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What the Living Do
Autobiographical collection is an elegy to the poet's brother, who died young from AIDS. These verses are poignant and true.
What the Prince Doesn’t Know
By Maureen Sherbondy
Two months ago the mammogram revealed
a lump, and days since then have passed.
She can no longer throw her hair over the wall
for him to shimmy up beneath the star-scarred sky.
In a nauseous-chemo blur, clumps of golden thread
fell from her head to the tower's cold stone floor.
Still, the witch keeps her here, caged and ill, the left breast
completely gone. Her head a pale bald egg.
So when the Prince yells up to her, Rapunzel, throw down
your golden hair, she hides beneath the sterile sheets.
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(First published in On the Dark Path: An Anthology of Fairy Tale Poetry)
What Type of Book Editing Do You Need? And When?
This article from self-publishing and marketing service BookBaby, by professional editor Jim Dempsey of Novel Gazers, explains the three types of editing that every manuscript needs before publication, and when to do each one. The page includes links to other useful articles on the same theme.
What We Have Learned to Love
Raw, tender poems of gay male love and lust, and the blurry line between them. This chapbook won the 2008-09 Stonewall Competition from BrickHouse Books.
When Do I Earn Out?
Fantasy novelist and software engineer Hana Lee created this free online calculator to determine how many books you must sell to earn out your advance. Input your royalty rates and list prices for hardcover, paperback, e-book, or audiobook sales to see your sales targets and how much your publisher will earn.
When Grief Becomes Surreal
In this 2016 article from Literary Hub, Tobias Carroll surveys some techniques that great novels and films have used to show the reality-distorting effect of grief and other overpowering emotions. Carroll is the managing editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn and the author of the novel Reel (Rare Bird).
When Space Was Big
By Samantha Terrell
When we are small
And space is big,
And there are so many unknowns
We can't hope to know them all;
When there are brighter stars
In a bigger sky
And the distant future
Is really, truly, very far,
There is a hope, too—
A motivation to keep on
Living past the moment,
To do something unique and new
Before time gets shorter, and spaces smaller,
And the world's pains
Grow bigger,
And the stars, dimmer;
Before the irony of life sets
In, and we learn to get lost in smallness,
Forgetting the world that
Once gave us its vastness.
When the Day Lilies Open
By Mary M. Sesso
She awakens sleep-deprived
on the oncology ward
offended by the cloudy light
that's opening the day lilies
in her back yard.
Cancer has again pruned away dreams not about itself&mdash
it wants to own her breasts,
dream about spreading
its wings.
She's angry at the malice
of bruises that crowd
her arms like flower buds,
gaudy shades of purple,
green, yellow.
And she's growing tired
of the middle and wonders
how it will end, weary of that face
with dark socketed eyes
straining to see the impossible.
But the sky turns cerulean blue,
heaven blue, and hope
puts down a tiny root
even as a poppy bruise
flowers around the I.V.
When You Write
Editor Jessica Majewski reviews technical tools for writers and offers productivity tips at her website When You Write. Check out her recommendations of the best keyboards, dictation software, grammar-checking programs, editing services, and more.
Where is the custom of raising a glass
By David Kherdian
Where is the custom of raising glass
to a dead companion of old?
No memorials to visit, friends
scattered, lost. Tender moments
come and go and have no place.
Like sediment, when the wine is drunk,
left in the glass, forgotten
Where the Meadowlark Sings
By Ellaraine Lockie. This widely published writer is known for narrative poems that capture the unique character of a place and its people. In her eleventh chapbook, winner of the 2014 Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, she returns to her native Montana to honor the land that her parents and grandparents farmed. The collection includes humorous character sketches, elegies for towns hollowed out by economic collapse, and love songs to the landscape that revives her spirit.
Where to Find Free Short Stories Online
This 2019 list from the literary website BookRiot links to high-quality online sources for free short fiction, including prestigious journals such as Granta, Guernica, Virginia Quarterly Review, and American Short Fiction, as well as leading sci-fi and fantasy sites like Tor.com and Lightspeed Magazine.
Where to Publish Flash Nonfiction and Micro-Essays
This 2021 article from the website of Erika Dreifus, poet and editor of the writers' resource newsletter The Practicing Writer, lists more than 50 reputable literary journals that publish short-form creative nonfiction.
While I’m Sleeping
By Gary Greene
I imagine
that as I sleep at night
she may come to sit in her chair
or lie on her couch,
so I leave on a superstitious light
and ensure both are clear,
as there's nothing to be gained
by upsetting a ghost.
So my heart doesn't break
completely,
I made up a rule
and that is
she can't allow me to see her.
I haven't worked out why,
exactly,
but it must be true,
as I haven't.
I check for impressions
from time to time,
but there are only the marks
left by my own hand
where I've smoothed the velour,
which I do
to make it easier to see
some errant sign she might leave,
never on purpose,
as (another rule)
that's not allowed either,
but maybe,
one early morning
a tear will slide down her cheek
unnoticed
as she hurries to depart
when she hears me
quietly coming down the stairs,
and in her haste
a small, damp spot
will be admitted into evidence.
Whisper Without Words
They are all the same
The night
Laughs the last and loudest
My friends
Invariably
Are anxious to creep
Walk taller
And pride their budding beards
This is our fate
That before the sun
Dies down
These children
Should all elope silently
And with silence
Leave us
To our face
Swollen, and ugly with silence
How may we know
Those alive
Seeing that they
Have chosen
Our hearts to walk?
A royal flower
When fading from royalty
And longing for shame
From nature's tempered elements
Too harsh to befriend.
Many a gentle gardener
Allows the gentle dame
A gentle passage
Through waiting earth
And she returns only to return
Yet, not in a fellow flower's soul.
How may we know
Those with us
Seeing
The dead
Have left their graves
To be with us?
The war had many returns
Her sweet fruit
Drove our peering eyes to its hut
Retreating deeper
From the historic, crippling search
For our lost African brothers
Among deafening ranting
Of many maiming machines
We later found them
Snoring merrily
Among other stench corpse
We bore them
(Cherishing the mien of love)
Home on our shoulders
Each heart
A broken article of cold
We lay them on the pyre
We wept
Calling on earth and heaven
To witness our dead
And then came
Departing heart-shake-
It was time to say goodbye
We dug them
Away into waiting earth
But they would not go
They have chosen our soul eternally to roam!
The dead are not dead
The dead are here with us
Alive
Walking tall
Among us
In our memories
Tirelessly
As we also must
Through love in loved ones
When the night
Becomes our light
And to waiting earth
We gravitate!
In learning
To live with the dead
We cherish
The smell of our living friends
Copyright 2008 by Akpoteheri Godfrey Amromare
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Whisper Without Words", comes to us from Nigerian poet Akpoteheri Godfrey Amromare. I've been struck by how submissions from our African subscribers maintain the clarity of free verse without the colloquial, self-conscious flavor of much mainstream American narrative poetry.
As I sift through this year's War Poetry Contest entries, many times I come across what I call the "unnecessary narrator"—the speaker who is not involved in the main action, and therefore writes a poem about how she feels when watching it on television, thinking about it while tending her peaceful garden, and so forth. It's as if we have lost permission to exercise our fictional imagination within a poem, let alone to claim the authority of the omniscient narrator who guided us through the great nineteenth-century novels of politics and society. An epic subject deserves a prophetic voice.
I appreciate the formality of Amromare's speech, a trait I also encountered in previous critique poems by Tendai Mwanaka and Obed Dolo. The emotions are strong and personal yet unadulterated with the mannerisms of the everyday self, the ironic asides and pop-culture details that an American writer might employ to create a likeable and accessible narrator.
Such details are unnecessary to give "Whisper Without Words" verisimilitude. Amromare's poem is made painfully relevant by our knowledge of Africa's ongoing wars. At the same time, because of the style and the narrative's supernatural elements, we feel situated in a mythic or universal realm, not limited to one historical moment.
The poem's subject, of course, is the healing of the community after violence. The physical presence of the "friends" frames the poem in its opening and closing stanzas, reflecting the narrator's progress from alienation to reconnection. I don't know how much importance to place on the shift from first-person singular ("my friends") to the first-person plural ("This is our fate") that is used for the remainder of the poem. It may be just an oversight, or it may signal that the shell-shocked speaker was initially holding himself apart from human relationships, but by the end of the poem he has been rewoven into the community of the living and the dead.
Whether it's intentional or not, I wouldn't change it. The distancing language in the first stanza ("They are all the same"; "My friends" not "Our") effectively conveys the speaker's inability to trust any signs of life and youth. He is not sure who is alive and who is dead. When he sees his young friends eager to reach manhood, he feels they are only racing toward death. Their naiveté makes him angry and cynical ("The night/Laughs the last and loudest").
The speaker and his community must answer the central question: "How may we know/Those with us/Seeing/The dead/Have left their graves/To be with us?" The dead are so present to their memories that the living seem unreal. At this point in the poem, it is primarily the dead who long for connection, who extend tenderness and healing (they only want "to be with us", not to blame us or haunt us) while the survivors are still too afraid to love someone else they could lose.
The line breaks in this stanza embed several phrases within the main one, amplifying its meaning. In the sentence as a whole, "Seeing" functions like "Since" or "Given that..." But we can also break out the phrase "Seeing the dead", which is how war's trauma manifests itself among these people, as well as the question "How may we know [i.e. relate to] those with us [who are] seeing the dead?" How to reach the minds of survivors whose memories overwhelm their perceptions of the present?
In a beautiful moment of insight, the narrator's community finds new life by embracing and identifying with the ones they lost, instead of burying the tragic memories. They must love one another with the love that they would want to receive when they too are dead. Their ability to grieve keeps them human amid war's "deafening ranting/Of many maiming machines".
I loved the physical intimacy of the final image: "In learning/To live with the dead/We cherish/The smell of our living friends". An American author might have noted the friends' voices or movements as proof of the difference between live people and ghosts, since smelling one another is a source of embarrassment in our sanitized society. But what could be more immediate, less likely to deceive, than the earthy senses of taste, touch or smell? How better to show the essential unity of the spiritual, human and natural realms, and thus return a bereaved community to a place of acceptance and peace? Having endured the sensory assault of retrieving their dead friends' bodies ("We later found them/Snoring merrily/Among other stench corpse/We bore them/(Cherishing the mien of love)/Home on our shoulders"), it is fitting for them to savor the familiar smells of their companions.
Some passages in "Whisper Without Words" seemed obscure or distracting to me. The attractive, poignant image of the "royal flower" is welcome after the harsh vision of weeping faces "Swollen, and ugly with silence". However, the action in the opening sentence of that stanza is unclear, perhaps because it lacks a main verb. Why would the flower, or anyone, be "longing for shame"? I was surprised to find that the repetition of "gentle" felt somehow soothing, incantatory, since I wouldn't normally recommend using the same word so many times in succession. "Returns only to return" was less successful, since at that point I was hoping for an explanation and found a tautology.
Ultimately, it was unclear to me what the flower, the gardener and the earth stood in for. Perhaps Amromare was thinking of the foolish innocence of the young men who went off to fight, in the belief that death would be a gentle and beautiful transition like planting a flower, but the allegory is not clearly constructed.
I also had my doubts about the passage "The war had many returns/Her sweet fruit/Drove our peering eyes to its hut". Though the storyline there is evident from the context, it felt like a mixed metaphor. The line about dead friends "Snoring merrily" was a jarring comedic touch in a tragic scene. Finally, I wonder whether the title itself should be replaced by a phrase that is less sentimental and drawn more directly from the imagery of the poem.
With these awkward passages fixed, "Whisper Without Words" should be welcomed by any journal that is open to a fresh idiom and cultural perspective.
Where could a poem like "Whisper Without Words" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Surrey International Writers' Conference Writing Contest
Entries must be received by September 5
Canadian contest offers prizes up to C$1,000 in each genre for poetry, fiction, essays, and children's stories (middle-grade and young adult readers, no picture books)
Firstwriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
UK-based writers' resource site offers prizes up to 500 pounds for published or unpublished poems, 30 lines maximum
Reuben Rose Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 10
Long-running international contest from Voices Israel offers prizes up to $750 and anthology publication for unpublished poems
National Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Prestigious award from the Poetry Society (UK) offers prizes up to 5,000 pounds; online entries accepted
Anderbo Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: November 1
Well-regarded online journal based in NYC offers $500 for unpublished poems, any length
We also recommend these literary journals with an international focus:
Deep South
FULCRUM: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Whispers
Mile after mile of trees border
the highway. She gasps.
The Maples' fiery red, the creamy
white petals of the Magnolias,
the verdant Evergreens standing
side by side lining the forest wall,
as though guarding its history.
It's her first visit to the south.
The early morning breeze rushes
through the car's open windows,
battering her windswept hair
as her eyes greedily search
for the unfamiliar.
She spots a shadowed grove
littered with deadfall,
like corpses strewn across a battlefield,
blemishing the landscape of soft
and dark greens, tinged with sunlight.
She hears a chorus of sounds;
a rustling amongst the trees,
ghostly whispers conjuring up visions
of secrets buried long ago, in unmarked,
unblessed graves.
Passing trees at 65 mph, she spots an Oak
and strains her neck for a quick look back
at a tree whose branches, as history records,
were once adorned, hung, and weighted
down with ornaments of flesh and blood.
Shrinking back from unwanted visions
of tree roots permanently stained a dark,
reddish-brown with the life force of her
ancestors, she curses the wrath inflicted
upon God's own likeness.
Off to the side, away from the trees
stands a Willow. The sway of its branches
in the breeze, calm, hypnotic, brings her
back to the moment. She can't help
but compare its grace to the stock-still
branches of the surrounding trees.
Again, she hears the sounds of the forest
swept along through the leaves moving from
tree to tree; less frightening, less haunting,
a voice whispering, "forgive them
for they know not what they do."
Copyright 2011 by Vea A. Glenn
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
In last month's Critique Corner, I offered a single simple technique that can instantly improve a poem. Well, I've got another one for you. This month, Vea A. Glenn has allowed me to use her powerful and heartfelt poem, "Whispers", to demonstrate.
It is a common technique—perhaps the most common—and so, I have heard it given many names. For now, let's go with poet Fred Marchant's nomenclature when he said, "Every poem could use a good scrubbing."
Extra syllables are what he suggests you scratch away at—syllables in the form of small words or parts of words (look for "ing" endings) as prepositions, or as part of complex verb tenses. Punctuation is your friend in this game.
Why? Well, consider what happens I remove just the word "the" from stanza one of "Whispers":
Mile after mile of trees border
highway. She gasps.
Maples' fiery red, creamy
white petals of Magnolias,
verdant Evergreens standing
side by side lining forest wall,
as though guarding its history.
The result is that the first time the definite article occurs is in the first line of the second stanza: "the south"—that is, a specific place, as opposed to a direction. American readers will understand this to be the area of the country associated with plantation slavery and the harshest of the civil rights struggles. By removing the prior occurrences of the word "the", its first appearance gains valence. I suggest using "an" as the first word of the next line to retain the effect.
To take the scrub further, the poet might replace the "of" in line one with a comma. See how punctuation can replace syllables in this revision of stanza three:
She spots a shadowed grove:
littered deadfall,
like corpses strewn across a battlefield,
blemishes the landscape—soft
dark greens, tinged with sunlight.
If the resulting sound strikes you for some reason as more "poetic", this is because density is a quality associated with poetry. Certainly there is now more elegance to this language, greater dignity.
A second difference between poetry and prose has to do with rhetoric. Poems are built upon the logic of metaphor, so we never need to justify or establish their use. This means, for instance, that "as though" from line seven could be scrubbed.
Another place extraneous syllables hide is in complex verb tenses and in prepositions that commonly accompany them. "Standing" in line five, for example, could be "stand". "Up" after "conjure" (line 21) and "down" following "weighted" (line 29) can fall away without altering the meaning.
Prepositions like this are actually a kind of redundancy. Excising redundancies is not quite the same as a scrub (see November 2010's Critique Corner for a fuller discussion) but they are closely related. Take, for example, the phrase "adorned, hung, and weighted/down with ornaments" from stanza three. The conceit is contained in the words "adorned" and "ornaments". This is ironic, since these decorations are of "flesh and blood". Irony is strong stuff and strong stuff is what this poem calls for. The other descriptors dilute its strength.
In practice, scrubbing amounts to close line-editing. To provide a full impression of how this is done, I will go through the poem in its entirety, providing a rationale for each revision in the parentheses that follow each stanza:
Mile after mile, trees border
highway. She gasps.
Maples' fiery red, creamy
white petals of Magnolias,
verdant Evergreens,
side by side, line forest wall,
guarding its history.
(Beyond the changes discussed above, I have removed the verb in line five as trees can be assumed to stand.)
It's her first visit to the south.
An early morning breeze rushes
through the car's open windows,
battering her hair.
Her eyes greedily search
for the unfamiliar.
(I have used punctuation to replace a syllable in line five. I have also removed "windswept." Battered hair is windswept. "Battered" is strong choice in a poem about physical violence and should be preserved.)
She spots a shadowed grove.
Littered deadfall,
like corpses strewn across a battlefield,
blemishes the landscape—soft
dark greens, tinged with sunlight.
(Discussed above. Notice how the change in punctuation allows the verb in the fourth line to be more active.)
She hears a chorus of sounds:
rustling among trees;
ghostly whispers conjuring visions—
secrets buried long ago, in unmarked,
unblessed graves.
(The use of a colon at the end of the first line indicates a list, which allows for some syllables to be excised.)
Passing trees at 65 mph, she strains
her neck with a quick look back;
an Oak whose branches, history records,
were once adorned
with ornaments of flesh and blood.
("Tree" and "Oak" are redundant. This version is a bit cleaner. The revision of the last two lines was discussed above.)
Shrinking from visions
of roots permanently stained dark,
reddish-brown with the life force of her
ancestors, she curses the wrath inflicted
upon God's own likeness.
(We can assume that the visions are unwanted because she has shrunk from them. More importantly, removing "tree" from the second line supplies "roots" with a second meaning. That is, roots in an ancestral sense.)
Off to the side, away from the trees
stands a Willow. The sway of its branches
in the breeze, calm, hypnotic, brings her
back to the moment. She can't help
but compare its grace to the stock-still
branches of the surrounding trees.
(Here I have not changed a word. Why? Because in this stanza, which invokes the association of the Willow with the gospel, the poem "turns". Allowing the language to remain lush in contrast to what has previously been spare reinforces the change in tone. It makes the previous revisions more expressively meaningful, which is always the reason for making any revision. If I were not using this to make a point, however, I might suggest striking "back" from the fourth line.)
Again, the sounds of the forest
sweep the leaves;
less frightening, less haunting,
a voice whispering, "forgive them
for they know not what they do."
(The poem has now turned. Remaining as economical as possible as it resolves will strengthen its drama. Of course, a sound cannot "sweep" as in line two. This is an example of a device called synesthesia, which blends the senses. It is an arresting technique, very useful for expressing a heightened sense of awareness.)
"Whispers" is a serious poem. The dignity that a scrub produces suits it. But is Fred Marchant correct? Can every poem use a good scrubbing? I don't think so. Poems that are conversational or in dramatic persona may have an expressive reason to sound casual. Poems that are metered sometimes require extra verbiage so as not to sound stilted.
Rather I would say that every poem deserves a scrubbed draft. The options this technique offers line by line are always worth considering, even if, ultimately, some or all of them are rejected. In other words, a scrub is one stage in the larger process of revision.
A word of caution about this: I often find that when a syllable is removed the rhythm changes. If I am close to the poem, especially if I have only recently composed it, I resist the change. There is a certain rhythm in my mind and I feel adamant that it is the correct one. Experience has shown me, though, that if I set the poem aside for some time, I discover the cleaner choice is the stronger one. Another good way to test whether a scrub is working is to ask someone else to read aloud the lines in question. You may be surprised by how powerful they sound.
Where could a poem like "Whispers" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by November 30
Writers' group in Norfolk, England offers prizes up to 1,000 pounds for unpublished poems; online entries accepted
Prism Review Poetry and Fiction Prizes
Entries must be received by November 30
Literary journal of the University of La Verne in California offers $200 for unpublished free-verse poems; enter online
Writer's Digest Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: December 1
National writers' magazine offers top prize of $500 for unpublished poems up to 32 lines; no simultaneous submissions
Gemini Magazine Poetry Open
Postmark Deadline: January 2
Online journal offers prizes up to $1,000 for unpublished poems of any length; enter by mail or online
This poem and critique appeared in the November 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
White Man’s Grave
By Richard Dooling. This anti-colonialist satire from the early 1990s holds up extraordinarily well. One could describe it as a talkback to Heart of Darkness combined with Tom Wolfe's style of exaggerated depictions of American folly and greed. When a Peace Corps volunteer goes missing in the jungle of an unnamed West African country, his naive Midwestern best friend embarks on a quest to rescue him, blundering dangerously and ridiculously into a web of intrigue involving witchcraft, foreign-backed coups, and misdirected international aid. Meanwhile, the missing man's father, a ruthless bankruptcy lawyer, starts to fear that he's been hexed...and that maybe he deserves it.
Whiteout
This snow is a set of wings
come undone.
Or is it my heart
feathered and flaked
in suspended descent?
It's been coming down all day.
A restless sparrow,
wintering in my breast,
beats within this hollow—
the span of your love,
the size of your hand.
Take heart! (You did.)
Take flight, burdened wings
wet with this affliction
of want.
My world is disappearing
from the ground up.
White gone
white upon relentless
white covering my tracks.
Covering this and that—
the definition of our days,
your rake and my spade.
Our garden lost its shape.
The lamb's ears, first to go.
And now the earth itself
gone cold, cold, cold.
I'm sickened
with the gentle slope.
This vanishing.
This wind that wings
your absence. The drift
against my fence—
a row of sharpened pickets
with barely a point left.
Copyright 2004 by Laura Van Prooyen
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Laura Van Prooyen's "Whiteout" stood out among this month's critique submissions for its haunting imagery and deftly economical use of language. Much of the poem's emotional force resides in what is not said, just as you may realize a person's impact on your life only after he is suddenly absent. The poem's clean, short lines are like the snow that creates a smooth surface over the rocky terrain beneath.
Nature and the seasons are among the oldest subjects of poetry. We return to these topics because they make up a basic language of human experience; winter is an instantly recognizable symbol for death and loss, for example. Yet for that very reason, it is particularly challenging to say something original about them.
A good nature poem avoids the extremes of banal description (a landscape with no personal "hook" to make us care) and sentimental projection (a landscape that holds no interest for the speaker save as the reflection of his feelings). "Whiteout" elegantly weaves back and forth between the speaker's interior and exterior landscapes without drawing obvious comparisons between them.
Both the inner and outer worlds in this poem are fully individualized through the use of surprising images, beginning with the opening lines, which caught my attention right away: "This snow is a set of wings/come undone." For me, the payoff in this sentence, the thing that made me interested to read further, is the phrase "set of wings." By choosing "set" over the more common "pair," Van Prooyen startles the reader into taking a closer look, and also suggests something mechanical and disconnected about the wings. A living bird's wings would more likely be called a "pair," whereas a "set" is like a costume, something severable and put on for the occasion. This unsettling picture presages the poem's overall theme of identities being whited out and taken apart: "My world is disappearing/from the ground up."
Another effective technique in this poem is the placement of key words with multiple meanings that add depth to the seemingly simple language. In line 6, for instance, "It's been coming down all day," the word "It" could refer to the snow or to the "descent" that the speaker feels in her heart. The ambiguity requires the reader to hold both possibilities in his mind at once, reinforcing the simile that the preceding lines set up.
In a similar way, the line "Take heart! (You did.)" adds a new, sadder shade of meaning to a familiar exhortation, when read in context with the other images. The line introduces a joyful note of freedom after the frustration of the confined, wintering bird. However, addressed to an absent beloved, the line could also mean "you took my heart away with you" and/or "you took your heart away from me."
The speaker releases the other person with the exquisite lines, "Take flight, burdened wings/wet with this affliction/of want." (Note the assonance of repeated "T" and "W" sounds that add musicality to the lines.) Yet the one left behind now sees her world disintegrate; the snow covers the tracks that their shared lives made, as if it had never been.
This dilemma is summed up in the closing image of the fence "with barely a point left." Again a word ("point") with a double meaning, perhaps posing the question whether the boundaries that were erected by both parties, "this and that,/the definition of our days," were really worthwhile. Did they part because they insisted too much on their own different tools, "your rake and my spade," an argument that seems trivial now that the garden has "lost its shape" entirely?
"Whiteout" combines precision of feeling with a fruitful ambiguity as to plot. I've chosen to read this as a breakup poem, but it could also be a poem about death, or about a parent who feels her identity shaken when her child grows up and becomes more independent. The fundamental themes are the same: loss, renunciation, yet underneath these, a hope that perhaps the speaker too will someday soar above the "affliction/of want." We know that winter ends, but at the time, it often feels eternal.
Where could a poem like "Whiteout" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: May 18
Highly competitive prize for a group of 1-6 poems
Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: May 31
Sponsored by Calyx, a journal of women's poetry; no simultaneous submissions
Mudfish Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: June 29
Well-regarded literary journal; 2004 judge is Best American Poetry series editor David Lehman
Baltimore Review Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: July 1
New contest for 2004 from a reputable magazine
This poem and critique appeared in the May 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Who Pays Writers?
Who Pays Writers? is an online directory of blogs, magazines, and literary journals that pay for accepted work, with information on their current pay rates. Some entries include more information about the difficulty of breaking in to that market, how it compares to other publications in its genre, and the amount of reporting required for a pitch or article.
Whose Voice Is This?
By David Dragone
Your heart is bloodied enough
so be kind to it
mindful of its confinement—
about how it's been taken into custody
by your jailer's voice—
how its scolding sentence is born
in the room behind your eyes—
about how the mouth that whispers your doubt
is doing hard time
behind despairing windows—
your thirsty ears clapped in irons
for years in a house of scarce applause.
Maybe every cell in your body
right down to the most guarded
is looking for a skeleton key
so you can open the dungeon door
and break away from the chains
that pain you in your cage.
Maybe you'll wonder why
as you turn the lock, your captor—
the one with the ugly tongue
is staring at you from the cracked mirror
just like mine was
as I walked away and my better voice
finally reflected and asked...
Whose voice is this?
How old is it?
and was it ever true?
Why Are We In Iraq
Poetry website dedicated to giving the poets of the 21st century a place to speak out about a world consumed with war, peace, religious intolerance, military strategy, violence and hate. Featured authors include Anne Caston, Frederick Van Kirk, and Ronald Wallace. See website for submission guidelines.
Why Write Characters of Color?
In this essay from the bulletin of acclaimed literary journal Glimmer Train, award-winning short story writer Lillian Li explores how to include nonwhite characters who are neither arbitrary nor tokens.
Wikipedia List of Literary Awards
This page links to all of the literary awards that currently have Wikipedia page entries, sorted by geographic region, genre, and language. The individual award pages are a useful place to find past winners and contest history, though they may not indicate whether the contest is still active.
Wild Must Be Wild
By Jeanne Blum Lesinski
—after Depression in Winter
by Jane Kenyon
There comes a little space
between the south side of the boulder
and the perennial garden
just right for the rabbit burrow
I found that spring: kittens
the size of Easter eggs almost
ready to wean and run—
or freeze, in hope the hawk is blind.
My daughter scooped one up,
carried it around in her hoodie,
like her own Velveteen Rabbit,
until I told her: wild must be wild.
I prayed there be no traffic
as the kittens scattered ahead of us
across the road to the woods.
I opened my eyes to waving grasses
and sighed.
Wilgefortis Press
Launched in 2016, Wilgefortis Press publishes the Good News Children's Book Series, a line of religious picture books that feature and affirm children and families who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and genderqueer. The press is sponsored by Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Debut titles by Megan Rohrer, pastor at Grace Lutheran and the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran church, include Faithful Families (co-authored with Pamela Ryan and Ihnatovich Maryia), which teaches that God loves all types of families, and What to Wear to Church, celebrating diverse gender expressions. Read a profile of the press at Jesus in Love Blog.
William Trevor: The Collected Stories
Small masterpieces of melancholy from acclaimed Irish writer. Like a scalpel, Trevor's prose is delicate yet piercing, exposing unnamed but all-too-familiar psychological truths about his characters and ourselves.
Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter Interviewed at Book Marketing Buzz Blog
Book Marketing Buzz Blog editor Brian Feinblum interviewed our editor and VP about the rewards and challenges of being a writer today, and the future of book publishing in the age of social media and e-books. This website is a useful resource for authors seeking to leverage their online presence into book sales and publicity.
Winning Writers War Poetry Contest Winners
This contest sponsored by Winning Writers seeks the best unpublished poems on the theme of war. Poignant, horrifying, uplifting, or darkly humorous, these beautifully written winning poems stand out for their ability to teach us something important about war and the complexity of human nature.
Witcraft
Witcraft is an online journal that publishes "brief, humorous and engaging" flash prose and poetry, 200-1,000 words. They are seeking "wit, word play, absurdity and inspired nonsense," and are not interested in political satire or gross bodily humor. Site is updated weekly, and top three submissions each month receive modest cash prizes.
With Words
With Words is a UK-based nonprofit that offers writing workshops and literary events for adults and youth, as well as an international haiku competition. Visit their website for basic advice on writing haiku poetry, with examples.
With Words
With Words is a UK-based nonprofit that offers writing workshops and literary events for adults and youth, as well as an international haiku competition. Visit their website for basic advice on writing haiku poetry, with examples.
Wocky Jivvy: Poems of Shame
Brave and as yet unsuccessful attempts to write a poem that The National Library of Poetry won't accept. From "Dawn of a New Eve": "Now he offers me dark fruit;/A piece of pie for my bloodroot./Thick serpent slithers through my verse;/Is what he seeks inside my purse?/'Oh Eve, I ssssavor what you wrote!'/Now he's coiled around my throat..."
Woman with Crows
By Ruth Thompson. This poetry collection, earthy yet mythical, celebrates the spiritual wisdom of the Crone, the woman with crows (and crows' feet). Because of her conscious kinship with nature, the speaker of these poems embraces the changes that our artificial culture has taught us to dread. Fatness recurs as a revolutionary symbol of joy: a woman's body is not her enemy, and scarcity is not the deepest truth. For her, the unraveling of memory and the shedding of possessions are not a story of decline but a fairy tale of transformation.
Women’s Review of Books
They are mainly interested in women's studies books, poetry, and literary prose. They also publish author interviews, photography, and original poetry. Women's Review of Books is published by the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, in collaboration with Old City Publishing in Philadelphia, PA.
Wompo - A Women in Poetry Listserv
Wompo is a listserv devoted to the discussion of Women's Poetry. Membership is open to all individuals who are interested in discussing poetry written by women. The discussion covers women poets of all periods, aesthetics, and ethnicities.
Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer
Make your moods work for you, judge if and when to quit your day job, get along with the others in your home and tap the power of positive and negative thinking.
WordDB Rhyming Dictionary
WordDB is a free reference site that includes crossword puzzle clues, thesaurus, antonyms, and a Scrabble wordfinder. Their main product is the Rhyming Dictionary, with hundreds of rhymes for over 350,000 words and phrases. Think there's no rhyme for "orange"? Check out their suggestions, based on a variety of accents and syllable pronunciation speeds.
Wordnik
Crowd-sourced online dictionary allows readers to supplement existing definitions and suggest new words for inclusion. The site also tracks how words are being used in tags and captions at online photo- and video-sharing sites. Additional fun features include a random word-of-the-day generator and a counter for each word's value in Scrabble points.
WordPress
Free blogging service describes itself as "a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability." Users seeking a more sophisticated and professional-looking blog should check them out.
Words
Words are like raindrops.
They fall. Single and
Sublime upon the earth,
The shores and the
Stream that
Gurgles and splutters and
Tries to
Make sense.
Words join together in
Sentences of streams,
Rivers, overflowing, flowing
And flowing in roads connected,
Disconnected, passing each
Other,
Only to be joined, connected
And go on
And on.
Words flow calm and tepid,
Smooth and serene
Or hot and roaring, thundering
And screeching.
Gnashing themselves on
The rocks and dead
Foliage.
Words are holy—
The scriptures of religion.
They are the canon that tell the
Pope what to do.
Almighty, all powerful they are
More powerful than
God himself.
Words are the creator—
They made God.
They made everything possible.
They have the power to kill or
Maim, to love or hate, to admire or
Insult. Words. Soft, romantic and
Lustful. Harsh, bitter,
Revengeful.
Words hurt. Words cure.
They are the surgeon's
Tools. They cut and chop,
Disengage and defuse.
They bisect, dissect and
Resurrect.
Words explode more potent
Than bombs.
They can take away or
Legitimize a life. Prop you up or
Bring you down and
Turn you round and round.
Words—I salute you.
Copyright 2012 by Shirani Rajapakse
Critique by Jendi Reiter
A new year, a fresh start. Time to re-assess the familiar materials with which we've labored for the past twelve months, to rediscover the heart of our projects and re-commit ourselves to bringing forth what's essential. In December's Critique Corner, my colleague Tracy Koretsky offered a close reading and appreciation of some prizewinning work by our subscribers. In this month's column, Sri Lankan poet Shirani Rajapakse invites us to a similar appreciation of the writer's most basic tool—words.
In this data-overloaded culture, where words (or misspelled fragments of words) are largely disposable vehicles to convey information quickly, the poet's careful attention can be a subversive luxury. How often do we take the time required to ponder the subtle differences between words and reflect on why one is a better fit for this line of this poem?
Certainly, careless word choices can produce some howlers for contest judges. A misplaced word is like a nail sticking up from the road, causing a flat tire that stops the reader's journey. To continue the automotive metaphor, bad poems can result from tunnel vision: the author concentrated so hard on one dimension of the word, such as rhyme, that he didn't bother asking whether the word was also a fresh image or consistent with the poem's mood.
The many dimensions to consider include meaning, sound, syllable count and accents, degree of formality, historical period, and even the word's history of usage in other well-known poems. And then there's the question of how many words are required to make the point—elaboration and repetition versus minimalism. Writing instructors sometimes offer cheap shortcuts such as "eliminate adverbs" or "no more than one adjective per noun" (so long, wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie). A thoughtful writer, however, will allow the words in each poem to choose their own companions, whether few or many.
Rajapakse's "Words" are gregarious indeed, yet her theme appears simple. So simple, in fact, that sometimes I asked myself whether the poem displayed true movement or only repeated a single theme to excess. The short line breaks contribute to this impression of a lengthy but monotone list. But I think there's more here to reward the patient reader. Countering our tendency to skim text for the "take-home message", Rajapakse wants us to slow down, give each word the benefit of the doubt, and think about how it functions:
They are the surgeon's
Tools. They cut and chop,
Disengage and defuse.
They bisect, dissect and
Resurrect.
Poets are like collectors. We love words with texture, sparkle and edge; rare words; lively words that are not used as often as they deserve. Rajapakse is a connoisseur of active, specific verbs, as this passage shows. Do we need both "cut" and "chop"? Well, cutting is precise and calculated, chopping is rougher and perhaps aggressive. The surgeon needs both types of blades. So does the writer. Along with a range of meanings, different words facilitate different sound techniques. "Cut and chop, disengage and defuse" give us alliteration; "bisect, dissect and resurrect" add rhyme. Maybe it's best to think of this poem not as a narrative but as a variety showcase, a talent show for words.
The opening lines demonstrate another aspect of wordplay, namely mimicking the rhythm of the thing spoken about. Notice the choppy linebreaks and short sentences when the author is comparing words to raindrops, versus the longer and more regular lines in the passage beginning "Words join together in/Sentences of streams".
Not all of the unexpected linebreaks are as successful. For instance, "Passing each/Other" introduces an awkward pause that isn't justified either by the importance of the word so highlighted, or by the sound-picture she's aiming to create, since this is the section of the poem where the metaphorical water is supposed to flow smoothly.
Another rough spot occurs in "They are the canon that tell the/Pope what to do." I generally advise against ending a line with the word "the" because it is a weak word to emphasize, and the break goes against the natural cadence of speech. The author might consider breaking after "canon" instead.
Rajapakse has made the rather old-fashioned choice to begin each line with a capital letter, which calls further attention to words that have been placed in positions above their real importance. During revision, she might try switching to standard capitalization (only at the beginnings of sentences), to see whether it makes certain phrases flow more naturally.
A couple of stanza breaks could also improve the pacing. For example, try breaks after "Foliage" and "revengeful". Each new stanza would then begin with "Words", adding a visible structure to the poem. In our March 2011 Critique Corner, Tracy discussed diction families—related words that build up an extended metaphor. By setting off one diction family from another, stanza breaks could turn "Words" from a repetitive "list" poem to one that actually contains pauses for thought.
Finally, Rajapakse might consider a more universal ending. The authorial "I" felt to me like an intrusion, since the poem was not a first-person lyric up to this point. Switching "I" to "we", as suggested in our October 2011 Critique Corner, generously invites the reader into the poem. However, "salute you" is still a cliche, and the lines immediately before this one are not especially distinctive either. Perhaps she could tinker with the last four lines to stay completely within the military diction family suggested by "Words explode more potent/Than bombs. They can take away or/Legitimize a life." These are some of the strongest lines in the poem, in terms of meaning and rhythmic punch. They should either end the poem or be followed by something shorter, thematically connected, and equally powerful. Rajapakse has a lively vocabulary and a love for the raw materials of writing, which will serve her well as she polishes this poem further.
Where could a poem like "Words" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Virginia (Adult Categories)
Postmark Deadline: January 19
Prizes up to $250 for poems in over two dozen categories including humor, nature, and a variety of traditional forms
Slipstream Poets Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by January 31
British writers' group offers prizes up to 250 pounds for unpublished poems on a selected theme (2012: "Encounters")
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Words of War: Comparing Veterans’ Experiences with War Poetry
This lesson plan module from The New York Times suggests readings and writing prompts to help students reflect on how war is portrayed in literature and in veterans' first-person accounts.
Words That Didn’t Want to Be Written on Paper
By Elie Azar
I squeezed my heart so hard I wanted it to suffocate
Every beat was screaming out your name.
Get out of my mind
Set free my soul
I have loved you
You haven't at all.
Get out from my corpse, it can barely hold itself
Leave me alone
You're a new regret.
I'm out of my mind
I still want you
It's all I tried to get
Love comes in actions,
Yours I can't forget.
Your eyes I love
They have so much to tell
A story of you and me
I was hoping it held.
Words I write to you
All the world seems to get
Why are you so blind?
My breathing is getting hard
I'm writing you this now that we're apart.
Words coming out from the hands that
wanted to hold yours so hard
A heart full of soul, walking itself to the pier of death,
Oh words
Mother of chains
Be that message in a box.
Set yourself free
Praise my ache
Slaughter my pain.
Make your way to whom I can't forget
Tell him he's my heart's boss.
I'll love him until love hates
And remember him until memories forget.
Words That Rhyme
Paul Aubrian created this site featuring lists of words that rhyme with a particular word or syllable. A fun way for formal poets to expand their vocabulary.
Words Without Borders
50% of all the books in translation now published worldwide are translated from English, but only 6% are translated into English. Words Without Borders, a project of the PEN American Center and Bard College, aims to improve the balance with English translations of outstanding work from around the world. Recent themed issues include Literary Border-Crossings in Iran and Writing from North Korea. Read the issues free online, and sign up for the free email newsletter.
Wordsworth
Created by Marissa Skudlarek, Wordsworth is a free online search tool that helps writers of historical fiction use period-appropriate language. You can compare a passage from your story to a corpus of fiction from the decade you're writing about, or look up whether a specific phrase is found in fiction from that decade. Wordsworth's database of comparison texts currently features (mostly British) classics written from 1801-1923. More texts after this date will be added when their US copyright expires.
WordTips Guide to Grammar and Punctuation
WordTips features several free resources to help with writing skills, anagrams and word puzzles, and Scrabble vocabulary. This page gives an overview of grammar and punctuation rules, plus links to many other sites with more detail on these topics. Clear, simple presentation makes it a suitable resource for middle- and high-school students.
Working Writers Newsletter
Blog for writers and screenwriters features upcoming contests, calls for submissions, literary conferences and events, and the latest news from the publishing industry.
World Haiku Review
Sophisticated presentation and analysis of haiku and haiku-related genres. Newsboard posts promote events and resources for Asian verse. Send handsome ecards for free.
World Literature Today
A bimonthly journal published by the University of Oklahoma.
World War I Historical Association
This site is the portal for several related sites about the history and literature of World War I: the Great War Society, the Western Front Association USA, and the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire.
