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Verse Daily
Similar to Poetry Daily. Visit for a new free poem each day. Verse Daily selects from review copies of literary magazines and books. Web Monthly page links to poems on the Internet. Both famous and lesser-known poets are represented. Publishers, send review copies here.
Verses Scribbl’d in My Burning House
By Katherine J. Leisering
While reviewing 17th c. surveyor map holdings, Massachusetts librarian Emma Loade discovered this first draft of Anne Bradstreet's "Upon the Burning of Our House". Footnotes are Miss Loade's.
Asleep was I, to dream of love
When three floors below to me above
Rose cries of, "Fire! Fire! my dear!
Get thy derriere outta here!"
Before I flew, toward door as dart,
My pen grabbed I close to my heart,
And put to scorch'd paper few brief verses,
In between some well placed curses.
Thought I, nightie now well heated,
"The hell with poems!" I'd become unseated.
Rising swiftly pray'd I to God,
"Please! Spare for me my bod!
And allow me like, you know, to step
Outside real quick and call a Geico rep."
We are covered well 'tis sure
For occasions ill, e'en backed up sew'r.
And should no payment come or stall late,
I shall but compare costs with Allstate.[1]
How didst such flames begin a-firing?
Was it ubiquitous faulty wiring?
Or mayhap pyromaniac parson[2]
Who lately'd been accused of arson?
My goods turned to ashes thus
Will ne'er make me Gloomy Gus.[3]
Though friends they may become aloof
Refusing meals if there's no roof.
Then shall we simply move up windward
To summer digs on Martha's Vineyard.
________________________________
[1] I, too, have Allstate.
[2] Parson Thurgood Mulch racked up a record thirty-three trips to the neck pillory in 1652 for setting trash can fires all over Plymouth.
[3] "Gloomy" Gus Standish (Miles' nephew) briefly dated Anne Bradstreet before tragically choking on a Thanksgiving turkey bone and succumbing in the arms of an Indian.
Vestal Review
Vestal Review pays 3-10 cents per word for accepted stories. Submissions should be 500 words maximum and have a plot.
Vetch
Launched in 2015, Vetch is an online literary journal of poetry by transgender authors. Essays and book reviews should take the poetry of trans authors as their subject. It was founded by the poet Liam O'Brien and is edited by writers from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Editors say: "Vetch seeks work by trans poets in trans language. This is not to say that trans people have a single way of speaking to one another, nor that trans language is by necessity revolutionary, but that we seek work that does not bother to translate itself for a cis reader. Vetch seeks work attentive to the ways in which power shapes language, poetry, and relations among trans people. Vetch seeks work excited by imagining a trans poetics, rather than dogmatic about establishing one." See website for email submission guidelines.
Veterans History Project
Library of Congress site collects personal reminiscences from veterans of recent wars. Search archives by time period or branch of service, or find out how you can add your own memories to the historical record.
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts
Award-winning poets Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu founded this online community in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding women's work as well as the critical reception of women's creative writing in our current culture. Formerly known as WILLA: Women in Letters and Literary Arts.
Vietnamese Reds
A string of red paper lanterns cast harsh shadows
upon a pagoda of silken Bodhisattvas, snapping
pleats of paper like peacock tails for American GI's.
Their celadon features light opium pipes, pouring
flowery rice wines; while pregnancies out of wedlock
are punished by lying in the street as elephants trod
on stomachs until garments are the color of cay-cay.
Still, born of this night are offenses more colorful
as the essence of jackfruit and pungent curries
stain winds. A river bleeds like a long cut, split open
by the evils of Reds and Capitalists alike. Junks
carry small explosions of orange as black clouds lift
from woks and grenades. Nearby a curious red rain
falls on banana leaves, where a child has followed
a scuttling blue crab over a landmine. Beyond
Saigon, a field of casualties lay splayed in the wake
of "conflict" resembling war. Their vampire smiles
appear to be stained with betel nut, but not.
Burlap bags swollen with shrapnel, bleed rice.
Jasmine and napalm float upon the moist dark:
marriage of dove and vulture. A people governed
by fate question virtues, as Confucius scratches
his head. A staccato beat sounds for the dead
from a drum said to be stretched with human skin.
Cay cay: a fruit similar to a persimmon that produces a dark pink juice that is used as a cosmetic and a paint and sealer for paper fans.
Copyright 2004 by S.K. Duff
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Vietnamese Reds" by S.K. Duff, surrounds us with a world of brutal illusions, where beauty and cruelty intertwine like the blossoms and dragons on a Chinese urn. The finely observed details create an atmosphere that is almost oppressively real, a feat that helps compensate for the lack of narrative development.
This is a poem of disguises and shape-shifting, where grains of rice can be mistaken for shrapnel, and woks and grenades give off identical smoke. The clash between the ancient Vietnamese civilization and modern American warfare adds yet another layer of disharmony between appearance and reality. Duff subtly suggests that the war itself is enabled by deception, as when politicians refuse to call things by their real names: "[A] field of casualties lay splayed in the wake/of 'conflict' resembling war."
The poem demands close attention in order to comprehend what is being described. It's easy to be dazzled by the sensory profusion and fail to spot the deadly reality beneath. It would be nice to deceive ourselves that the bodies' lips are red with betel nut, a sensory indulgence, "but not." Duff is a master of restraint. My favorite example of chilling understatement:
...Nearby a curious red rain
falls on banana leaves, where a child has followed
a scuttling blue crab over a landmine.
Death is everywhere in this poem, but rarely named outright. Even the execution of pregnant girls is masked with the pleasing, impersonal image of decorative dyes.
Poets who aspire to tackle emotionally charged topics could learn subtlety from "Vietnamese Reds". The author refrains from unnecessary editorializing and trusts his readers to have the appropriate response to the scenes laid out before them.
Yet one drawback of the poem's journalistic detachment, in my view, is a certain emotional coolness. The very title suggests an abstract composition, rather than a human drama. While I'm glad Duff refrained from telling us how to feel, as so many poems about atrocities do, I wasn't sure what the details added up to. The poem is structured as a realistic narrative, but it didn't seem to move forward toward a dramatic resolution. The final image of a drum "stretched with human skin" is one more addition to a catalogue of horrors, rather than a clue to making sense of the whole picture. The poem stops, but doesn't really end.
The closest we come to closure is "A people governed/by fate question virtues, as Confucius scratches/his head." This intriguing yet enigmatic statement left me wanting to know more about how it applied to the specific scenes of the poem.
Is the oppressive fate in question the traditional Vietnamese culture, with its harsh punishment of sexual misconduct, or the modern-day "evils of Reds and Capitalists"? Or is the point that modernity has just substituted one inhuman system for another, rather than bringing individual freedom?
Since there are no characters in the poem—the human figures are either inferred from the physical objects they create, or dead and reduced to objects themselves—the notion of a choice between virtuous and amoral action is hard to read back into the preceding stanzas. Perhaps the author is saying that we commit atrocities when we allow ourselves to depersonalize our actions, to act as if "fate" and not human choices ordered those women to be trampled and those soldiers to be shot.
I also found the first two stanzas to lack a strong poetic rhythm, which made them feel overly wordy. The following is a powerful image, but it seems to be struggling to stand out from a jumble of sounds:
...while pregnancies out of wedlock
are punished by lying in the street as elephants trod
on stomachs until garments are the color of cay-cay.
However, by the third stanza, the rhythm tightens up. The line breaks feel more inevitable, matching the flow of the concepts. This image in particular had all the elegant economy of an Asian brushstroke painting:
Jasmine and napalm float upon the moist dark:
marriage of dove and vulture.
The latter line reminded me of the cryptic, metaphorical names given to martial arts poses, or sections of the I Ching.
Where could a poem like "Vietnamese Reds" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Columbia Journal Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: March 1
A prestigious magazine published by New York's Columbia University.
Foley Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by April 16
Sponsored by America, a Jesuit magazine, yet this contest favors works with a more subtle philosophical/spiritual component, rather than explicitly religious verse.
Pablo Neruda Prize
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Sponsored by Nimrod International Journal, this is one of the most prestigious contests for individual poems. Intense, image-filled work may find a home here.
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Vigil for Darfur
This moving poem by 17-year-old Sabina Carlson supports Amnesty International's campaign for diplomatic and humanitarian aid to stop the genocidal civil war in Sudan's Darfur region. Visit their website to find out how you can help.
Virtual Literary Events Calendar at the Washington Post
Launched in May 2020, this calendar curated by the books editors at the Washington Post lists online literary events from publishers, authors, libraries, festivals, and bookstores around America.
Vispo: Langu(im)age
Vispo, or visual poetry, is an art form that explores the visual patterns of written language, with an emphasis on appearance over meaning. This site showcases examples of vispo in images, videos, and even a computer game ("Arteroids" by Jim Andrews) where players shoot text fragments with other texts.
VistaPrint
Design your own postcards, greeting cards, business cards, flyers, stationery and promotional materials. Use VistaPrint's templates or upload your own artwork.
Visual Thesaurus
Each word you enter links to other words in a fascinating, shifting web. Great brainstorming tool.
Vitality
Vitality is an online literary journal for poetry, fiction, essays, and artwork with LGBTQ protagonists. Submissions accepted year-round. This is a paying market. They are especially interested in genre fiction with an adventure storyline (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, thriller, steampunk, comedy, travel, historical fiction) and characters who are nonbinary in their gender identity and sexual attraction. No homophobic slurs or bullying, even by villains; explicit sex; or "tragic queers" (LGBTQ characters dying). Read the full list of the editors' likes and dislikes here.
Voyage: A Young Adult Literary Journal
Launched in 2020, Voyage is an online literary journal dedicated to young adult literature. They publish new essays and stories weekly, and also host a first chapter contest with a cash prize and literary agent review.
Waiting for Pentecost
By Nancy Craig Zarzar. Winner of the 2007 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest, this poetry collection depicts intimate relationships cleaved by silences, frustrated by communication barriers both psychological and inter-cultural, but capable of being healed by empathy. Divine grace helps some of these characters find the willingness to enter into another’s strange mental world, like the husband who alone appreciates the creative visions of his stigmatized, mentally ill wife. Others remain on the opposite side of the barrier, perhaps because their intentions were not as pure, like the male narrator who is intrigued by his hairdresser’s quiet daughter.
Waiting to Burn
Memorable chapbook whose poems are always about so much more than their literal subject matter. Cleland trusts her readers to recognize the story of an unhappy marriage in a cat's transformation into a dog, or the divine-human power struggle over forbidden knowledge in a guided tour of a factory. This book was one of the three winners of the 2006 Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Competition. Their book design and materials are above-average.
Wake Up Call
By David R. Altman
A gold-eyed predator races through the low limbs,
her kill window only six minutes, just before first light.
Like a Vampire of the Woods,
she must return to her hidden roost before sunrise.
Gliding silently, she sees the unsuspecting cat
curled upon the deck post, its hearing long gone and
senses dulled with age,
now the target of a racing drone, whose radar is locked on.
It strikes quickly; the cat, never to awaken, is suddenly lifted upward,
leaving one family to feed another, creating memories of its ninth life,
now flown like a grocery sack to an unlikely final resting place
high among the branches, far from the deck post
where her kitten sleeps undisturbed,
a lofty sacrifice that will never be confirmed.
Walking Backward
By Diana Anhalt
Late each night, woozy with sleep, my bare feet
traveled blind—knew one room from the next
through warps in the wood, space between
floorboards. Sensed their width and breadth...
For forty years I called that place home.
It still resides in me. The feet are last to follow.
They fumble with the unfamiliar, reject the waxed
surface of a new life, are the last to forgive
my leaving, long to return me to the old home—
unwashed windows, lopsided gate, caged parrots
in the kitchen, geraniums. At night my feet step
back, tread dream halls where faces linger
in mirrors, Spanish echoes down corridors
into a past I left behind. And there you are,
waiting in the entrance. You lean
against the door frame, ask: Como te fue?
How did it go? Red wine or white?
Walt Whitman
This scholarly archive includes complete text of Leaves of Grass plus biographical materials and literary criticism.
War Poetry by David Ray
Mr. Ray was one of the founders of American Writers Against the Vietnam War in 1966. Recent books include 'The Death of Sardanapalus: and Other Poems of the Iraq Wars' and 'One Thousand Years: Poems about the Holocaust'.
War Poets (Wikipedia)
Brief overview of the emergence and development of the contemporary war poetry genre, with links to information on major poets of World Wars I and II.
War Poets Association
The War Poets Association promotes interest in the work, life and historical context of poets whose subject is the experience of war, with particular interest in World Wars I and II, the Spanish Civil War, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Their website posts announcements of new publications in this field, calls for papers, and literary events (mostly in London).
War, Literature & the Arts
Handsome literary journal published by the English Department at the US Air Force Academy. Features writing by well-known authors such as Philip Caputo, Andre Dubus and Carolyn Forche.
Warnings and Cautions
Website dedicated to identifying scams.
Water on Rocks
By Mary Lou Taylor
Oh, you red planet!
Did you once have beings running around,
keeping herds, building shelters, planting?
Once did you have water?
Spirit and Opportunity—they surprised you.
Twin robots hunkering down on opposite flanks,
busy poking at rocks, maneuvering, searching soil,
mining for minerals. They didn't go away.
Spirit hung around five years, then got stuck.
Opportunity soldiers on, a ten-year-old, golf-cart-sized
robot, exploring, working Endeavour Crater, looking
to see if you were once warm and wet.
Opportunity spotted a rock called "Esperance,"
filled with clay minerals. Acid water, undrinkable,
once flowed across it. Hey, Mars, we know you had
a wet past. Today you're cold and dry.
Earth needs to know your history. Let that Opportunist
be a geologist who walks around your surface, uses
a hammer on the inside of a rock, digs in, picks up
dust particles. Mars, get ready for your close-up.
Water Street
By Naila Moreira. This poet and science journalist's second chapbook marries the majesty of High Modernist style with a humble attention to our nonhuman neighbors on the planet. Like Yeats and Eliot, she speaks with prophetic sureness about cosmic themes, but where they might have recoiled from nature's messiness into the cool chambers of intellect, Moreira shows us the fatal consequences of such detachment. She quickens our conscience to protect our fragile environment, then invites us to be awestruck by meteor showers and comforted by the cycle "of being and of killing, of eating and of rot", as our tiny breaths "fuse with the world's bedlam of respiration".
Water, rising.
By Sally Stewart Mohney
for Vinings
Waking in the night to a thunder-full
of dark. Green stage rises as you sleep,
crests a high angry orange. Rushing sluice
groans and juices over moss banks. River feels
coarse grain of pasture grass on its underbelly.
Horses pulled from half-graze. Neighbors in
sudden red kayaks witness mattresses, chairs
and sofas tossed in a slow, painful ballet. Stormwater
mud-gullies into your street belly-level. Like watershed
creatures, you find alternate egress. Folks collect in pluff
mud at tide's edge to watch churn boil: dam of net,
leaves, rope. Warped door. Pool toys. Hopeful raft.
Copters cast shaking shadows. Your fingers trace
the dull floodmark on a bowering honeysuckle stand,
nurse the remains.
Wave Mechanics
By Dana Curtis
(i)
I don't have the math and I become more
and more convinced that no one has
the green ribbon given to everyone just
for participating. When we were
undressed by the water, satisfied
as if this was anything other
than a revolutionary new
interpretation that might be called:
pastoral or pictorial or labyrinthine
and what question will finally be
revealed as our shadow, our
hours in the light cast by
the new oven, the old
reality—castanets are what
we hear in this endless ocean
of grass dotted with horses and
fish—they're still flipping on the
oxygen and they might never
stop. I take down my hair. I take
the final dictation. I have not taken
the temperature of what will come.
(ii)
I don't have the math and I don't see much
chance of ever receiving a line of
integers like diamonds. There seems
more chance of paying the rent
then a deposit of numbers appearing
at my door. I'm experiencing the
poverty my husband always said I deserved.
If the universe doesn't give it to you then
you don't deserve it: look at me. There can be no
reconciliation if both sides of the equation
are wrong. I was sleeping in the park
while the stars let out shrieks of
contentment, of justification—
it was cold or it was
not cold. I was or was not.
This is what is integral
for a long-lost daughter lost again
and I know what the world will
give me this time.
(iii)
I don't have the math but I do
have a disease—all about
perception. I'm looking
through the glass of what used
to be water. It's the wave
form and the hand in the air
signaling departure or return or
symbolic particles because they
look like they need to be there
and what will I do because I have
the math without numbers, the
numbers without significance;
it's a standing spherical demonstration
of what I saw in the dark—
the darkest room where there might be
nothing to hear because we sit down
with all our notations meaning so much
to us. It is a disease
of the light.
Waxwing
Waxwing is a thrice-yearly online literary journal promoting the tremendous cultural diversity of contemporary American literature, alongside international voices in translation. They seek to include American writers from all cultural identities alongside international voices published bilingually. Waxwing currently accepts submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations. Authors published in Waxwing include Cortney Lamar Charleston, Amy Dryansky, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Oliver de la Paz.
We Are Not Numbers
We Are Not Numbers is an ongoing archive of personal stories from emerging Palestinian writers. Launched in 2014, the project trains Palestinian journalists to reach an English-language audience. Its mentorship program pairs young Palestinians with experienced writers to help shape and publish their narratives. WANN's goal is to help people outside Palestine understand the lived experiences of occupation and exile. Their logo was redesigned in 2024 as a kite to reference the poem "If I must die" by the late Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2023.
We Are You Project
The We Are You Project is the first comprehensive 21st Century coast-to-coast exhibition depicting current Latino socio-cultural, political, and economic conditions, reflecting triumphs, achievements, risks and vulnerabilities, affecting all Latinos "within," as well as "outside" the USA. It is also the first 21st Century art movement that cohesively combines Visual Art, Poetry, Music, Performance Art, and Film making, amalgamating these diverse art-forms into one ("united") socio-cultural artistic Latino voice, which utilizes ART to confront current challenges and opportunities that are faced by contemporary Latinos and Latinas throughout the USA and Latin America. Featured poets include Raphael Montañez Ortíz, Colette Inez, George Nelson Preston, and Gloria Mindock.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman
By Kaitlyn Greenidge. This ambitious, unsettling debut novel delves into the secret history of primate research and race relations in America. The Freemans, a high-achieving middle-class black family, accept a live-in position at the (fictitious) Toneybee Institute in rural Massachusetts to teach sign language to a chimpanzee. Their narrative is braided with that of Nymphadora, a maverick black schoolteacher in the 1920s who was seduced into taking part in the Toneybee's questionable experiments. In both timelines, the black protagonists' lives unravel because they underestimated how the white scientists saw them, too, as animal test subjects.
Web Del Sol
Locus of the new literary art. This enormous site publicizes outstanding new poetry and fiction.
Web Hosting Rating’s Top 100 Web Design Resources
Freelance website developer Lisa Sanovski reviews service providers on her Web Hosting Rating site, which includes this extensive list of her favorite resources for fonts, graphics, stock photos, logo editors, and other web design tools.
Website Setup: 10 Best Website Builders
Website Setup is web designer Robert Mening's tech support site for artists and small business owners seeking to set up their own website or blog. Authors who are weighing the pros and cons of a custom design versus website-building software will benefit from this list, updated annually, of the most user-friendly and cost-effective site builders.
Websites and Blogs About the English Language
At her blog English in Progress, educator and translator Heddwen Newton maintains this list of her favorite websites for word nerds. Links include style blogs, etymology resources, and news sites covering linguistic trends.
Wedge of Blacktop, Saturday, 1955
By Paul Scollan
All they could wish was this wedge of blacktop
by the back-porch stoop of this matchbox cape
in this shirt-cling evening of a dog-day swoon,
the breadloaf radio set out on the rail,
the longneck beers, dead soldiers on the stairs,
Blanche kicking high in her grease-stained dress,
her great girth tweaking like she's traveling light,
Chaz winging free right into tomorrow in
his busman's pants, his spit-shined shoes,
a sleeveless top, sweet jazz in his moves
to the toot of Duke in "It Don't Mean a Thing,"
and a switch of the dial to slow it all down
to arms ringing round to doo-wop sounds could
roll honey up the hill of the house next door.
Weird Old Book Finder
This quirky search engine designed by tech writer Clive Thompson browses Google Books to show public-domain books from the 18th century to the 1920s, one at a time, based on your search terms. Rather than a straighforward research tool, it's a vehicle for finding unusual texts and illustrations to spark your imagination. Before using it, read Thompson's blog post about how to get the most out of your search.
Welcome Table Press
Welcome Table Press publishes anthologies of contemporary and classic literary essays, and the periodical pamphlet series Occasional Papers on Practice & Form, which features transcripts of lectures on writing and teaching the essay form. See website for free downloads of excerpts from these publications, as well as an annual contest judged by Robert Atwan, series editor of The Best American Essays.
Wendy Wahman Illustration
The website of children's book illustrator Wendy Wahman includes links to animated videos of her stories.
Wergle Flomp Entries by Anthony McMillan, Maria St. Clair and Mark Stevick
This month, the Critique Corner looks at more runners-up from the 2004 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, in our continuing quest to define poetry so bad it's good.
INTERNECINE WITH SPAM
by Anthony McMillan
But that one can, acidulous; sitting alone
On the shelf, obeisance to the Cag-mag,
This has gotten out of hand; I am broken
-------The can must be opened-------
I feel a little nostalgie de la boue, as the top of
The can is removed, for it reminds of darkly days
When hunger had its ways and smashed pork in a can
Seemed almost toothsome and grand.
Now I am throe and threnody, loathing my penury
As I spoon the scoria out into a bowl.
It squishes on the spoon, its sibilants, some
Domestic swine like tune; that I cannot understand
But imagine its saying, "Damn, I'm dead/cut up
And crushed in this can". Now I rue the day
I mixed my "babe like," friend in
-----------Mayonaise-----------
Effluvium, on bread and I feel such dread
But I slaver nonetheless, I do hope you understand;
It's truly out of my hand, there was only this one
Can of Spam, acidulous; sitting alone.
So shut up and leave me alone
I'm hungry.
Copyright 2005 by Anthony McMillan
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Anthony McMillan's "Internecine with Spam" is a fine example of the "ode to junk food" genre, to which some of our best Wergle entries belong. As I observed in last month's critique, humor thrives on contrast and incongruity. The cheap mass-produced foodstuffs of modern life defy all efforts to romanticize them in verse. Junk food, flattering our basest tastes, represents the opposite of art's mission to dignify our animal life with meaning. The more elaborate the language, the more sharply the mismatch is felt.
Paying effusive homage to a subject clearly unworthy of the honor is a classic form of mockery. The satire cuts in both directions, however, since lavishing poetic care on a product like Spam also exposes poetry's potential for clueless self-absorption and fussy remoteness from everyday life.
McMillan's poem derives added humor from its occasional misuse of erudite words, giving the impression that the speaker is trying hard to sound "literary" but has more enthusiasm than talent. For instance, the title employs "Internecine" (an adjective to describe internal strife or warfare within a group) instead of the more sensible noun "Interlude". Perhaps "Internecine" is a reference to a lost kinship between man and pig: " Now I rue the day/I mixed my 'babe like,' friend in/Mayonaise".
Similarly, the narrator expresses his inner conflict colorfully, yet ungrammatically, with the words, "Now I am throe and threnody". A throe is like a pang (throes of death), while a threnody is a poetic lament. He might feel throes, or sing a threnody, but his chosen phrasing suggests that the narrator is tossing around lofty words of sorrow without quite knowing what they mean. "Scoria" means "pebbles formed by lava," but it has a vaguely repulsive, medical sound (like "viscera"), as well as being a creative description of Spam's texture.
Another humorous device used by McMillan is the constant intrusion of the grotesque into the narrator's grandiose musings. The narrator tries to give deep meaning to the act of eating Spam: "I feel a little nostalgie de la boue, as the top of/The can is removed, for it reminds of darkly days/When hunger had its ways". However, the disgusting details keep getting in the way: the "smashed pork in a can... squishes on the spoon, its sibilants, some/ Domestic swine like tune". (I found several definitions of "Cag-mag" on the Internet, but the one that seems apt here is the Welsh slang for "unwholesome or loathsome meat; offal.")
I was impressed by this poem's playful rhythm and internal rhymes, particularly in the third stanza. The last two lines ("So shut up and leave me alone/I'm hungry") broke the mood for me. They seemed superfluous, perhaps trying too hard to be funny, and also out of step with the narrator's self-dramatizing, pseudo-intellectual persona. He suddenly sounded like a teenager, certainly not old and refined enough to have "nostalgie de la boue".
The poem could have ended with "Can of Spam, acidulous; sitting alone," which brackets the poem with similar lines in the first and last stanzas. Another option would be to replace the word "acidulous" in the last line with an equally erudite yet nauseating word, such as "glutinous," to avoid redundancy.
I don't think I feel very hungry anymore....
SPINNY SPINNY PINWHEEL
by Maria St. Clair
Spinny Spinny Pinwheel
Go Round And Round
Pretty Pretty Colors
Like Spinning Flowers
Pinwheel Go Spin Spin
Spinny Spin Spin
Spinny Forever
My Little Spinny Pinwheel
Spinny Spinny
Spin Spin
Pinny Wheelie
Spin Forver
Spin Spin Spin
Copyright 2005 by Maria St. Clair
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Inane yet strangely charming, "Spinny Spinny Pinwheel" was the best among many entries that tested the vanity contests' willingness to publish childlike babble. This is generally not my favorite type of humor poem, since it's a little too easy to write, and lacks the complexity and inventiveness that allow a humorous piece to stand up to multiple readings. Such poems are also harder to distinguish from one another, which is a disadvantage in a competition.
So what made "Spinny Spinny Pinwheel" stand out? Maybe it was the poem's artless spirit of fun. Like a toddler who can amuse himself (and annoy his parents) for hours by repeating the same jingle, the speaker finds endless satisfaction in repeating variations on a few simple words: "Pinwheel Go Spin Spin...Spinny Spinny/Spin Spin/Pinny Wheelie". Every word is capitalized, every moment as important as any other. The speaker, like a small child, exists in a perpetual present where the same word or object is always fresh and fascinating.
Also appealing was the sense that the narrator has no idea how dopey her little poem is. We receive many other entries in this style that self-consciously call attention to their lack of merit. Like the comedian who laughs too loud at his own jokes, these authors detract from their humor by belaboring it. "Spinny Spinny Pinwheel" maintains a consistent focus, never glancing over its metaphorical shoulder to see if the audience is laughing. Even the final misspelled "forver" is endearing, like a lisping child who mispronounces words in his eagerness to share his latest enthusiasm.
Having now proven that the inventive critic can find Deep Meaning in just about anything, we proceed to our final poem....
WORM SEX
by Mark Stevick
On certain mindless summer days
we hear the river's throat confessing fish,
and our eyes grow empty toward desire
which swims below our pupils,
and we will not be
until we are stumps beneath the sycamores,
reaching roots into the liquid music
for the singing trout.
From the shed or the garage
my friend resurrects a spade
barnacled with minerals
and spoonish like my tongue but
pointed slightly--I can just see that.
This iron edge will open up another mouth
pronouncing soil and stones.
We will be digging for worms.
It might be anywhere that we will
drop the blade and bite;
we are reckless and slightly desperate,
pace the undulating lawns past shrubbery
past bricked beds,
pacing generally toward some unattended corner,
toward anonymity in the mulch and
our specific relief.
We are always lucky.
Shovelling in sweat I am surprised
at the hole I myself am widening.
The worms turn up.
We stand in the silence of farmers and stare
at their appalling knots and humid tangles,
knowing, as we fish, that some dashing
invertebrate Romeo leeches after his soft lover.
Copyright 2005 by Mark Stevick
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Mark Stevick, winner of serious contests from such fine publications as Swink Magazine and The Baltimore Review, can also claim the unique honor of having his poem rejected by the Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest because it was too good. Although the poem's sexual innuendos occasionally edge toward absurdity, the vast majority of the piece is so lyrical and original that one cannot help but take it seriously. The final image of star-crossed worm lovers is amusing as intended, but the writing that precedes it is too strong to be undermined by a touch of self-parody. If anything, the occasional bursts of humor make the characters more likeable, and rescue their idyll from sentimentality.
The first four lines beautifully capture the haze of desire that descends upon the protagonists. The literal object of their obsession is catching fish, but that activity stands in for all the pleasures of surrendering to a languid summer day.
Chief among those pleasures is sex, a presence that lingers just below the surface for most of the poem, slyly peeking out through the images of digging a hole. "It might be anywhere that we will/drop the blade and bite;/we are reckless and slightly desperate". The protagonists are like teenage boys in love with their own animal exuberance, so caught up in the magic of the act itself that they are indiscriminate about whom they catch.
"We are always lucky./Shovelling in sweat I am surprised/at the hole I myself am widening." It doesn't take Dr. Freud to figure that one out. As these images accumulate, the innuendo becomes more obvious, and the poem risks making the protagonists seem ridiculous. After all, they're getting turned on by the unromantic and slightly disgusting activity of digging for bait worms.
With the last two lines, however, the speaker reveals that he's in on the joke, enjoying the comical side of sex as well as the passionate side. In the "appalling knots and humid tangles" of the worms, the speaker seems to see (and genially accept) how bestial, silly or weird our romantic couplings might appear to an outsider. I loved this poem, but I felt it was not really a spoof but a serious piece leavened with humor.
In place of the usual list of potential markets for the critique poems, I'd like to close with a selection of my favorite books of humorous verse:
Very Bad Poetry
Edited by Ross and Kathryn Petras
Unintentionally awful verse through the ages. Include 19th-century bard James McIntyre's not to be missed "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing Over 7,000 Pounds".
The Stuffed Owl
Edited by D.B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee
Another treasury of cringe-worthy classics, with equally amusing commentary by the editors.
Pegasus Descending: A Book of the Best Bad Verse
Edited by James Camp
Much-praised anthology shows that even Emily Dickinson was capable of a few clunkers.
The following two winners of prestigious first-book prizes are not strictly humorists, but their work displays a madcap inventiveness and levity that are all too rare on today's literary scene:
Maine
By Jonah Winter
Offbeat offerings in this winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize include "Hair Club for Corpses" and a sestina in which every line ends with "Bob".
A Defense of Poetry
By Gabriel Gudding
This winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize rediscovers the glorious art of invective in the title poem, comprising several pages of (footnoted) insults such as "your brain is the Peanut of Abomination" and "suing you would be like suing a squirrel".
These poems and critiques appeared in the March 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Wergle Flomp Entries by B.F. Texino, Rebecca Sutton and “Chick L Scott”
This month's critique corner analyzes three of the near-miss entries from our 2004 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, which rewards poetry that is deliberately, hilariously bad.
UNTITLED ("I got this bag of oats..."
by B.F. Texino
I got this bag of oats for the goats
but it is not the sort of food for them, the goats.
So I make the list for all the animal to see
who it is that are wanting them, the oats
Here is the list now read it. The Chicken
The Dog The Monkey
The Donkey The Hog The Horse Rats and Mice in pit.
Now we will take some names away
because some animals says no way
no oats The Chicken? Sorry he must die for food
are not oats food says Jesus.
Sorry Jesus, We love Chicken! not oats.
The Dog? Good Dog! No Oats.
Monkey? Monkey-Devil Monkey-Devil
Monkey-Devil!
Guess who? Shut up Jesus!Sorry Monkey no oats.
The Donkey? Will Jesus ride the donkey to
Bethlehem? Yes? Thank you Jesus!
Yes oats! Bye Bye Jesus! Jesus Waves.
Copyright 2005 by B.F. Texino
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Nonsense poems are much harder to craft than is commonly supposed. Our standards are high. When we read gibberish, we want to be moved to shout, "Behold the miraculous workings of the human mind!"
As with the formal-verse parodies, incongruity is often a key ingredient of the humor of a nonsense poem. Craftsmanship, while harder to measure, is also a consideration. Gibberish that displays some emotional range, and that uses a variety of sentence structures, stands out from the heap. Again, contrast creates humor. The trick is to mimic the form of a poetic argument or narrative that moves from point A to point B, without actually saying anything that makes sense.
Texino's poem has a storyline that is both original and absurd: the speaker bought some oats, and is asking a motley collection of creatures whether they want any. It's a very strange barnyard that contains a chicken, a monkey and Jesus. This poem runs the gamut of emotions from affection ("Good Dog! No Oats.") to demented rage ("Monkey-Devil Monkey-Devil/ Monkey-Devil!"), from triumph ("Will Jesus ride the Donkey to/Bethlehem? Yes? Thank you Jesus!") to tragedy ("The Chicken? Sorry he must die for food"). All the ingredients of great literature...and it makes absolutely no sense.
Tone of voice can make all the difference in a nonsense poem. Many of our less successful entries are along the lines of "Deedle deedle deedle/doodle doodle doodle," which is not funny because there is no tension between the speaker's perception of his own seriousness and our awareness that it's nonsense. The poem has nothing to say but "look at how stupid I am." When the butt of the joke is in on the joke, the joke dies.
By contrast, in "I got this bag of oats...", the speaker clearly thinks he's saying something important. Capitalizing the names of the animals strengthens this impression. His words have the portentous slowness of someone who isn't very bright. "So I make the list for all the animal to see/who it is that are wanting them, the oats." Part yokel, part lunatic, he unselfconsciously skips from macabre incantation ("Monkey-Devil!") to sweet baby-talk ("Yes oats! Bye Bye Jesus! Jesus Waves."). The poem's blend of childlike naiveté and twisted thinking gives it a sinister, carnivalesque atmosphere that is quite disturbing.
This poem was also a close contender in the 2004 contest, though it ultimately gave way to poems that had more laugh-out-loud images and virtuoso use of poetic forms. Nonetheless, it is a fine example of inspired nonsense.
UNTITLED SONNET ("Shall I compare thee...")
by Rebecca Sutton
Shall I compare thee to my Great Aunt May?
Thou art more hairy and more flatulent:
Rough winds do balloon her underpants by day,
And night's calm doth not ease her repellence:
Sometime the heat doth cause her brow to shine,
And often doth the sweat stain 'bout her limbs,
And every orifice spurts forth the whine,
Denied her mouth in which cream cakes are brimmed:
But thee to nursing home be not chained,
Nor lost to thee be the baked beans thou ow'st,
Nor from public transport be thou restrained,
Where thou clear the seats about which thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long we gag while seated next to thee.
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Sutton
Critique by Jendi Reiter
One type of successful Wergle entry is the parody of a classic poem. We like this category because it requires the author to display poetic skill and originality. Many of the unsuccessful entries achieve one objective of the contest - proving that vanity contests will publish drivel - but don't put in the extra effort to write a poem whose badness is truly inspired.
Here, Rebecca Sutton takes off on the well-known Shakespeare sonnet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The painfully sincere effusions of a love poem are a perfect target for the parodist. The original author's demand to be taken seriously sets up the contrast between expectation and reality that generates humor. The oh-so-sweet "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" becomes "Rough winds do balloon her underpants by day."
Many humorous poems depend on a mismatch between style and subject matter. The high craftsmanship and ornamentation of a sonnet is appropriate for a paean to Shakespeare's beloved; it's ridiculously inappropriate for a description of a gluttonous, smelly old lady.
Bodily functions are a rich source of humor, but a mere recitation of gross words and images lacks the originality that we crave. Low comedy is about contrast, the intrusion of our body's vulgar common denominator into an aristocratic space. "And every orifice spurts forth the whine,/Denied her mouth in which cream cakes are brimmed." That's just funnier than saying "She stuffs her face." I particularly liked the line, "Nor lost to thee be the baked beans thou ow'st," which elevates the musical fruit to the heights of Elizabethan diction.
In a year where we had many fine formal-verse parodies, Sutton's clever poem was a close contender but only made it to the penultimate judging round, mostly because its scansion was too irregular. The lines of a sonnet should generally obey iambic pentameter, with occasional extra beats or varied stresses to prevent the poem from falling into a sing-song rhythm. Lines like "And night's calm doth not ease her repellence" and "But thee to nursing home be not chained" are eloquent and funny, but don't fit the meter. Too many such lines weaken the impact of the parody, whose humor partly depends on its resemblance to the original.
The poem's argument also could have been clearer. Who is being addressed, and why is he/she being compared to Great-Aunt May? In the original, Shakespeare indirectly praises his beloved by listing the things to which she cannot be compared, because she is even lovelier than they are. Here the goal seems to be the reverse: the addressee is more "hairy and...flatulent" than even Great-Aunt May - harsh! Yet the last six lines undermine this comparison; unlike Great-Aunt May, the addressee is not banned from public transport or forbidden to eat baked beans.
The lesson: even funny poems can benefit from more logic. In fact, an airtight progression of logical inferences that reaches an absurd conclusion is one of the funniest things there is.
MY SPECIAL DREAM
by "Chick L Scott" (Sue Scott)
If I was a bird I'd be flyin high
And stare down at the ant-sized world
Through one side of my head then the other
Cause birds eyes ain't up front like humans
And I'd cheep a melodius song
Floating on a wing and a breeze
Doing whatever I want
And not pay no more bills
Or get the car transmission fixed
And drain the septic system
Nothing like that, or anything else too
The only bad part would be in the winter
Cause I get real, real cold and might freeze with no heat
If I didn't fly south
Except that I'd be the lazy kind of bird, like ostriches
Who hates flying long distances
So I'd probably want to change back into human form
I think that's called molten
Around October 15th.
Copyright 2005 by Sue Scott
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Like Texino's poem, Sue Scott's "My Special Dream" generates humor from a narrator who is unaware of her own stupidity. I read this as a parody of the sentimental free-verse poems often written by adolescents and other beginning writers, who are painfully unaware of the blandness of their ideas or the inconsistencies in their tone.
Here, the speaker launches into an oh-so-poetical (if not particularly grammatical) declaration of her special dream: "If I was a bird I'd be flyin high". We're abruptly brought back to earth by this profundity: "And stare down at the ant-size world/Through one side of my head then the other/Cause birds eyes ain't up front like humans." Over-explained and literalized, the image of the bird loses whatever glamour it originally possessed.
She tries again for romantic effect with "And I'd cheep a melodius song/Floating on a wing and a breeze," but is quickly sidetracked by problems little noted by Lord Byron: "And not pay no more bills/Or get the car transmission fixed/And drain the septic system". The speaker goes on to utter one platitude after another, totally convinced that she's making fascinating new observations. Like a child, she can't focus her attention long enough to sustain the original idealized mood, so earnestly does she want to show off her garbled scientific knowledge: "So I'd probably want to change back into human form/I think that's called molten/Around October 15th."
I've seen too many serious poems brought down by clunkers like these. In addition to its entertainment value, deliberately bad verse can hold up an uncomfortable but useful mirror to our own artistic shortcomings. Whether your verse is light or heavy, be conscious of the poetic voice you've chosen, and avoid abrupt changes of tone without a reason.
Instead of our usual "where could this poem be submitted" suggestions, here are two venues that accept humorous verse:
Light
https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/
Brief, clean poems seem to be preferred.
Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest
Online Submission Deadline: April 1
http://www.winningwriters.com/contests/wergle/we_guidelines.php
Sponsored by Winning Writers. Free to enter.
These poems and critiques appeared in the February 2005 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter.
Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest Winners
This contest sponsored by Winning Writers pokes fun at the low standards of vanity poetry contests by awarding prizes for poems so bad they're good. From the off-color to the merely off-the-wall, these poems will give you a good laugh while also instructing you in how well-intentioned serious work can go awry. Squeamish folks beware.
West Branch
Reading period is August 15-April 15. Enter through online submission manager. This is a paying market.
What Editors Want: A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines
In this essay from the online bulletin of the literary journal Glimmer Train, Lynne Barrett gives new writers an overview of the magazine editing process and offers tips to help your submission succeed. Barrett is the author of several short fiction collections and the editor of The Florida Book Review.
What He Left
By Charlie Bondhus
I know it's broken,
but the cool, dark potential still unnerves me.
Many things are wrong:
something (the bullets?) rattling
like coins in a jar, the bright silver firing pin
snapped like a link in an old rosary.
Its black weight makes my hands
crinkle, two leaves flaking apart;
the only way I can hold a thing so potent
is with the knowledge that the moving parts
are immobilized.
It's always been this way,
loving chrome-cut men,
so solid there's not a hollow space to accommodate
the rising contractions of the heart.
You showed it to me one day,
explained hammers, pins, and primer;
cartridges and sparks, mechanical energy
and chemical reactions, you said
firing a gun is a little like writing fiction;
there's an initiating action,
a chain of events, the moment of crisis,
and then the falling tension,
the irrevocable resolution, but,
I know ours is not that kind of story.
No climax: you simply packed
what was useful and indisputably yours,
leaving me everything that might have been
ours, so why abandon this broken, deadly bit
of memory you carried
through Afghanistan?
Hard and cold as canteen water,
a memento of more than one desert,
I cradle it as though it were your heart.
What I Call Erosion
By Kelli Russell Agodon
Today's sea seems tired of stealing
acres of sand from the beach.
What I call erosion, the waves call:
I wish the wind would stop rushing us,
I wish we could just take it slow.
In the beauty of whitecaps, I sometimes
see sadness, sometimes how lucky we are
to watch the sunrise one more time.
There's so much we're carrying these days—
an osprey with a fish in its talons,
a killdeer runs across the dunes
trying to distract us from its nest.
Danger, even when it's not, is everywhere.
Sometimes I pretend to have a broken wing
as I look out the window. But then a cloudscape
in a world of buffleheads, of saltwater roses,
and I forget fear. It's 7 a.m. on a Thursday
and an otter is pretending none of my concerns
matter. The otter, if laughter was a mammal,
is diving in and out of the waves, playful.
When the planet says, This is impossible,
the otter responds, Only if you believe it.
What Is Creative Nonfiction?
The website of well-regarded literary journal Creative Nonfiction offers articles on how to define the genre, its signature techniques, and sample essays from the magazine.
What Is There?
What is there?
What is there, when looking out
From the narrow sill of your eye,
Window to what is?
What will you see
When you finally see?
Light and dark limit the possibilities.
Does light pool like a fluid around the little shards of matter
Disguised as dogs and cars and trees?
Can you drown in the all?
I think the ocean of what is
Is there only for me.
I hear its incessant surf beat upon the strands of my mind.
I am so alone in here,
I welcome the sound.
What is there?
How do you define it?
Everyday, I bang a drum;
The vibrations propagate
Across the lawn
Over Jim's house,
They ring all around Kobb Boulevard
And then they bounce off the shells of air and ripple
Upon the placid sea of stars that swells with the night.
And the sound that returns to me,
Is the echo of nothing.
The emptiness is beautiful.
What is there?
I can answer the question now,
But why would I spoil the surprise
For you?
Copyright 2009 by Robert J. Frankland
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Those who have practiced meditation know that the question "What is there?" is the first step on an infinite journey of discovery. We think we know what surrounds us, or at least our perceptions of it. Perhaps we're even bored with the world as we imagine it to be, not sure why we should bother asking the "obvious" question that Robert J. Frankland's poem poses. Yet once we try, with a truly open mind, to quiet our ideas and observe what exists, what vast spaces open before us—and inside us!
"What is there, when looking out/From the narrow sill of your eye,/Window to what is?" Frankland asks. We first become aware of the situated nature of our own viewpoint, and then of its limitations. Most of the time, we live in the closed room of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, experiencing them as if they were the whole world. The question "What is there" invites us to understand the self as a window opening onto something larger.
"What will you see/when you finally see?" Fresh awareness contains the promise of exciting, unsettling new visions. The narrator of the poem glimpses a unity underlying the phenomena we normally perceive as separate, as expressed in these elegant lines: "Does light pool like a fluid around the little shards of matter/Disguised as dogs and cars and trees?" When he says, "Light and dark limit the possibilities," I interpret this to mean that it takes effort to see past our surface reality, full of oppositions and differentiation, to the unity that he believes is more real.
However, this boundary-dissolving vision can also be frightening. If you asked me why I avoid meditation and prayer, even when my body and mind are clearly calling for the relief of stillness, I would express the same concern as Frankland does in the next stanza: "Can you drown in the all?" Because we can never fully escape the fact that we are ourselves and not another, seeing the world as an illusion can plunge us into a lonely place where there is only the self, face-to-face with the Infinite: "I think the ocean of what is/Is there only for me./I hear its incessant surf beat upon the strands of my mind./I am so alone in here,/I welcome the sound."
In the next stanza, the narrator seems to have emerged from this solipsism by reconnecting with ordinary phenomena in a more humble way. "Everyday, I bang a drum"—the sum total of his words, actions, efforts at communication, reduced to this almost childlike repetitive act, which is nonetheless disciplined ("everyday"). The echoes of the sound spread outward, from his neighbor "Jim", to an entire boulevard, all the way to the stars, yet "the sound that returns to me,/Is the echo of nothing." It's a sublime vision of interconnectedness that resists self-aggrandizement.
I admit I was taken aback by the sudden introduction of named characters and places, halfway through a poem that otherwise took place in a wholly conceptual, spiritual realm. I understand how these details function to re-situate the narrator in common human experience, and to show the continuum from the individual to the cosmic connection. Still, I wonder whether the transition could be less abrupt. Where is Kobb Boulevard? Why is "Jim" introduced without a modifier, as if we should know who he is? ("Across the lawn" implies that he is a neighbor, but the search for contextualizing details creates a speed bump in the reading of the poem.)
After these two isolated facts, we are thrown back into the non-specific heavens. The lines "they bounce off the shells of air and ripple/Upon the placid sea of stars that swells with the night" are beautiful and I wouldn't change them, but I might put a comma after "night" and add one more line referring to specific constellations. Alternately, add one more intermediate layer of detail between Kobb Boulevard and the cosmos—the skyline of a named city, perhaps, or a recognizable landscape (e.g. Midwestern corn fields).
Neither of these solutions really satisfy me, though. The basic problem is that Jim and Kobb Boulevard seem to belong to a different poetic voice or genre than the rest of the poem. It would make more sense to weave such details into earlier stanzas as well, but the first part of the poem is so well-written that I would prefer to go in the opposite direction, take out Jim and Kobb Boulevard, and replace them with brief images of unnamed people and streets.
I'm also not sure the ending is strong enough for a poem this profound. The last three lines felt a little cutesy, perhaps because "I can answer the question now" seemed too neat a conclusion. The whole point is that "What is there?" is an endless question. It's not a finite surprise that the narrator coyly withholds from the reader. I would prefer an ending that puts the narrator and the reader on a more equal footing, as companions in an ongoing exploration of the mystery.
Overall, "What Is There?" is a lyrical and well-paced poem that expresses important truths. With a little work on the consistency of its poetic voice, it could be a winner.
Where could a poem like "What Is There?" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 30
Irish independent publisher offers prizes up to 500 euros and a reading at their West Cork literary festival; mailed and online entries accepted
Tiferet Writing Contest
Entries must be received by April 1
$500 awards for poetry, fiction and nonfiction from ecumenical journal of spirituality and the arts; enter online
Kay Snow Writing Awards
Postmark Deadline: April 23
Oregon's largest writers' association offers awards up to $300 in adult and $50 in student categories for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and children's literature
The Ledge Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Competitive award of $1,000 for unpublished poems, any length, from the literary journal The Ledge
Connecticut Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: May 31
The Connecticut Poetry Society offers prizes up to $400 for unpublished poems, 80 lines maximum
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
What She Said
Provocative poetry chapbook by a Palestinian-American writer whose creative and academic work on Middle Eastern and women's issues has been widely anthologized. The title poem in this collection was a finalist in our 2004 War Poetry Contest.
