his website for selections from his poetry and critical essays as well as a useful introduction to traditional poetic forms and meters.
Timothy Steele
Website of neo-formalist poet Timothy Steele, a professor emeritus of English at California State University, Los Angeles, includes selections from his poetry and critical essays as well as a useful introduction to traditional poetic forms and meters.
Tincture
Lethe Press is a well-regarded small press with an interest in queer literature. Their imprint Tincture is dedicated to publishing LGBT authors of color. Books in their catalog include the anthologies From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction and Walking the Tightrope: Poetry and Prose by LGBTQ Writers from Africa, as well as individual titles by Nathan Goh, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Timothy Wang, and others.
TinFish Press
An adventurous small press in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Founded in 1995 by Susan M. Schultz, TinFish publishes experimental poetry and prose from the Pacific, including Hawaii, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia, California and western Canada. "Tinfish uses recycled materials, including tarpaper, weather maps, proof sheets, and hamburger sleeves to cover its always un-recycled poetry and prose." Bestsellers include Sista Tongue by Lisa Linn Kanae and Living Pidgin: Contemplations on Pidgin Culture by Lee "Da Pidgin Guerilla" Tonouchi. Read an article about TinFish in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
Tinnitus
By Barbara Regenspan
1
The cicadas come to me
at three in the morning.
The trees
are inside the room,
hiding in darkness.
The dust on the floor
belongs now
as particles of soil,
until morning
when they'll reclaim their soul
as dirt.
2
He said, there are crystals in your ear.
I can break them up with one painful tweak.
He did; they didn't.
He said, your mind is stretching to hear
what it used to—and can no longer—
so it generates sound to fill the silence.
3
She knows now: on its way out,
everything is vibrating; hear it
and try not to answer. Let it stand in
for the last beautiful word.
Tint Journal
Tint is an online literary journal for ESL (English as a second language) writers. They publish poetry, fiction, essays, flash prose, author profiles, and articles with writing advice.
tinywords
tinywords is a daily online journal of haiku and micropoetry (150 characters maximum). Sign up to receive a poem a day by email or text message.
Tip of My Tongue
Search this database of dictionaries for that word you can't quite remember. You can input meanings, syllables, sound-alikes, and letters that it should or shouldn't include. This free reference site is created and maintained by writer and software designer. Chirag Mehta
Tips for a Good Poetry Reading
This post from award-winning poet Diane Lockward's blog offers sound advice for poets, hosts, and audience members. Lockward is the author of What Feeds Us and Eve's Red Dress, both from Wind Publications. (Hat tip to The Practicing Writer newsletter for the link.)
To Everyone Who Wants Me to Read Their Writing and Tell Them What to Do
In this 2022 blog post, publishing expert Jane Friedman talks about the benefits and limits of asking for feedback as a beginning writer. The takeaway: perseverance and passion are more important than any one person's opinion. "If I were to tell you today that your project is a waste of time, would you abandon it? If so, perhaps it's best that you did. To keep writing in the face of rejection is required of every professional and published writer I know."
To Trope or Not to Trope
In this 2017 essay from the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares, Chloe N. Clark discusses four stories that self-consciously re-use common fictional tropes about women in order to subvert these tropes. While beginning writers are often told to avoid clichéd roles for their characters, it can be an effective postmodern literary technique to make the characters themselves aware of and commenting on the limited identities they are forced to embody.
Too Much Horror Fiction
Will Errickson is the co-author, with Grady Hendrix, of Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction (Quirk Books, 2017), a popular history of the pulp horror paperback in its heyday. Errickson's blog reviews notable and campy titles from the 1960s-90s, a number of which are being reissued now by Valancourt Books.
TOON Books
TOON Books publishes high-quality comic books for children, designed to teach verbal and visual literacy in a more engaging format than traditional books for first readers. Editorial Director Françoise Mouly is the Art Editor of The New Yorker magazine. Notable contributors include Art Spiegelman, Hilary Knight (creator of Eloise), and Neil Gaiman.
Top 100 Book Review Blogs for Readers and Authors
Feedspot, a site that aggregates content across the Web, compiled this list of book review blogs that have the highest visibility in terms of Google search ranking, social media presence, and consistent quality of posts. The list includes both general-interest and genre-specific sites such as romance, children's books, and fantasy.
Top Ten Topics for Writers
Basic information on submission etiquette, getting published, writers' conferences and degree programs, avoiding scams, and promoting your work. From the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Torrey House Press
Based in Utah, Torrey House Press is a nonprofit publisher of literary fiction and nonfiction, with a mission to encourage conservation by telling compelling stories about wilderness and nature. Titles include Scott Graham's mystery series set in America's National Parks and an anthology fundraiser to protect Native American sacred lands.
Toward Creating a Trans Literary Canon
In this 2018 essay for The Paris Review, literary scholar RL Goldberg recommends contemporary books by transgender and gender-nonconforming writers. Highlighted authors include Eli Clare, Leslie Feinberg, Andrea Lawlor, and Vivek Shraya.
TrailerShelf
A project of Wildbound PR, TrailerShelf is a curated site that features book trailers in a variety of genres including literature and fiction, mystery, young adult, spirituality, history, biography, art books, children's literature, and indie authors. There is no charge to submit your book trailer, but the site is selective about acceptance, based on the quality and creativity of the video and the expected audience for the book. They expect to add a paid advertising feature with modest fees. Wildbound PR founder Julia Drake says, "The prices [are likely to] range from $10 for social media amplification to $75 for being featured in our Top Trallers section. There's no way to tell on the site whether placement is paid for or not, but bear in mind that we have to accept the submission, so if we feel that the placement is not warranted, we won't accept the sponsored listing. We will have a special section to highlight great trailers for self-published and indie books to help self-published and indie authors get more exposure."
