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Trans Journalists Association Stylebook and Coverage Guide
The Trans Journalists Association has created this free online style guide for editors and journalists who write about transgender people and the stories that affect them. It includes guidance on name and pronoun usage, education about commonly repeated inaccuracies and politically contentious phrasing, and editorial best practices for centering trans voices.
Transcending Flesh in Fiction and Fantasy
Queer fantasy writer Ana Mardoll, author of the Earthside series, discusses how to acknowledge the existence and needs of transgender people when creating a fictional world that includes widespread access to body-modification techniques. This piece was published on xer Patreon page (a platform to support content creators with recurring donations); a complete book of essays on the topic is also available for download on a pay-as-you-wish basis..
Transgender Today
Launched in 2015 on the New York Times website, this evolving collection of personal essays by a diverse group of transgender youth and adults is inspiring and informative.
Transition Magazine
This literary and cultural journal was founded by Ugandan writer Rajat Neogy in 1961, and re-launched in 1991 by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. Transition publishes poetry, fiction, and essays from and about Africa and the African diaspora.
Translation Shop
Translation Shop is an online clearinghouse for finding certified translators for your official documents, business communications, or academic papers. Their site representative explains, "We are ATA certified, which offers objective evidence that a translator possesses the knowledge and skills necessary to provide a quality translation."
Transoceanic Twitter
By Alex Deppert
Transoceanic tubes twitter, trigger transition,
timely tighten transcontinental transmission.
Tie Trotsky to Trudy, Tunisia to Tennessee,
trigger transmutation, teeming translucency.
Two trillion text tatters, twittering tirelessly,
trading tirades, trueness, tomfoolery,
towering tom-tom tons, terrible tastelessness,
treasure troves, trenchancy, terrific tastiness.
Textual tadpoles terrify, titillate,
troglodytes, townsmen take to tolerance, transmigrate.
Tackle textual tessellations, tidal text tweezer,
trigger talk-triple-tripe-trips, tipsy text teaser,
technological tongue tongs, titanic travesty,
turning tricks, taking turns toughly, tempestuously.
Transpositions: A Symposium on Christianity and Fantasy Literature
This blog is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Transpositions seeks to create conversations between Christian theology and the arts, and discuss the nature of both art and theology as a transposition of divine reality into earthly form.
Trapped in New Mexico
So...the men want to hear about meat.
About how the carcasses would bleed
when we'd strip away the hides after
slicing a bit at the stomach and feet.
Do they want to hear about hunger,
do you think? The emptiness that
drives an animal to take the bait
moments before cold steel jaws spring
shut
killing
and
maiming
everything they catch in their grip?
Should I tell about the owl I saw
upon a riverbank? One crisp morn,
early spring, as I ran the traps?
Ran steel traps on the riverbank.
The broken thing sat with one leg snared
and the other leg free, bobbing,
bobbing, bobbing...so I tried to drive
a .22 into its wise old brain.
Turns out I drowned it with a heel
there in the icy water passing.
Yes, I drowned it with a heavy heel
to bring to an end our suffering
early in the New Mexico spring.
Copyright 2005 by Lana Loga
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Trapped in New Mexico" by Lana Loga, assaults the reader from the outset with the brutal facts of survival in a predatory world. The plain-spoken, repetitive lines summon echoes of old folk songs where nature's laws harshly repay human violence. Here, the trappers themselves are trapped, victims of a fate that their own actions brought down on them. Even the noble owl, an unintended casualty, is implicated in the cycle of predation. His hunger and our own may be equally irresistible, culpable and deadly.
The first line effectively sets the tone of the poem. "So...the men want to hear about meat." The female narrator throws down a challenge to those who prefer not to face the bloody realities undergirding their existence. She is determined to make them see the cost of the life she leads. Setting herself up in opposition to "the men" establishes her basic stance of alienation and aggression. In her world, men and women, human and animal, are at war. The only gesture of sympathy in the poem is an act of violence; she reaches across the divide to kill the owl even as she becomes one with it. "I drowned it with a heavy heel/to bring to an end our suffering".
"Do they want to hear about hunger,/do you think?" The narrator's moment of solidarity with the owl at the end of the poem gives this question a new meaning. Perhaps the same "emptiness that/drives an animal to take the bait" also tempts humans to think they can safely seize the benefits of a way of life that ultimately kills their souls. I sensed an implicit political dimension to this poem, a lament that oppressed creatures would turn on one another instead of joining forces to choose a less destructive way of life.
I loved the rhythmic, incantatory language of "Trapped in New Mexico." Like the refrain of a ballad or the two-part structure of Bible verses, the repeated yet slightly varied phrases "as I ran the traps/Ran steel traps on the riverbank" and "Turns out I drowned it with a heel...Yes, I drowned it with a heavy heel" lift the poem into the realm of legends and archetypes. Loga also makes effective use of intermittent rhymes and assonances (meat/bleed/feet, grip/traps, passing/bobbing/suffering) to drive the poem forward.
I wasn't sure about her decision to change the line length during the pivotal moment, the phrase "shut/killing/and/maiming". On the one hand, the abrupt stylistic shift highlights the importance of these words. On the other hand, as I've said before in this space, I find that single-word lines more often dissipate than enhance the energy of a phrase. Also, in a short free-verse poem such as this, the inclusion of different styles sometimes gives the impression that the author is not in complete control of her material, that she has not settled on a form and tone for the poem. The other stanzas are so intense and economical with words that another line in the same style could still deliver the powerful effect that she intended. One possibility is to put the words "shut, killing and maiming" on a single line, creating a one-line stanza like "Ran steel traps on the riverbank."
Where could this poem be submitted? These upcoming contests came to mind:
New Millennium Writings Awards
Postmark Deadline: June 17
https://newmillenniumwritings.org/awards/
Twice-yearly contest offers $1,000 each for poetry, fiction and essays; style and content of "Trapped in New Mexico" are good fit for this prestigious journal
Mad Poets Review Competition
Postmark Deadline: June 30
http://www.madpoetssociety.com/
Enjoyable journal publishes accessible yet well-crafted poetry that makes an emotional connection with the reader; top prize $100
SSA Writer's Contest
Postmark Deadline: June 30
http://www.ssa-az.org/
Society of Southwestern Authors offers $300 prizes for poetry, fiction and nonfiction; follow formatting rules carefully
The Writers Bureau Poetry & Short Story Writing Competition
Entries must be received by July 31
https://www.wbcompetition.com/
$1,000 in each genre in this contest from a British online writing school
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Travesties: A Queer Journal of Uncanny Arts
Travesties is an online literary journal for LGBTQ authors, publishing poetry and art that is "queer in all senses of the word". Texts are paired with spooky pink illustrations for a magical and macabre vibe. Editors say, "We want pieces that are bizarre and bountiful, that have striking imagery and delicious sound." Unpublished work preferred but not required. Send 1-5 poems or up to 10 pieces of artwork.
tree turtle
tree turtle is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer, educator, and activist, whose work explores the intersection of black, LGBT, Buddhist, and working-class identities. tree turtle's work has appeared in journals such as Fence Magazine, The New Formalist, Prick of the Spindle, Ploughshares, and many others. Eight works of couture book art were published by Widows Nails Press, a project of Marcel Christian Labeija, who was also an affiliate of the famed Nuyorican Poets Café.
Trenches on the Web
World War I reference site maintained by the Great War Society. Their online newsletter, the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, features historical research, book recommendations and links to materials about World War I. The site also includes a historical overview of the war, an extensive links directory, discussion forums, and information on battlefield tours.
Trip Wires
By Sandra Hunter. With startling breadth of vision, this short story collection reveals the raw and tender material of our common humanity across borders—from a Sudanese refugee in Glasgow, to the survivor of a Colombian paramilitary kidnapping, to young soldiers in the Middle East whose emotional armor is breached by defiantly joyful children. The standout tale "Brother's Keeper" channels Flannery O'Connor to expose the underside of white Christian benevolence toward Africans. For immigrants and wanderers everywhere, gratitude takes a backseat to homesickness, and rescue is not the same as safety. Hunter restores these displaced persons to the center of their own life story.
Tripping with the Top Down
By Ellaraine Lockie. Prolific poet Ellaraine Lockie has a gift for revealing the spirit of a place with a perfectly chosen character sketch or a quirky interaction that invites us to think twice about how we move through the world. In her work, travel produces enlightening friction between an unfamiliar environment and the unnoticed edges of ourselves. This collection, her 13th chapbook, takes us along on her tour of the American West, from her Montana birthplace to her native California and points between.
Trish Hopkinson Poetry Blog
Poet Trish Hopkinson is the author of the chapbooks Emissions and Pieced into Treetops, as well as many poems published in literary journals. On her blog, she shares interesting writing tips, articles, calls for submissions (no-fee only), and other information to help promote good writing.
Trumpet
By Jackie Kay. Lyrical writing distinguishes this multivocal novel about a trans male jazz musician in 1950s-'90s Scotland and the many ways that people process the revelation of his queer identity after his death.
Tu Books
Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low, publishes diverse middle-grade and young adult novels. Their motto is "Where fantasy and real life collide". Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and genre-bending works are welcomed. Editors say, "Tu Books was created for a specific reason. The present and the future belong to everyone and to limit this reality is a fantasy. Adventure, excitement, and who gets the girl (or boy) are not limited to one race or species. The role of hero is up for grabs, and we mean to take our shot."
Turkey City Lexicon
Critters Writers Workshop, a writing resource for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror authors, offers this primer for SF workshops to identify and avoid bad prose habits. Types of problems are listed somewhat randomly, with amusing titles like "Squid in the Mouth" (inside jokes that readers won't understand), "Fuzz" (using the word "somehow" to gloss over plot holes), or "The Jar of Tang" (an entire story contrived solely to reveal a twist).
Tweetspeak Poetry
Tweetspeak is a friendly online poetry community with a clean, sophisticated design. They offer a variety of features to help people engage with poetry, including writing prompts, book clubs, audio recordings, and craft essays.
Twisted Road Publications
Twisted Road Publications is an independent literary press founded in 2013 by Joan Leggitt. They publish up to four books a year, with a special interest in work by or about marginalized groups (e.g. people of color, LGBTQ people). The press accepts un-agented manuscripts. Authors in their catalog include Pat Spears, Nance Van Winkel, and Glenda Bailey-Mershon. "We seek to publish gifted writers whose works are under-represented by corporate marketing. We are partial to the writer who possesses a gift for compassionate, sharp-eyed truth-telling, rendering fully formed characters and stories that get under our skin. Ones that push hard to discover the kind of truth that exposes the reality of our deepest humanity."
Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing
In this earthy, revelatory poetry collection from Main Street Rag Publishing, bodies eat, sweat, climax, and die. Some of them are stuffed. All are handled with reverence. Humorous or embarrassing moments open up suddenly into a vision of fellowship that levels social distinctions.
Two Haiku from Journey to the Clear Light
By Robert Paul Blumenstein
the owl grew many
all the fluffy chicks survived
squirrels not too well
tender purple cones
singing in pine bough cradle
tomorrow's giants
Two Medicine Lake
By Cris Mulvey
Walking onto the frozen lake
beneath these chiseled mountains,
snow puff-powdering the purple air,
ravens rustling by, carrying light
like a drink in the curve of their backs,
the ragged cry of their cackling
deepening the thrum of silence:
I am a pine seed stuttering
onto a stainless platter,
the air around me
the color of bluebirds’ feathers
twirling into an ocean of sky.
Two Sides of a Ticket
By Helen Leslie Sokolsky. This distinctive poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press contains a portrait gallery of urban characters. Their alienation is healed, momentarily, by the author's mature and compassionate re-imagining of the lives she glimpses in passing. These narratives show us recognizable scenes made fresh by Sokolsky's original metaphors.
TypePad
Paid blogging service starting at $8.95/month. Higher tiers offer more data storage, bandwidth, number of blogs per user, and customization options.
UCLA Children’s Book Collection
The UCLA Children's Book Collection online archive offers free downloads of over 1,800 digital titles, from classics like Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to lesser-known public domain works from the 19th century and earlier.
Unbeknownst to You, My Brother
By Lucia May
Downtown the coroner speaks
with averted eyes about the bullet
and its path from your hand to your head.
He whispers his request
to kindly remove my child from the room.
For your funeral your wife dresses
in plastic shoes and a tight ruby dress.
You don't know that she will never give
our mother your ashes in the cardboard box.
She will scatter them to your son's horror.
You don't know that one morning
our mother will be found
lying in a field in the muddiness
of her stroke.
Your young son sits in the back row
during the service at the funeral home.
You don't know that he too will die
at your age.
In my Bible
there is no holy card from your funeral
but I have saved a yellow lined
memo sheet from the coroner
with the heading William J. Brown.
In my handwriting is
One spent, 5 extra
Smith and Wesson
The coroner, Dr. Edelstein, wrote
S&W Revolver
357 Magnum
Ser # S-305856
The minister glanced down to his notes
during the final prayer
to remind himself of your name.
#
(Reprinted from Blond Boy (Evening Street Press, 2014); originally published in The Awakenings Review, Fall 2012)
Unbound
UK-based site applies the principle of "crowdfunding" to book publishing. Agent-recommended authors pitch their book ideas on the site. If you like their idea, you can pledge to support it. If they hit the target number of supporters, the author can go ahead and start writing. If the target isn't met, you can either get your pledge refunded in full or switch your pledge to another Unbound project. Pledging readers get backstage access to the creative process, including updates on the book’s progress, exclusive interviews, draft chapters, information about the author's backlist, and discussions with the author and other supporters.
Unbridled Books
Founded in 2003, Unbridled Books publishes fiction of high literary quality that also appeals to a broad audience. In an interview at the literary journal Ploughshares, editors Fred Ramey and Greg Michaelson expressed a preference for books that exude a spirit of hope and survival, not excluding dark subject matter but not ending in a place of despair. Authors in their catalog include Elise Blackwell, Ed Falco, Marc Estrin, Emily St. John Mandel, and Richard Kramer.
Unbroken Awareness
My life is now a floating shell
I am a vessel on that river.
The storm, the ship, the sea,
Whose shores we lost in crossing.
I can see the milky distances—
In your eyes, but you cannot see me.
A thin melon slice of first moon,
Melting into songs and slivers of ice.
You could feel small creatures dying.
Cowering humans in their burrows.
Fighting for lives other than theirs.
Aware they could not escape.
Each of us came into being
Knowing who we are,
What we are supposed to do
But why do you try to hold back—
The sands, falling in the hourglass?
I am now unconscious.
In a way—, but mute.
A little pearl of awareness,
But this pearl is not me.
Knowing yet unable.
I am now timeless!
All times and in all futures
I am a universe of windows
I cannot be touched again
I am in an endless dream
But I can see you outlined
Looking beyond what you know
One day the seeds would return
And life would continue.
Copyright 2007 by Tendai R. Mwanaka
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem comes to us from Zimbabwean poet Tendai R. Mwanaka. Its themes of ego-less awareness and awakening wisdom reminded me of Buddhist beliefs about the interconnectedness of all life, transcending boundaries of self and other, human and animal, or the living and the dead. The speaker's lyrical insights are comforting even when mysterious, because of their tone of tranquility and faith that eventually the listener will reach full understanding. The poem itself is a "pearl of awareness", polished and pure.
In the opening lines, the narrator seems to be reporting back from the other side of death. "My life is now a floating shell/I am a vessel on that river." Transformed by emptying, simplified, the speaker is content to be borne along by larger forces. The identity that once bounded his entire experience is seen from outside as merely one object in a wider landscape. It was a container for an awareness that now soars above it. (I regret having to assign a gender to the speaker when the whole point of the poem is to transcend such identity markers, but the limitations of English prose grammar require this.)
Contrast this open vista to the confined perspective of "Cowering humans in their burrows." Yet the speaker picks up on and encourages the listener's first stirrings of insight that other selves exist: "You could feel small creatures dying" and perhaps also the line "Fighting for lives other than theirs". This latter phrase could mean several things in the context of this poem. Are the human-creatures fighting to protect someone beyond their own selfish interests—the beginning of the empathy that leads to "unbroken awareness"? Or are they misunderstanding what is "theirs", clinging to an identity that they mistake for the fullness of life? As the speaker later says of himself, "A little pearl of awareness,/But this pearl is not me."
Mwanaka uses sound effectively to enhance the meditative mood of the poem. Listen to the S sounds in the first stanza, which replicate the feeling of identity dissolving: "The storm, the ship, the sea,/Whose shores we lost in crossing." They are joined by the hum of M sounds in the dreamy, beautiful images of the next stanza: "A thin melon slice of first moon,/Melting into songs and slivers of ice." Whiteness pervades the poem: pearls, milky distances, ice, moonlight. Because of this tactile richness, the poem never feels too abstract even though it puts across complex philosophical ideas.
The kernel of the poem, which reads like a miniature poem in itself, is the aphorism that is the fourth stanza:
Each of us came into being
Knowing who we are,
What we are supposed to do
But why do you try to hold back—
The sands, falling in the hourglass?
There are two ways of thinking about the significance of an individual life. One is the futile path of denying and resisting change and death, for fear that the self's evanescence makes life meaningless. The other is to recognize that change and death do not defeat the overall pattern of which each life is a unique part.
The speaker would like to communicate this comforting notion to those left on the other side, but there are limits on their ability to hear him. From their side of the veil, he appears "mute", "knowing yet unable." The next stanza reassures us that his condition is actually one of joy: "I am now timeless!/All times and in all futures/I am a universe of windows". Although we cannot fully experience this connection now ("I cannot be touched again"), he has faith that we will come to enlightenment someday, too ("I can see you outlined/Looking beyond what you know").
"Unbroken Awareness" stood out among critique submissions for its assured pacing, luminous imagery and wise insights. Clear without over-explaining, it is a good example of poetry that works as both spiritual message and enjoyable lyric.
Where could a poem like "Unbroken Awareness" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Prestigious, competitive awards for poets aged 18+ from a leading UK-based poetry organization; top prize 5,000 pounds; online entries accepted
The Plough Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
Contest to raise funds for UK arts organization offers two prizes of 1,000 pounds for unpublished poems; 2007 judge is UK poet laureate Andrew Motion; enter by mail or online
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Prizes of $100 for prizes for poetry, stories, prose poems, personal essays, humor, and literature for young adults; previously published works accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the October 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Under the Arbor
We came for love
When the light was fleeing
Under the arbor, by a tree.
We sat in silence
On my coat of leather
Under the sky, near the earth
The night was tender
Warm and bright
With you and I, the garden wall.
We came for love
When life was fleeting
Under the arbor, by a tree.
Our ageless day
Yet the inevitable night
Has entwined us forever
With a longing for life.
Copyright 2005 by J.T. Milford
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Under the Arbor" by J.T. Milford, has the timeless quality of an old English ballad. Though not strictly formal verse, the poem develops a song-like cadence through the use of repeated speech patterns and grammatical constructions in each stanza.
The style and theme of "Under the Arbor" reminded me of Lord Byron's "We'll go no more a-roving". What gives these deceptively simple lines so much power? Perhaps it is the immediacy and sincerity of the feelings that the poet shares with us. There is no self-conscious drama, no aesthetic affectation. No matter how many poets and lovers have made the same observations, the ecstasy and the loss are felt afresh by everyone who falls in love.
Similarly, in "Under the Arbor," the scene becomes more poignant for its lack of detail. The lovers are every lover, the arbor is every pastoral scene where the changing light and turning seasons reminded us of life's fragility. This theme comes through in Milford's deft reworking of the first stanza in the fourth: "When the light was fleeing" becomes "When life was fleeting."
The poem uses just the right amount of repetition to create a musical structure without becoming monotonous. The first two lines of stanzas 1-4 have two stressed beats each, but the number and pattern of syllables varies slightly. Lines ending in "silence", "leather" and "tender" relieve the pressure of having each line end on a stressed syllable, which can give a poem a leaden tread. The third line of stanzas 1-4 feels like two shorter lines because it falls into two parallel halves, usually a pair of prepositional phrases. But the poet breaks that pattern slightly in the third stanza, "With you and I, the garden wall," allowing the heart of the poem, "you and I," to stand out more from its context. The three-line structure creates the sensation of two halves joined to form a greater whole in the third line.
I was less enamored of the concluding stanza, which deviated from the pattern of the preceding stanzas without a clear rationale, and lacked their careful pacing. I also felt that the move from physical details (the arbor, the light, the wall) to more abstract images ("ageless day," "longing for life") diminished the impact of the scene. In the first four stanzas, I was seeing through the poet's eyes, whereas in the last stanza, he was telling me what he thought. Sensation is more powerful than second-hand interpretation.
More importantly, I wasn't sure what he was trying to say. The "ageless day" and "inevitable night" appear to contradict one another. These lines could be read as saying that their love made the day seem timeless, yet all along they know night is inevitable. But how has the coming of night "entwined [them] forever/With a longing for life"? Is it that they cling more tightly to each other because they know that the passage of time brings loss? If the point is that they are united forever by love, the last line pulls the reader in a different direction: are they longing for life, or each other?
My suggested rewrite below flows more naturally from the preceding stanzas, while preserving most of the images and clarifying the main idea:
We longed for life
Though night descended
Entwined forever, in ageless day.
The last line could bear a double meaning. The lovers' bond makes day out of night, and night and day are also entwined, just as the lovers' ecstasy is always intermingled with awareness of mortality.
Where could this poem be submitted? These upcoming contests came to mind:
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
http://www.firstwriter.com/competitions/poetry_competition.shtml
Top prize of 500 pounds plus a free subscription to this useful resource site for writers. Submit online only
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Understanding Modern English-Language Haiku
By Tracy Koretsky
This month, in a special edition of Critique Corner, we've invited five editors from top online haiku and related-form publications to demonstrate the revision process they used to arrive at these poems:
flies explore
the newly painted sign
fish market
—Jane Reichhold, editor of Lynx
cold night
the dashboard lights
of another car
—John Stevenson, editor of The Heron's Nest
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as fear
—George Swede, editor of Frogpond
dune wind—
the blackened seed pods
of a bush lupine
—Linda Papanicolaou, editor of Haigaonline
blue sky
before me
beyond me
—Colin Stewart Jones, editor of Notes from the Gean
Copyright in these poems is reserved to their authors. George Swede's poem was first published in Acorn #24.
Like it or not, American poetry is factionalized. Academic poets snub gesturing street poets; language poets bar-brawl with new formalists. It's the kind of passionate squabble that, at the very least, proves the vitality of the source from which all these tributaries flow. Yet, with rare exception, haiku, the most practiced form of literature in the world, is segregated, as if in a lake of its own. Ask an American poet what a haiku is and you are likely to be told that it is a three-line form with 5, 7, and 5 syllables per line, and that it contains a nature image. Neither is true.
This is unsettling given the seminal relationship of haiku to American poetry. In the early twentieth century, a time when American arts of all types were struggling to distinguish themselves from European conventions, there was a concurrent interest in all things Oriental—an interest shared by Ezra Pound, the intellectual center of the first truly American movement of poets, the Imagists. Through them, haiku—or rather, what Pound and his circle misapprehended to be haiku—came to provide the formal tenets (though not the subject) of modernism.
Half a century later, during America's next significant cultural revolution, poets would once again misapprehend haiku, this time as philosophical fuel for those poets known as the Beats. Pound misunderstood the two parts of a haiku, believing they were meant merely to describe one another rather than to resonate. He even called his experiments with the form "equations". As for the Beats, they thought their subject entirely Zen, which, in reality, is a small subset of haiku. Now, not all misunderstandings—especially among poets—are bad. Something new and fresh arose from these accidents, something still easily evident in American poetry today.
Just to parse haiku and understand its mechanisms can provide keys to reading American poetry with greater sophistication, which in turn matures our craft. Through haiku, a poet can begin to comprehend contemporary poetry's disjunctivity—its leaps in logic and argument, and the space it must leave for the reader's participation. In terms of craft, it can help teach where to cut lines and how to work across stanzas.
But beware, despite its brevity and seeming transparency of diction, there is nothing simple about haiku. It is a deep and highly nuanced genre with sensibilities that can take years to comprehend. That is why this primer attempts to introduce only how to read haiku—not necessarily to write it.
To begin, then, let us turn to some of the genre's best magazines. In 2004 I conducted a poll of 22 such publications, discovering that none of them—that's right, none—sought poems with lines of 5/7/5 syllables. To oversimplify, Japanese and English sound units are not easily comparable. As a result, it is rare to find a poem as long as seventeen syllables in today's English-language haiku, and the way those syllables are arrayed varies widely.
As you go through the demonstrations our kind guests have donated, take note of the syllables and the way they are distributed across the lines.
How to do so most effectively will be the topic addressed by our first guest, Jane Reichhold, a renowned teacher of haiku. In addition to these superbly lucid primer pages from her excellent book Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide, Reichhold provides a free peer-critique website for the benefit of the world community of English-language haiku writers: the popular and lively AHA Poetry Forum.
Yet, have a look at Lynx, the magazine Ms. Reichhold edits with her husband Werner, and you might not see any stand-alone three-line poems. What's going on? Well, there is a whole universe of material that shares the essential qualities one finds in haiku; material not far, in some aspects, from Western poetry, but possessing a somewhat different logic. There is inspiration to be found there, but you have to know how to interpret these poems first.
To help us do so, Ms. Reichhold begins:
"Haiku is a genre of form poetry meaning that the form has a definite form. Though we non-Japanese do not count syllables, I do strongly believe that we should maintain the shape of haiku with short, long, short lines. Take:
fish market
the flies explore
the newly painted sign
and notice what happens by simply rearranging the lines:
flies explore
the newly painted sign
fish market
First of all, we eliminate an article (the)—always a plus when trying to be succinct. Secondly, all haiku writers search for interesting first lines that grab the reader's interest. 'Flies explore' opens up an activity—stronger than if on a place—'fish market'. Thirdly, since this haiku uses the riddle technique, the author should set up the riddle with the first two lines, then give the 'answer' in the third. As the haiku is originally expressed, the 'answer' is given away in the first line.
I created this poem for this demonstration, but often the original version is the way the author experienced the poem: being in a fish market, then noticing more flies are crawling on the sign than on the fish. In the revision the poem is expressing a situation: "flies are crawling on a sign—why?" The answer comes in the end "because this is a fish market!" —the AHA moment of the poem."
That "aha" moment one hears so much about in haiku circles basically has to do with allowing the reader to make the connection for him- or herself. Haiku demands an active reader.
In fact, our second guest, John Stevenson, editor of the venerable publication The Heron's Nest, ties this to the form's origins: "Haiku itself comes from an earlier form of poetry known as renku—a collaboration in which two or more poets contribute verses."
So you see, haiku began as something of a game—or at least a participatory improvisation requiring the total involvement of the poets. But like games or musical improvisations, there are some rules, and one is that the opening verse, from which the form we know as haiku derives, contain a seasonal reference.
Note that this is slightly different from the common Western understanding that haiku is about nature. A seasonal reference is not only about nature, but about nature within time.
Mr. Stevenson expands on this: "The reference can be a single word or a phrase. Some of the most frequently used are snow, cherry blossoms, and fireflies, denoting winter, spring, and summer respectively." Take some time with some issues of The Heron's Nest for a sense of how haiku poets make seasonal references. While there, notice how they operate with the rest of the poem.
To show how such references function expressively, Mr. Stevenson offers us this:
overnight travel
the dashboard lights
of another car
"This may have evoked a haiku mood for some readers, but the application of a traditional seasonal reference can offer powerful associations. Since one has so few words to work with in a haiku, it's important that each carry its weight. Why not avail myself of the additional resonance of a late autumn seasonal reference suggesting the imminence of winter—especially when it expresses part of what I am feeling:
cold night
the dashboard lights
of another car
Since I have said no more in the poem itself, I will say no more now about the particular associations this adds to the poem. But perhaps you will agree that an additional element has been introduced and that it broadens the implications of the poem. Not to be overlooked are the implications of the fact that I have identified with other poets through the act of using a traditional season reference."
This sense of referring to, and thereby resonating with, centuries of poets who have used the same or similar seasonal references is often cherished by people who love the form. It is the principal way to access emotion in these poems.
The concept of resonance is perhaps the most difficult for Western readers to understand. We tend to make Ezra Pound's error and read the second part of a haiku as an expansion upon the first, as if there were a colon between the two parts. Rather, the intention of the combination is to create a sort of chord—the relationship may be subtle or oblique or witty or stark or joyous; the relationship is literally the crux of the form. To read haiku means to make the connection.
People who write haiku in English generally use the term "juxtaposition" to describe this, and it is never easy. "A successful juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated things leads readers to a moment of awe and wonder; an unsuccessful one leaves readers disinterested, even irked," says our next guest, George Swede, editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America.
"Across the centuries, writers have over-used some pairings, so that rather than being unexpected, they have become familiar: blossoms/spring, rose/woman, rain/tears, night/monsters, and so on. Any poet who employs such established associations must find a fresh way or risk boring the audience. To avoid this, the poet can always opt to unite two things no one has yet considered as possibly belonging together. But, an unusual combination risks that readers will find the pairing incompatible."
Mr. Swede shows us how he struggled to make choices in this poem, the final version of which is forthcoming in the haiku magazine, Acorn:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as a massage table
"The two main elements were the deep chasm and the massage table; snorkeling provided the context or linking mechanism. My reasoning was that snorkeling involves the same posture as getting a massage—lying prone. The reader was supposed to connect the chasm in the ocean floor with the idea that a massage table can also lead to deep experiences, sometimes painful or exhilarating.
Looking at the poem again, I found the connection too far-fetched. I had to find something more meaningful than a massage table:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as feeling
This change didn't work either, but for a different reason: 'feeling' was too vague. So, I recalled what emotion dominated my adventure snorkeling:
snorkeling
a chasm as deep
as fear
At last the two chief parts were linked in a way that made sense, but the poem no longer possessed what I had originally sought: two entities never before juxtaposed. Instead, I had brought together two oft-associated things, chasm and fear. I can only hope that readers will find snorkeling to be a context novel enough for them to experience the haiku as unique."
Notice in each of these examples how the third line operates. In Jane Reichhold's poem, it answers a riddle, in John Stevenson's, it subverts our expectation—the intimate light does not originate in the poet's own car. As for George Swede's, we expect something tangible, concrete; what we get is anything but. Appreciating these small surprises yields much of the delight of the genre.
Why "genre" and not "form?" Sample the online contents of Frogpond, the publication Mr. Swede edits, and you will discover other types of work within the haiku family. To learn what these poems are and how to read them, Mr. Swede suggests the definitions of the Haiku Society of America, the parent organization of his publication.
What they have in common is that a resonant juxtaposition is relevant in all of them. This is the quality shared by the daring work on the pages of Lynx. It is true also of haiga, the exciting visual collage form, in which a haiku is paired with an image.
"There is an openness in the relationship—a 'link/shift' relationship to each other," says Haigaonline editor, Linda Papanicolaou. "Images are not coupled with captions or explanations that tell us what we're seeing in the photo. The haiku may, in fact, be about what's in the image, but amplify or complement it, say, with sound, smell, or other imagery beyond the pictorial. Or, it may be about something else completely, linking to the image through comparison, mood, etc. A good haiga suggests rather than tells; this allows the reader to enter the work as aesthetic experience."
To see what she means, click through an issue of Haigaonline. You will find there everything from ink brush painting, simplified in style, with a haiku written in calligraphy on an empty section of the paper, to Western-style drawing and painting, collage, digital imaging, photography, etc. Doing this may be the fastest way to comprehend the range of sensibilities current in contemporary English-language haiku poetry.
Ms. Papanicolaou, for example, studies and often tries to emulate traditional haiku. She demonstrates:
"I wanted to write a type of haiku called 'shasei'—a sketch. It was early October, I was in some dunes in California, and the wildflowers were past their peak. I jotted:
blackened seed pods of lupine
on my pad.
Often in traditional haiku, the first line is a season word fragment, but mine already had its season—blackened, dry seedpods occur in late autumn. I felt they brought to the poem the Japanese aesthetic of impermanence and loss. So what I still needed was an image that established setting, or complemented and deepened the phrase:
dune wind
evokes harshness and brings in sound as well as the tactile sting of blowing sand.
blackened seed pods
of a lupine
needed something—more specificity, perhaps—so that the phrase didn't just end with a third line that just completed line two without bringing something of its own. The original plant was what's called 'beach lupine', a small, blue-flowering mounding plant. But a taller, more robust yellow-flowered lupine called "bush lupine" is also native.
dune wind—
the blackened seed pods
of a bush lupine
I liked the sound; plus, 'beach' lupine with 'dune' was redundant—closed. The larger, showier species, with its sense of resilience, seemed the right way to end the poem."
Toward the other end of the spectrum of haiku sensibility is Colin Stewart Jones, editor of Notes from the Gean, who uses his "sketch" to somewhat different ends:
"To choose to record an event in haiku form is a subjective act and one has, therefore, given the event meaning. So I tend to record my initial reaction to a set of circumstances and then work on the composition later. I use the word 'compose' deliberately. For example, I remember first taking a note of the scene:
the expanse of summer sky ahead of and behind me
I then started thinking about how the sky was also above me, so I jotted down:
over my head
This started me thinking about how the sky was beyond my understanding, which led me to other philosophical questions and my emotional responses to them. I felt like I was young again, looking up at the sky in wonderment for the first time. This would become the essence of the haiku I would try to write.
Often, when I try to write my thoughts as a haiku, it just doesn't work. I had:
summer sky—
the expanse of blue
ahead of me
summer sky—
the expanse of blue
all around me
I thought of synonyms for 'ahead' and 'behind,' and came up with 'before' and 'beyond.' These would better suit the philosophical questions I had posed as they had more depth of meaning. To finish the haiku, I simply pruned and arranged these elements:
summer sky
expanse of blue
before me
beyond me
I wanted not just to set a scene, but to pose an existential question then supply an answer of sorts. Thus I arrived at my arrangement.
I decided to drop the obvious seasonal reference 'summer sky' for 'blue sky' which I felt was more universal yet still gave a strong sense of summer. I deliberately chose no punctuation so the poem could be read in multiple ways.
blue sky
before me
beyond me
The consonance of the B sounds was serendipitous but, with the monorhyme of 'me' on the end of lines 2 and 3, added a dimension to the poem, highlighting man's eternal search for understanding."
Mr. Jones explains the somewhat cryptic name of his publication this way: "A Gean tree is a wild cherry which, though not as showy as the formal Japanese variety, is nevertheless still rooted in the same ground and will produce fruit." In Notes from the Gean, readers will encounter one-line poems, and poems on subjects not usually associated with haiku. "There are many poets whose work I admire," says Jones, "but I still feel the haiku community could do with some radical new writers."
His publication features them from every place in the world where English is spoken, and sometimes where it's not; its masthead reflects this. "I first 'met' the original editors of Notes from the Gean on an Internet discussion forum," he said—a forum very much like the spirited community Ms. Reichhold hosts. "There," he continued, "as I developed as a writer and started to submit my poems for publication, I began to encounter the work of, and form relationships and even friendships with, other poets."
Which is what I, along with all the hard-working editors who generously donated their time to this piece, would like to invite you to do. It's a great way to begin a practice that will allow you to be highly creative with words and images for free every single day if you like. Listen well and patiently, and you will strengthen your ability to read and write poetry—both Eastern and Western—that surprises and delights.
This essay appeared in the April 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Unforgotten
By Dean Kostos
A child steps from a silhouette of fire,
pleating paper into egrets of flame.
Tattooed with smoke, his selves a duet,
he grows into a statuette of flame.
He releases the singed kites & birds,
attempting to forget the flames
that cleansed nothing but branded
loss: fleshy rosettes of flame.
He breathes into tarnished mirrors,
coaxing embers from regret's flames.
Voices splinter like lightning, igniting
words' clatter: castanets of flame.
Dean pleats his ashes into a boy
who emerges, forever bearing the debt of flame.
Union Songs
This Australian website has collected over 600 labor union and political protest songs, from classics like "Bread and Roses" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to contemporary offerings such as "After We Torture Our Prisoners". A number of the songs are accompanied by audio recordings. An extensive links directory provides information on other working-class music and cultural sites.
United States Copyright Office
Find out how to register your work. Copyright search engine is easy to use. Note that mailed submissions to the Copyright Office may be severely delayed. Use a private carrier like FedEx or UPS instead.
University of Arizona Poetry Center
The website of the University of Arizona Poetry Center features reference materials such as a digitized collection of writers' portrait photos, a blog with articles and interviews about poetry and education, and a basic guide to the poetry publication process.
University of Toronto’s Glossary of Poetic Terms
Brief definitions of poetic forms and literary devices from Acatalectic to Zeugma.
UnLost: A Journal of Found Poetry
UnLost features poetry and artwork made by transformation, erasure, or collage of other texts and images. Unpublished work is preferred.
Unmonstrous
By John Allen Taylor. Bold, tender poetry chapbook depicts a Southern childhood marked by sexual abuse from his Sunday school teacher, and the grace and gratitude he finds in reclaiming his body as part of the natural world.
Unraveling at the Name
Speaking in sonnets seems as natural as breathing for this author, whose effortless mastery of poetic forms is employed to tell the story of a young woman's discovery of her lesbian identity. Some explicit passages.
Unruly Bodies
Best-selling essayist and novelist Roxane Gay, author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, curated this pop-up online journal in April 2018, featuring 24 contemporary writers' reflections on embodiment and how it is policed by society. Contributors include Kaveh Akbar, S. Bear Bergman, Kiese Laymon, and Carmen Maria Machado.
Until We Meet Again
By Richard Eric Johnson
Barriers in place
go no further
people cars trains
stuck in time
coiled razor wire glow
bad present
faces tense
eyes perplexed
anger multitudes frustration
shout deafened ears
cold heart finger tips
trigger-touch guns
silent wet eyes
lips blow kisses
across The Wall
Untitled (“mother’s now…”)
mother's now
translucent glowing
coldly by this aging
winter sun
autumnal under
a puzzled cloud
forgetful of both
time and place
her hand cold
as fresh chicken
Copyright 2009 by Hugh Hodge
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
As I begin my tenure as poetry critic here at Winning Writers, I find myself looking towards the future. That is why, of all the many beautiful and intriguing poems that arrived in my mailbox, I picked this SMS text poem by South African poet Hugh Hodge.
You may ask, "What is an SMS poem?" and, perhaps querulously, "Um...why?" I'll admit I did.
SMS, just to make sure we're all on the same page—or, er, screen—means "short message service"—what most people simply call "texting," that apparently all-absorbing and reportedly thumb-nerve numbing activity that has people all over the world hunched over their cells and squinting.
Although the technology was developed in the early 1990s, implementation was slow. But by the year 2000 there were 17 billion SMS texts (yes, that's a "b"). One year later that number was 250 billion, and the millennium was born.
By 2005 the number of SMS transmissions overtopped the trillion mark. And as you might imagine, with all that communicating going on, it wasn't long before poets joined the party.
Enter "cell phone poetry", or "SMS poetry", or the like, into a search engine and you will discover sites offering "funny" or "sexy" examples, many of which you are free to copy. Far and away, most listings are for seduction poems, small offerings to send last night's date. This is comforting. Apparently, the "function" of poetry, as the Marxist critics would say, has not changed much since the early work of John Donne.
But even if the message hasn't much changed, clearly the medium has, begetting orthographic innovations sometimes called "textese" or "slanguage"—abbreviations slashed almost beyond recognition or symbols substituting for letters, such as m8 representing the word "mate". Though oft decried, these devices are lent a degree of legitimacy, indeed gravitas, by world-renowned Cambridge linguist David Crystal in Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 (Oxford University Press, 2008), to which this essay is greatly indebted.
According to Crystal, the first competition for text poetry was offered only two or three years after the arrival of texting by The Guardian, which claims to be the world's leading liberal newspaper. Early adopters though these liberals may be, note that, despite the distinguished panel of judges, the contest and its results are relegated to the technology pages.
Still, the games had begun. A second and more lucrative prize from The Guardian soon followed, then a sister city project between Antwerp and Leeds, a Tasmanian prize, a Filipino one, fourteen from the British forum, txt2nite.com, even a new Dutch literary foundation dedicating to awarding De Gouden Duim (The Golden Thumb)!
All right then, let's play! But what makes an award-winning text poem? Well, obviously, like any text message, it must contain no more than 160 characters. Beyond that, the judges from that original Guardian competition offer some insights; among them, the suspense created when one can only read a single line at a time, and the necessity of an unequivocal opening. As in all poetry competitions, judges enjoy a fresh approach or subject. Nevertheless, I wonder if some of the salient characteristics specific to this new type of poem may have been missed in their commentary—notably, the impossibility of stanzification. Also, wouldn't such a poem, by its nature, be epistolary?
This month's poet, Hugh Hodge, who, as a computer programmer and editor of South Africa's oldest literary journal, New Contrast, is no stranger to either technology or poetry, found himself in such insufficiently charted territory that he felt the need to include his own rules (no textese, message must be sent) and explanation along with his poem.
What is immediately striking about his poem is its subject matter. It is not about dating, not humorous, nor self-referentially about texting itself—none of the cliché SMS topics.
Less fortunately though, the poem opens with some difficult syntax. Follow me here: if the "mother's now translucent glowing" is a compound noun as suggested by the possessive, then it is the "glowing" which is cold. If, more probably, the noun is intended to be "mother", then the meaning is either "mother (is) now translucent (comma) glowing" or "mother (is) now translucent(ly) glowing." Or perhaps the noun is "now" and "mother" is an adjective modifying it.
This may appear nit-picky, but confusing syntax at the beginning of a poem can be off-putting. The reader cannot enter properly. And when the reader is a competition judge with a large stack to get through, your poem may not get the patient response you desire.
My favorite lines are 4-6. I like especially the juxtaposition of winter sun/autumnal. Is it winter or autumn? If it is winter, then aren't we done with autumn? Wait, I'm confused about time here, which is, of course, the point. The reader participates in this confusion. Furthermore notice how each word has an "n" and the "u" and "l" sounds both unify the phrase and propel it forward to the next line, creating a full movement from sun to cloud. Additionally, there is the personification of "cloud" serving double-duty as a metaphor for mother.
Lines 7 and 8, in comparison, are uninspired. They are also explanatory. Mom's confused about time; we've got that. The participation we enjoyed as readers is undercut when prosaically summed by the author. I recommend the lines be struck.
What really makes the poem successful for me are the final two lines which move the poem to an unexpected place with their disquieting image. The chicken may be fresh, but it's dead. And actually, if it were recently dead, it wouldn't be cold. This image is not merely unappealing, but troubling, because it is something as dear as mother's hand.
However, it is not only that final image that leaves me troubled. There is the question of what my response might have been had the poet not informed me of his medium. How does contextualizing a piece affect that piece? Remember, Marcel Duchamp's urinal would have been merely that, had he not signed it. Translations, arcania, invented forms, or resurrected ones require context, but when does context become gimmick?
And when does the need for context disappear? Will we ever recognize an SMS poem as readily as we do a sonnet? Some industry experts predict the volume of SMS messages to be 2.4 trillion by 2010. According to Julie Bloss Kelsey, "twitterzines", like the recently inaugurated Thaumatrope, are avidly seeking—and paying for—160-character fiction and poetry.
On the other hand, other analysts predict texting will be a short-lived trend, with video messaging soon to replace it. So perhaps we'd best get our thumbs working.
Where could a poem like "mother's now..." be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
PANK Magazine's 1,001 Awesome Words Contest
Entries must be received by September 30
Edgy, contemporary literary journal offers at least $200 for creative writing (one prize across all genres), up to 1,001 words; top prize amount is partly contingent on fees received, ranging between $200 and $750
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
UK-based writers' resource site offers prizes up to 500 pounds for poems up to 30 lines (published or unpublished); enter online only
Abilene Writers Guild Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 30 (don't enter before October 1)
Texas literary society offers prizes up to $100 in a number of genres including rhymed and unrhymed poetry, short stories, articles, children's literature, and novel excerpts
In addition, here are two sites that specialize in SMS poetry:
Copyblogger
This copywriters' and bloggers' advice site offers occasional prizes of iPods and gift cards
txt2nite
Online forum collects funny and poetic text messages
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Up from the Root Cellar
The root vegetable, as metaphor for the unearthing of secrets and the renewal of aging bodies, unifies this satisfying chapbook from Cervena Barva Press. In Woodworth's inventive poems, nuns peeling potatoes could be fantasizing about Marilyn Monroe's striptease; a woman puzzled by hints of her father's infidelity might try to call her childhood home by speaking into a rose shaped like an antique telephone.
US Font Map: The United Fonts of America
This entertaining article at The Statesider shows a map of 222 typographical fonts named after US locations, some with quirky stories behind them. (For instance, Georgia, one of the more common fonts used today, got its name from a tabloid headline that read "Alien Heads Found in Georgia"!)
US Legal Forms
Clearinghouse for over 36,000 legal forms that are free or available for purchase online. Includes state-specific forms. Writers will appreciate the templates for contracts, rights assignments and intellectual property filings.
V.A.
By Terry Severhill
Very aggravating
Sitting here at 2 North,
V.A. Regional Medical Center, La Jolla
Waiting—
God, how many hours, weeks, years
Have I spent waiting on a reluctant
Government?
Signs—
Signs all around—
"Depression"—
Well yes it is—
This whole fucking place is.
"Cognitive Mood Disorder Clinic"
Huh? That sign pisses me off for some reason.
"Psychiatry Emergency Clinic"—
Why don't they just say—
"This place is for all you pissed off
Rage filled, bummed out assholes"
but that would just be another sign.
Under the sign
"Depression"
They list 9 signs.
I have 7.
I'm so depressed by the revelation.
I got here early—
That must be a sign of something.
I wasn't the first. Just a kicked-backed black dude about my age—
A regular—the doctors and staff know him by name.
More "clients/patients" trickle in—
A couple look like WW II vets.
Only one looks under thirty.
I'm nervous—
I'm nuts—
I'm just a "little" crazy.
Ha. Ha.
Why else would I be in 2 North?
(2 North is a walk in psychiatric clinic, 2 South is the lockdown ward)
Valancourt Books
Founded in 2005 by partners James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle, Valancourt Books is an independent small press dedicated to the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction. They specialize in gay titles, Gothic and horror novels, and literary fiction.
Valparaiso Poetry Review
A publication of Valparaiso University in Indiana, Valparaiso Poetry Review is a well-regarded online literary magazine of poetry, reviews, and criticism. Journal has been published since 1999; currently, the archives that are free to read online go back to 2010. See website for review submission guidelines.
VCU Medical Literary Messenger
VCU Medical Literary Messenger is Virginia Commonwealth University's twice-yearly online journal of creative writing about medical themes. The journal aims to promote humanism and the healing arts through prose, poetry, and photography.
Versal
Visit their blog for the editors' thoughts about their submission review process and the wide(ning) aesthetic that Versal seeks out. Contributors have included Peter Shippy, Jennifer Chapis, and Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.
