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Book Review Directory
Launched in 2015, the Book Review Directory is a growing list of bloggers who review books in various fiction and nonfiction genres. The site has three goals: to match authors with reviewers, to raise the profile of book review blogs, and to help readers find new books in their areas of interest.
Book Series Recaps
Book Series Recaps helps fans catch up on details they have forgotten, in preparation for reading the next book in a series. The site also features spoiler-free book reviews, fan art, discussions, and book quotes. Authors they follow include Leigh Bardugo, Holly Black, Roshani Chokshi, Sarah J. Maas, and Toni Adeyemi. Focus is on YA and fantasy.
Book That Poet
State-by-state directory of poets available for readings aims to match them with local libraries, bookstores and historical societies looking for speakers. Most listings are in Wisconsin at present, but site owner hopes to expand its reach. Poets pay $12 per year to be listed.
Book Traces
Book Traces is a project of the University of Virginia. They scan and digitize interesting margin jottings and other objects left inside old books. As libraries de-accession copies of books that are not rare or widely read, pieces of history are being lost. The curators say, "Thousands of old library books bear fascinating traces of the past. Readers wrote in their books, and left pictures, letters, flowers, locks of hair, and other things between their pages. We need your help identifying them in the stacks of academic libraries. Together we can find out more about what books were and how they were used by their original owners, while also proving the value of maintaining rich print collections in our libraries."
Book Trailer Design Advice from Zara West
In this blog post, romantic suspense author Zara West (Beneath the Skin) describes the basic elements of a successful book trailer and how to create them using public-domain music and images.
BookBaby
BookBaby offers self-published authors a full range of services from editing and design to printing, distribution, and marketing. BookBaby is a co-sponsor of our North Street Book Prize—that's how much we trust them!
BookBaby’s Guide to Book Pricing for Authors
BookBaby is a leading vendor of self-publishing and related services. In this 2023 article on their website, writer and editor Philip Kinsher breaks down the costs of publishing and marketing your book, and the factors to consider when setting the book's price in various formats.
BookBub’s Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing
Self-publishing service BookBub has compiled this list of articles from their BookBub Partners blog, covering every aspect of the marketing campaign for your self-published or small press book. Topics include book and cover design, pricing, advertising, creating an online platform, author success stories, and how to track the results of your marketing efforts.
BookFinder
Launched in 1997, BookFinder is a website that lets you compare prices (including shipping costs) from 100,000 booksellers worldwide. A great source for used books, textbooks, or locating a particular edition of the book you want.
BookFunnel
BookFunnel is a reasonably priced subscription service for authors. It handles the technical aspects of distributing e-book review copies in multiple e-reader formats.
Bookish & Writer Events: Sarah Nicolas Newsletter
Sarah Nicolas is the author of the YA novels Keeping Her Secret and Dragons Are People, Too. Her weekly newsletter on Substack features listings of upcoming author readings, book fairs, and writing workshops.
Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and Language of Harm
PEN America is an organization that defends freedom of speech for writers worldwide. This thorough report from 2023 studies the negative impact of social media outrage on writers' freedom to address controversial topics. Although the critics in question are often motivated by progressive ideals such as anti-racism, the report argues, our political discourse suffers when publishers over-react by canceling book contracts or revising books without the author's permission. In many of the examples cited, the book's problems were capable of other interpretations, or the author's public behavior was too quickly conflated with the value of the book itself.
BookLender
Like Netflix for books, BookLender (formerly Booksfree) allows customers to rent up to 15 books at a time, with no late fees, due dates, or shipping costs. Members can choose from more than 250,000 paperback titles or 36,000 audiobook titles.
Bookmarks & Inkblots
Bookmarks & Inkblots is a book review column started by poet Konstantin Rega, an editor of Virginia Living magazine. This feature highlights Southern authors of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
BookRix
BookRix is an online community where authors of poetry and prose can upload their work and receive feedback. Membership is free. The site is based in Germany but has an English-language section. BookRix offers several free contests throughout the year, with prizes up to $1,000; winners are decided by members' votes.
BookRix
BookRix is an online community where authors of poetry and prose can upload their work and receive feedback. Membership is free. The site is based in Germany but has an English-language section. BookRix offers several free contests throughout the year, with prizes up to $1,000; winners are decided by members' votes.
Books About Transgender Issues for Teens
Parents, educators, and teenagers will benefit from the New York Public Library's list of recommended YA books about gender identity, last updated in 2015. These fiction and nonfiction books can help schools create a more welcoming and diverse environment.
Bookshop
Established in 2020 by Andy Hunter, the publisher of Catapult Books, as an alternative to Amazon, Bookshop is an online book vendor that directs a portion of its proceeds to support independent bookstores.
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press curates this blog of poetry news and reviews, focusing on the Boston area.
Boston Comment
Hard-hitting essays on the state of contemporary poetry, by poet and critic Joan Houlihan. Among her targets: incoherent experimental poetry, free verse that sounds like prose, and famous names who are past their prime. She is also founding director of the Concord Poetry Center which offers conferences and workshops in Massachusetts.
Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge
Poetry slam open mike and featured readers can be enjoyed every Wednesday night at this club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Both/And: Trans & GNC Writers Tell Their Own Stories
Launched in 2022, this limited series in the online journal Electric Literature features essays by transgender and gender-nonconforming writers of color. Readers are encouraged to donate to help pay marginalized authors. Electric Lit's Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris, the first Black trans woman to helm a major magazine, says: "In a decade when the transgender community has gained unprecedented visibility in both pop culture and socio-political contexts, the publishing industry lags behind... Both/And will elevate the stories of those at the forefront of the fight for racial and transgender equality, while employing EL’s significant literary platform to uplift transgressive writing."
Brain Pickings
This free, donation-supported website curated by Maria Popova collects links to the week's best articles on literature and culture. Sign up for their email newsletter to be notified when new pieces are posted.
Break Every String
By Joshua Michael Stewart. This poetic autobiography is a blues song for the dead-end economy of Midwestern towns and the family wreckage they harbor. His characters crackle with energy that could find its outlet in verses or fists, parenting your own children or stealing someone else's, a guitar or a bottle. As the one who escaped, Stewart plays through all the octaves of emotion, from gratitude to judgmental pride, to survivor guilt, to wary compassion: "of loving/the lost with raucous praise, of letting the gone go."
Breakfast’s Lust
A breakfast spread was
laid out on the table.
Coming down the stairs
in a purple robe flowing
light around my knees I
saw him happily reading
the paper. Out of the
corner of his eye he
spotted me urging me
into his arms.
I went to those arms facing
him while sitting down on
legs that cradled us as
we slept.
A brush of morning kisses
painted me the smell of
minted paste invaded waving
the air of the sweet
breakfast behind us.
What a wonderful way to
start the day. He hugged
me closer as I slid my hands
down the length of his
torso like curtains ending
a play, I slid my hands
down to the zipper of his
pants letting the palm of
my hand kiss the growing
firm members.
I slid my hands in a slow
action as it swelled and
pumped please don't stop.
Cold sweat beads glittered
against members flesh, but
the kisses never stopped just
hungered for each other a
little more.
His hands pulled on the
robe as he trying to resist
the finish.
From his kisses shivered
a moan slithered between our
tongues as he rubbed the
backs of my legs wanting
to place that swell of
pleasure inside my own
tightness so we may enjoy
the swell together. With
the other palm held the
rested slick backed hair
against my neck breathing
more moans and hisses to bed
smelling flesh that gleamed
in the face of pulled back
curtains of the kitchen.
A little nip on flesh,
an arch of cramped bone
clashing together to
relax, an eased swallow
of a climax producing a
formed whisper of
"I love you." Blessed
our morning while I put
member back in his pants
and held him as if the
world was going to end.
Copyright 2011 by Amber Davis
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Sex and lyric poetry fit together like...your favorite body parts. Erotic verses may be written to seduce, to boast of conquests, to memorialize a moment that was as fleeting as it was all-consuming, or even to satirize an opponent for his undignified slavery to lust. From Catullus, to the medieval troubadours and the bawdy Elizabethans, to contemporary poets like e.e. cummings and Sharon Olds, poets have found myriad ways to examine those acts that lay bare the emotions as well as the body.
But how much detail, or rather which details, should the poem expose? These choices can spell the difference between a satisfying erotic poem and one that instead provokes disgust or ridicule. Where sex writing strikes a false note, it's often because the language is overly clinical, vulgar, or pompous and flowery—or some buzz-killing melange of all three. It's no wonder that so much comedy revolves around sexual innuendo. The sexual moment requires you to cease stage-managing the self and just inhabit it, and sincerity always risks crossing over into foolishness. Without the possibility of a fall, the tightrope act wouldn't be exciting. The good erotic poem knows how to walk the line.
I selected this month's poem, "Breakfast's Lust" by Amber Davis of Troy, NY, because it's an example of an erotic lyric that has potential but could also be improved through editing. Davis takes us step by step through this episode of seduction, lingering on each sensation to intrigue and hopefully arouse the reader. She doesn't indulge in the florid metaphors for sexual organs that were once the hallmark of romance novels. Yet the coupling is suffused with a romantic glow because of the comfortable domestic setting and the slow build-up of physical intimacy between the partners.
Timing is everything here, so it's important to reread your erotic poem with a critical eye for unnecessary asides and repetitive words that dissipate the tension. The style of "Breakfast's Lust" is relatively unsophisticated, a first-person "and then...and then...and then..." straightforward description of events, without the associative leaps that a more advanced writer would employ to connect sex to some other aspect of the human condition—for instance, something funny, melancholy, or frightening about our inner nature that breaks through our defenses and disguises when passion takes over. By comparison, the motivation of Davis' poem is simply to share the pleasure of the scene. If that is your goal, it's all the more important to be concise.
Although Davis' focus is narrow in this way, the poem remains interesting because not all of the delights it presents are actually sexual. The rich color and silky flow of the bathrobe, the appetizing aroma of breakfast, the sunlight through the kitchen window, and the clean scent of toothpaste are equally to be savored. Where metaphors make an appearance, they are surprising and original, not used in a coy prudish way to pretend we aren't talking about sex, but rather to make the setting as vivid as the encounter within it. Some of my favorites were "a brush of morning kisses/painted me" and "I slid my hands/down the length of his/torso like curtains ending/a play". These images flirt with concealment even as the characters begin to bare all. Such texture or counterpoint can make the difference between literary erotica and the dull mechanical pumping of body parts in pornography.
"Show, don't tell" is a cliche because it's true. Love poems seem particularly subject to the temptation to over-declare. We certainly wouldn't want to edit our partners if they said "I love you" a thousand times! But the reader is won over by craftsmanship, not sincerity. Here, the tender relationship between the partners is perfectly encapsulated in the lines "I went to those arms facing/him while sitting down on/legs that cradled us as/we slept." On the other hand, the sentence "What a wonderful way to start the day" is unnecessary and bland.
Allow me to suggest some other phrases that could be cut without hurting the meaning and rhythm of the poem: "I slid my hands/down to the zipper of his/pants" (we already know where she's headed!); the next "I slid my hands " before "in a slow action" (repetitive); and possibly the lines "but/the kisses never stopped just/hungered for each other a/little more" (it's nice that they're not forgetting the romance in the lust, but there are more kisses coming soon, and "hungered for each other" is a bit melodramatic). The section could be rewritten thus:
He hugged
me closer as I slid my hands
down the length of his
torso like curtains ending
a play, letting the palm of
my hand kiss the growing
firm member
in a slow
action as it swelled and
pumped please don't stop.
Additional edits would clean up grammatical errors such as the plural "members" for "member", and omitted articles and pronouns ("while I put his/member back in his pants"). A stanza break following "resist/the finish" would provide nice breathing space and make the stanza lengths more uniform. Davis might also want to think about changing the poem title. "Breakfast's Lust" sounds rather like a bodice-ripper and doesn't add anything. Titles can be a convenient place to provide background information without intruding into the temporal flow of the poem. Would the author like to tell us more about the relationship between the lovers? Is this a special day for them? How long have they been together? Have they made up from a fight? Are they married to each other, or to other people? The mystery is hers to reveal.
Where could a poem like "Breakfast's Lust" be submitted? It was challenging for me to find markets for this poem, because its subject matter might be too racy for the amateur magazines and local poetry societies that I typically suggest for emerging writers, but its style is too simple for the more prestigious journals. The following contests may be of interest:
Oscar Wilde Award
Postmark Deadline: June 27
Gival Press offers $100 and web publication for poems by authors aged 18+ that "best relate gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered life"; past winners have included erotic poems
Aquillrelle Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by August 31
Belgian writers' forum offers publication of a book-length manuscript for the top three winners of their free contest for unpublished poems
Suggestions for Further Reading:
Charlie Bondhus, How the Boy Might See It
Mary Carroll-Hackett, The Real Politics of Lipstick
Jill Alexander Essbaum, Harlot
Lisa Glatt, Monsters and Other Lovers
The New Penguin Book of Love Poetry
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Bright Sky, Cole Night
By Anne Kaylor
~For Charles Urrey, 1954–2014
His battered hands are bruised yet
never beaten. Kneading with need,
he molds honey-laced love, even as
his broken body grows too fragile
to touch.
Yet nothing—not even hours
preparing the gear nor single-digit
degrees—surpasses his desire to stargaze
tonight as the clouds part to reveal
constellations.
By motorized chair, his fingers navigate
him in this rural setting where clarity of sky
matches a crystal mind. He begs to be lifted,
to gaze at his dark heaven, but his frame
betrays him.
His cognizance is caged by tongue;
sagging, his view clings to earth.
But inside, his own unforgettable jazz
blares a timbre acclaiming life and he sheds
death's tainting touch
for one more day, his Stetson
firmly in place as we break bread,
heedless of the odds.
Brilliant Flash Fiction
Based in Ireland, the online journal Brilliant Flash Fiction is published quarterly and accepts submissions of unpublished short stories under 1,000 words. See website for rules for their quarterly free contests with prizes up to 50 euros. No simultaneous submissions.
British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism, 1793-1815
By Betty T. Bennett. Essay briefly surveys the literature of war in Britain during a crucial period in the development of the modern nation-state. Includes extensive bibliography. This essay is the introduction to a larger anthology not available online.
Brittle Paper: An African Literary Experience
Launched in 2010, Brittle Paper aims to promote and discuss the best in contemporary African literature. They publish original fiction and poetry, literary news and commentary, book reviews, and craft articles. They also compile a list of notable African books published each year. Among the useful resources on this site, we recommend Kenyan author and Cornell University professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi's article "Writing Your Other: A Concise Guide for White Writers".
Broadsided
Each month, Broadsided selects a poem or flash prose piece from their submissions and invites an artist to create an original "broadside", or poster, featuring that poem. A letter-sized PDF file of the collaboration is posted on their site to be freely downloaded and distributed. You can sign up as a "Vector" and agree to post at least two copies of each month's poems in your local coffee shop, library, bus station, public notice board, grocery store, or other public gathering place. Entries should be submitted by email; send 3-5 poems, maximum 30 lines each, or one prose piece, maximum 300 words, in the body of your message to broadsided@gmail.com. Include a short bio. Previously published work accepted. Past contributors have included Mary Jo Bang, Ilya Kaminsky, G.C. Waldrep, Brian Teare, and Robert Wrigley.
Broken Pencil
Broken Pencil reviews the best zines, books, websites, videos, and artworks from the underground and reprints the best articles from the alternative press. They also publish original fiction and interviews.
Broken Sleep Books
Broken Sleep Books is a small literary press in Wales that publishes poetry and nonfiction chapbooks ("pamphlets" in UK parlance) and full-length poetry collections. See website for their submission windows for each genre. Editors say, "We particularly wish to encourage more working-class writers, LGBTQ+, and BAME writers to submit. Politically we are left-leaning." Authors in their catalog include Angela Cleland, Pádraig ó Tuama, and U.G. Világos.
Brotherly Love and Stamens and Pistils
BROTHERLY LOVE by Ellaraine Lockie
I knew cancer was coursing
through his body
in stage four deadly drama
The doctor having prepared us
for the final act
in his appointed position
A combination of God
and aggressive casting director
Allocating antidotal roles to archangels
with names like Leucovarin and Kytrel
Typecast as side effect soldiers
Performing all-too-temporary truces
I knew he'd be a memorable hero
Benchmark behaved like a hundred year oak
Even though no malignant knots
ever before blighted our family tree
He sits rooted by the peace
of each pain-free day
Suspended in the soft deception
of a leather lounge chair
While bombs of chemotherapeutic
proportion drop from plastic bags
Staging his private world war
Poisonous parts played out
in provisional victories
I didn't know I was an actress
Another stretch he's pulled
in my elastic existence
Like the tugs that lured
a little sister from farmwife fate
The push into college, classical music, safe sex
All the quality-of-life debts
scripted across my cinematic mindset
As I sit watching the IV
rerun its surreal suspense
And I pretend in Oscar-quality portrayal
that oak trees are immortal
and make-believe can recast reality
Copyright 2010 by Ellaraine Lockie
STAMENS AND PISTILS by Margaret Sherman
After I was fixed
people sent me mixed baskets of
carnations, daisies, roses
lilies to acknowledge my sterility.
Surrounded by these living arrangements
I fell into a deep sleep wondering
where a useless uterus
and a pair of damaged
ovaries would end up
while my fat orange tomcat
ate all the perfect flowers.
Only a few petals were left
in memoriam.
Copyright 2010 by Margaret Sherman
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
Illness, our own and those of the people we love, often compels poets to the page. We struggle to give voice to the mute and expression to the inchoate. Just the act of this striving is moving. We all have bodies; there is no topic more universal. Yet poems about illness can be tricky, skirting mawkish sentiment. One way to successfully avoid this pitfall is to use metaphor. In this month's Critique Corner, we will look at how two poets have attempted this. They are Ellaraine Lockie of Sunnyvale, California, with her poem "Brotherly Love"; and Margaret Sherman of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, with "Stamens and Pistils".
To begin, let's compare their basic structures. "Brotherly Love" consists of three stanzas, the first two of which begin with the words "I knew" and the last with "I didn't know." With this, Lockie ensures a turn in her poem (see August's Critique Corner) by providing a simple but durable structure upon which to hang her rumination. Sherman, on the other hand, does not ruminate, but rather organizes a narrative around a cohering symbol: flowers sent by well-wishers.
This is not to say that Lockie doesn't use metaphor. In fact, she brachiates from one to the next. In the first stanza she seizes upon the word "drama" to generate "final act", "casting director", "roles", "typecast", and "performing".
The "hero" of the first line of the second stanza can then be read simultaneously as both war hero (suggested by "soldiers" in stanza one, line eleven) and dramatic hero. In either case, the notion is temporarily set aside as lines two through five exploit instead the possibilities of "tree" as their dominant metaphor. Line nine, though, harkens back to "hero" in the first line of the stanza, still referring concurrently to both "soldier" ("bombs", "war") and to its original reference to theatrics ("parts", "played").
The conflation is somewhat confusing, a condition given voice in the strategically placed following line "I didn't know". With this line Lockie returns to the metaphor of drama, possibly implying "costume" with the "elastic" trope over the next three lines. Finally, at the end of this stanza—which by the framework of the poem is pre-designed as its conclusion—the metaphor of "tree" is re-sounded within the very same sentence as the more sustained metaphor of "drama" (now morphed specifically to mean "cinema").
Ultimately the question must be: are all these various strands of concept effective? Do they, by their very abundance, their compounding and intermingling, evoke a sense of overwhelm for the reader that might reflect the competing and complex internal processes of their narrator?
The key to understanding this poem, to my mind, is actually a single, tiny, word. It begins line nine of the final stanza. That's right: "As".
With this sudden shift to the present tense, I find myself with a clear picture of the poet with her notebook open. Lockie is an extremely experienced, well-published, and frequently-awarded artist; she knows how to generate a poem. She knows, for example, the time-tested dependability of the "I knew...I knew...I didn't know" framework as a way to initiate material. She knows the value of the specific and exotic and so gives us the names of drugs. We witness her following out avenues of ideas as she milks the possibilities of diction within the theater/cinema family.
The same generative quality occurs in the occasional examples of strained syntax ("Benchmark behaved", or the full sentence about the doctor in stanza one). Likewise for the multiple occurrences of consonance as words suggest other words to her. ("Poisonous parts played out/ in provisional" is the most extensive example of this.) Her considerable experience tells her not to overdirect, but to let the ideas come. And come and come. There is no shortage of ideas in this piece; the poet has a kit of tools and knows how to call upon them.
Now, at this stage of her career, Lockie is incapable of writing a bad poem, even as a first draft, and this poem has enjoyed multiple publications (first in the journal The Hypertexts and then in the poet's chapbook, Finishing Lines). Nevertheless, here at the Critique Corner, all poems are read as drafts. So, responding as such, I would say that, in this piece, my attention is constantly called to the poetics as I am further and further distanced from the feelings motivating it. In the end I know nothing of the brother nor anything memorable of the narrator's experience with him. I understand that the narrator senses an unreality in this experience—that she is being called upon to play-act—and I believe that to be a powerful notion upon which to base a poem, but rather than delve into how uneasily this requirement sits, we are instead asked to ponder trees.
One way the author might drill to the truth of this piece might be to recast it entirely in the present tense. By imaginatively revisiting the moment, she might access the kind of self-referential details that would let the reader truly inhabit the space with her, as opposed to watching her from a distance.
The operative word there is "details" because, by providing the reader too much undetailed information, a poet can give away some of its power. Let's take a look at Sherman's "Stamens and Pistils" with this idea in mind. In her first line she says she was "fixed". This is an ironic choice that not only tells the reader what the poem is about but also how the poet feels about it (more like broken). However, in the sixty words of this poem, we are given this information twice more: "my sterility", and "useless uterus/damaged ovaries". With each iteration, its potency is drained.
Look to the details of the poem to see what might convey the information without explicitly reporting or instructing the reader how to feel. We have a list of flowers, the aforementioned internal organs, a cat, some petals. Notice the adjectives associated with these in the main stanza: "mixed baskets"; "living arrangements" contrasted against "deep sleep" (with its implication of death); the pairing of "useless" and "damaged"; three adjectives for the cat: "fat", "orange", and "male"; and finally "perfect flowers". Within these well-selected phrases lies the poem. Notice, for example, that the flowers have no color. Only the tomcat—which most specifically refers to an un-neutered animal, as well as being slang for seeking sexual adventure—has one.
It is easy to strike "to acknowledge my sterility". The poem loses nothing since the same information is stated with more explicit detail within the next five lines. The question is, should the first line—with its all-too-rare use of effective irony—go as well? Alas, I would say yes. Beginning the poem without it would leave open the question as to why the poet is receiving flowers and return the impact to the phrases about the uterus and ovaries, where it belongs. It would allow the reader to discover as opposed to being told. Whenever possible, make room for readers to participate in putting your narrative together and they will become engaged with the piece.
The same concept can be applied to the final two lines. It is easy to identify "in memoriam" as being too telling, but what of the petals? Allowed to imagine them for myself, I conjure something that looks a bit like tears, or that browns. Even simply read as fallen petals, they make a lovely image. Just cutting the final line would leave this strong poem with a weak verb; that won't do. So, the poet will need to work with it to find something—perhaps, as I've suggested, the word "falling"—that will give the piece cadence, but retain what is powerful about it: its coherence around a simple but potent symbol, its reliance upon the logic of metaphor to speak to readers.
Because, even as we write through our grief, even as we work to release the silent tongues of our bodies, it is the reader we must write for. Whether the choice is to be more brave and share more deeply, or more subtle, to leave room for the reader to take part, the solutions become more readily apparent when we put the reader first.
Where could poems like "Brotherly Love" and "Stamens and Pistils" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Lucidity Poetry Journal Clarity Awards
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Free contest with prizes up to $100 for poems in any form dealing with people and interpersonal relationships; authors must be 18+
Beullah Rose Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: January 1
Literary journal Smartish Pace offers $200 for unpublished poems by women; enter by mail or online
Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by November 30
Norfolk-based writers' group offers prizes up to 1,000 pounds for unpublished poems; online entries accepted
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
National League of American Pen Women chapter offers prizes up to $100 for poetry, stories, prose poems, personal essays, humor, and literature for young adults; open to both men and women; previously published works accepted
Writer's Digest Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: December 15
National writers' magazine offers prizes up to $500 for unpublished poems, 32 lines maximum; online entries accepted; no simultaneous submissions
These poems and critique appeared in the October 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Bruno Was From Brazil
"I'm from Oakland and I'm not a statistic. Yet. But New Year's Eve I left the Bank of America at 2:30 pm; the news that night flashed on my bank. It was the scene of the last homicide of the year, at 3:20 pm.—, which meant I dodged a bullet by 45 minutes. Witnesses say two Latino males and two African-American males had a parking lot altercation. The Latino driver used an ethnic slur and one of the black guys pulled out a gun and shot him. The two blacks drove off, witnesses say, and Bruno who was from Brazil and delivered pizza, for god's sake, died on the spot...now you know the last word in the guidebook for new arrivals is nigger. Ask Camille Cosby. And I know poor, poor Bruno heard the word a thousand times delivering those pizzas. 'Some nigguz on 90th Ave. want mushroom/salami/chicken...only nigguz want combos like that...you my nigga...when you get money from nigguz, check for counterfeit...nigguz, Bruno, watch out...' Poor Bruno, the word probably came off his tongue like spit. And he didn't know you could call a black person a nigger and get utter scorn and contempt. Like down South where they just ignored it and kept their inner dignity. But Bruno, you don't call a real nigga a nigga. That's like a death wish. Are you crazy? Suicidal? Certain words are like gods. They command respect. Nigger is a god. I'm so sorry for Bruno. He was a sacrificial lamb—that's what you have to do with gods. You have to appease them, give them a lil' somepin somepin. And I know Richard Pryor went to Africa after he made $50 million off the word and came back with religion. Stopped using the word and used crack instead. But he didn't stop folks from using it. He just made the word an academic issue: shall we nigger; shall we not nigger? Forget Dick Gregory's autobiography called Nigger. No, a Harvard law professor writes a book called Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Nigger is a God, nigger made millions, now it has a career. And the country's leading black intellectual, a guy named Skippy, finds one of the first novels written by a black, titled, what else, Our Nig. So I'm proposing a constitutional amendment on the use of the word. There are simply days when it is dangerous to use the word. And one of those days is Friday night. And another of those days is Saturday night. Ok? On MLK's birthday, abstain. Christmas, it goes without saying. The season is the reason. And proceed with caution on the Fourth of July. Fireworks, drinking and the use of the word by the wrong people don't mix."
Copyright 2007 by Judy Juanita
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's unusual and provocative piece, "Bruno Was From Brazil" by Judy Juanita, crosses the boundaries of genre (appropriately for a poem about explosive cross-cultural interaction). An example of the fluid form known as the prose poem, which has become increasingly popular in literary journals, this piece would also work well as a slam poetry performance. Neither form can rely on line breaks to signify that the text is "poetic", forcing the author to pay closer attention to aural patterns and timing in order to give the piece the musical momentum and intensity of a poem. Writing prose poems, or reading one's work aloud, are both useful tools for free-verse poets to discover whether they are allowing line breaks to substitute for true poetic speech.
What exactly is a prose poem? This overview from the Academy of American Poets website notes: "While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme." Juanita's poem fits this description, with its staccato sentences, its wide-ranging associative leaps between topics and varieties of diction (news reports, conversation, academese and slang), and especially its mesmerizing repetition of That Word.
"Bruno Was From Brazil" initially leans toward the prosy side of the equation, beginning in the voice of a hard-boiled detective story: "I'm from Oakland and I'm not a statistic. Yet." Halfway through, somewhere around the line "Certain words are like gods," the piece takes off as a manic riff on racially charged language and whether its sting can ever be dulled by context. Without line breaks (brakes?), the words spill out furiously, defying decorum and step-by-step logic, so that when we finally reach the author's satirical "solution" of a constitutional amendment, it's obvious that we'll never be able to draw neat lines separating safe from dangerous uses of the word. In this way, the author's chosen form enhances the message and emotional impact of her story.
The hybrid poetic form liberates Juanita to include sentences that would feel too wordy and technical in a traditional lyric poem (particularly the section from "Forget Dick Gregory's autobiography" to "Our Nig"). Other sentences, by contrast, display more of the aphoristic, non-literal qualities of poetry: "now you know the last word in the guidebook for new arrivals is nigger"; "Stopped using the word and used crack instead"; and the passage "Certain words are like gods. They command respect. Nigger is a god. I'm so sorry for Bruno. He was a sacrificial lamb—that's what you have to do with gods. You have to appease them, give them a lil' somepin somepin."
The repetition of the word "god" parallels the subsequent variations on "nigger", reinforcing the connection between these concepts. Gods are lethally unpredictable, a power that we try and fail to contain with words and rituals, and yet a power we can't resist invoking to make sense of our lives. This poem suggests that racial and cultural identity, and perhaps even language itself, are essential aspects of being human, but also have the potential to dehumanize. Where there are borders, there will be wars.
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The latter half of the poem seems to deride academic efforts to domesticate the word, implicitly questioning whether this is just another way of encouraging children to play with live ammunition. The line between safe and unsafe contexts is easy to cross unawares; wouldn't it be better to suppress the word entirely? On the other hand, how can we think and speak critically about real and persistent racial divisions if we allow racist language to silence us? Neither speech nor silence can perfectly preserve the illusion of a vantage point outside the moral failures of our culture. By choosing to use the word—to rub our noses in it, in fact—but ending with a self-mocking non-solution, Juanita makes us see that cosmetic changes to language only conceal racism, not eliminate it.
Adding to the moral ambiguity, "nigger" is a word traditionally used by whites to oppress blacks, but the homicide victim in this poem is a Latino immigrant who used the word in ignorance, and his assailants are African-American. Who is truly innocent here? The shooters, or men in their social world, might have felt they were resisting oppression by putting a positive spin on a word that the white majority used against them (the way some gays have reclaimed "queer"), but clearly the word still hurts them, no matter how tough they try to become by using it on each other. It's like keeping a loaded gun in your house: all it takes is one curious child to turn responsible self-defense into irresponsible risk.
Some interesting postmodern themes that arise in this piece: "Bruno Was From Brazil" is a poem about language that points to its own inadequacy, yet cannot be silent. It's also about the disjunction between signifier and signified. Repeat a word often enough and it starts to sound strange, almost nonsensical. Abstracted from its interpersonal context, the word as word reveals itself to be empty, arbitrary. Yet this can lull us into a false sense of security, because of course the interpersonal context is always there, and the word in the real world always has a history and an explosive charge. The author, the speaker, is not in complete control of how the word will be received. Is it "just a word"? Yes—and no.
Where could a poem like "Bruno Was From Brazil" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fineline Competition
Postmark Deadline: May 1
$1,000 award for prose poems and flash fiction, 500 words maximum, from Mid-American Review
Boston Review Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: June 1
Competitive award of $1,500 from well-known literary review that publishes experimental poetry and progressive political articles
1/2 K Prose-Poem/Short-Short Prize
Postmark Deadline: August 15
$1,000 award for prose poems and flash fiction (500 words maximum) from Indiana Review, a prestigious journal
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Buck Studies
By Douglas Kearney. Read these energetic, challenging poems once quickly for their frantic virtuosity of sound and rhythm, and again slowly to tease out the allusions in each compressed line. "Buck" was a racial slur in post-Civil War America for a black man who was sexually powerful and defiant of white authority. By juxtaposing it with "Studies", Kearney mocks the pseudoscientific white gaze, and also demands a place for black subjectivity in the canon of high culture. This second theme emerges most strongly in the two poem cycles that bracket the collection. The first reworks the Labors of Hercules through the legend of 19th-century African-American pimp Stagger Lee (the subject of numerous murder ballads by artists as varied as Woody Guthrie, Duke Ellington, and The Clash). The second cycle replaces Jesus with Br'er Rabbit in the Stations of the Cross. As great satires do, these mash-ups make us ask serious questions: Who gets to go down in history as a hero instead of a thug? Would an oppressed people be better off worshipping a trickster escape artist, rather than a martyr?
Bud
By J.C. Todd
What an exact moment,
beyond stop watch, clock, daily planner.
Nothing meted out. Pure season,
expression of something immense
that you barely glimpse.
Coiled tight like spirochetes, hundreds
squinched in a head, how many heads
on a bush? On a bank of them? Fragrance
when sun hits not green but not blossom.
Less cloud, longer light, a shift of wind
to south—imagine—detonation
as though bombs have been ticking below notice,
ticking in a rhythm so full of silence
who could count it out?
Each noon buds loosen, scent is more intense,
perfume you long for, whiff of an awakening
so piercing it will disappear as you open to it.
The brain can't hold such beauty
and keep the body running.
Just before it blows into bloom
you could die of it—lilac.
Cut, it will fade. You'll say it's lost
its scent, but that's been given
to you, and to stay alive,
you've had to forget.
Le dur désire de durer,
how harsh the desire to endure.
Originally published in Big Bridge, Issue #16
Buddhist Poetry Review
"Our vision encompasses the full spectrum of Buddhism, and we welcome submissions from authors who write from any perspective." Submissions are accepted via their online form. See website for special themes for each issue.
Budgeting for Bibliophiles
This article on the CouponChief website links to their favorite sites for free or discounted books and audio books.
Bulb Culture Collective
Bulb Culture Collective is open year-round to submissions of poetry that was previously published by a now-defunct journal or website, or that was published at least two years ago (regardless of the journal's current status). They will share a new poem on their website twice a week and promote it on social media. Please include credit to the original publisher, and any relevant content warnings about sexual violence or domestic abuse.
Butterfly Story Collective Podcast
A project of the University of California-Davis, the Butterfly Story Collective is a podcast where immigrants share their stories about their experiences living in the United States. Featured speakers include civil rights attorney Hassan Shibly and actor Bambadjan Bamba from the film "Black Panther".
Button Poetry
Founded by National Poetry Slam champion Sam Cook, Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of distribution, promotion and fundraising for performance poetry. Button produces and distributes poetry media, including: video from local and national events, chapbooks, collaborative audio recordings, scholarship and criticism, and many other products.
by George
In this enchanting, multifaceted novel, a shy boy begins to uncover the secrets of his family of vaudeville performers when he finds a ventriloquist's dummy belonging to his late grandfather. (In keeping with his family's off-kilter understanding of reality, the boy was named after the dummy.) A shift from magical realism to psychological realism halfway through the book may at first disappoint fans of the former genre, but ultimately fits perfectly with the human George's choice to break the family pattern of sacrificing truth to illusion.
Cabinet
Like the 17th-century cabinet of curiosities to which its name alludes, Cabinet is as interested in the margins of culture as its center. Articles have included the history of failure in American culture; recipes for cooking imaginary animals; the fear of eating (and being eaten by) octopus; philosopher Slavoj Zizek's analysis of capitalism's current fascination with Buddhism; and the invention and artistic uses of the balloon. Cabinet is a print journal but sample articles are available online. Sold-out issues can also be downloaded from their website as a PDF (free for subscribers).
Café Crazy
By Francine Witte. In this tough-minded, bluesy poetry collection, the narrator cuts her no-account alcoholic ex-husband down to size—and curbs her lingering desire for him—by contextualizing their relationship within nature's larger creative and destructive patterns, from forest fires to mass extinctions. "Charley" is just another predator, and not an apex one, at that. Witte's portmanteau words give the poems a distinctive voice and an improvisational quality: bees are "sticky with flowersex", and humans "go along futurestupid", like any other species unable to predict the meteor strike with their number on it.
Caitlin Kunkel’s List of Humor and Satire Websites
Caitlin Kunkel is a writer, editor, and teacher of humor and satire. In this Medium post from 2020, she shares links to reputable humor-writing sites that accept submissions and pitches, with brief guidelines and examples of the work that they publish.
Call Out of Exile
Come home!
I have not cast you off, my vagabond.
It is I who have borne you from your birth,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
Why then must I seek you among foreign flocks,
and through caravans of imposters cry out your name?
Have you forgotten your dear Shepherd, my lamb,
or my Name, that you do not call upon Me?
Look up! Look up, my poor one! Where have you fallen?
I come wounded to bind you up, thirsty to refresh you.
Come in!
Don't be a stranger to your Father's feast. It I who host you,
I who crush the wheat and press the oil. It is I who mix my wines.
How long will you linger by half, little sister?
Here, I send out your brother with meat for your mind.
Open and taste! See the passage I make for you,
the ground I've leveled by the weight of my waiting?
Arise and come! Put on again your everyday jewels that blaze
with the light from my Hearth, and come with Me to the kitchen.
I have an apron there with your name on it.
Come here!
Have I held my peace too long, restrained Myself past the measure
of your freedom? You cup your will like a brazier for Me.
No more will your memories shame you, my little one,
nor fear alarm, nor doubt cry out, "Where is your God?".
One look at you, and the fury of my love is stirred up against them.
I make them tinder to kindle your sparkle,
and a sweet-smelling smoke to console you.
I am a Man of War for you, an Army of Love;
and I am the wakeful Governor of your peace.
Come closer!
How have I not noticed that gleam in your eye?
What numb thirst is sealed up in you against all taking-by-surprise,
that I may come and slake it? What delights concealed there
that I might relish, should you return the favor and I be taken too?
Stay with Me a moment in the parlor. Don't dart away
to peek at Me over your books and prayers.
Promises I whispered long ago into your secret ear
are kept here in this ivory box under the hidden stair
for just such a time as this. Open it!
the whole fruit from tender buds
poetry in foreign tongues
dancing lessons
banquet graces
the end from the beginning
Promises I made to you in a fit of love when you were young
now come to term and seek the light.
Will you join your poor Partner in the garden now
that He may keep his word to you? Let's dance!
Every move a metaphor—restrained, oblique—a gloved touch I keep in custody
till you awake and I can take you to the waters at the edge of light.
There forget the limits of desire when my glove has touched your craving
and you awake past day and into night.
Hold still, my love, hold still when you awake past day and into night.
Copyright 2007 by Karen Winterburn
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, Karen Winterburn's "Call Out of Exile", combines the form of a modern personal free-verse lyric with the tone and subject matter of a more ancient genre. Suitable for use in a contemporary church liturgy, the poem resembles Biblical writings such as the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, where God directly and intimately addresses human beings in poetry that is part prophetic summons, part tender seduction.
Like its scriptural antecedents, "Call Out of Exile" imagines God speaking in ways that are sometimes uncomfortably sensual ("forget the limits of desire when my glove has touched your craving") or colloquial ("I have an apron there with your name on it"). This mixing of high and low, I believe, is meant to challenge the reader's impulse to keep God on a pedestal, at a distance. As envisioned by this poem, God seeks relationship with us to such a radical extent that God is willing to come down to our level, risking impurity and foolishness. In so doing, the God of this poem prompts us to revalue those mundane experiences that we considered "unspiritual".
Winterburn plays it a little too safe for the first stanza of the poem, using standard imagery that we associate with Bible scenes. The poem picks up momentum halfway through the second stanza. Although the feast imagery is still rather standard for devotional poetry, a note of mystery and excitement creeps in with the phrase "I send out your brother with meat for your mind". Who is the brother? It could be Jesus (as the Shepherd language in stanza one suggests), a prophet, or a human companion who helps the reader on her spiritual journey. The brother/sister trope is also reminiscent of the Song of Songs, evoking an innocent intimacy. The alliteration in this stanza ("meat for your mind"; "weight of my waiting") enhances the poem's lyricism.
The poem's central theme is captured in the paradoxical line "Put on again your everyday jewels that blaze". We are royalty, in disguise even from ourselves. In exile, we have forgotten that our daily lives are clothed with God's ennobling love. We need to be reminded that the exile is only self-imposed: "I have not cast you off, my vagabond."
I'm still of two minds about the "apron" line. I understand in theory what it's supposed to be doing, namely bringing God down to a level of closeness and familiarity that will make the exiled listener feel comforted, not afraid. However, as the only modern image in the poem, it feels jarring, maybe too cutesy or flippant. I can't help picturing those novelty chefs' aprons with jokes on them, which doesn't feel right for a seduction scene. The stanza would work at least as well if it ended at "kitchen".
Winterburn's imagery really catches fire in the next two stanzas. The thrilling line "You cup your will like a brazier for Me" sounds like it should be in the Bible, perhaps in one of the prophets' visions. The texture of the lines "I make them tinder to kindle your sparkle,/and a sweet-smelling smoke to console you" perfectly fits their content, the first line light and crackling, the second soothing and low-toned. Winterburn lets the rhythms of her speech flow uninhibited at last, as in the line "What numb thirst is sealed up in you against all taking-by-surprise,/that I may come and slake it?" This passionate way of stringing words together reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins. "Every move a metaphor—restrained, oblique—a gloved touch I keep in custody". There is so much to enjoy in the sound and meaning of that one line.
The poem becomes quite erotic in the final stanza, yet always in keeping with the modesty and kindness of the Lover, who graciously restrains his great power so as to leave the hearer free to respond. This too is in keeping with Biblical passages where God is compared to weak or disadvantaged characters (a lamb, a cuckolded husband, a hen brooding over her chicks). God's willingness to assume such vulnerability demonstrates the depth of divine love.
This poem's genuine emotion and sensual directness made it meaningful to me, but I would have liked to see Winterburn take more risks with language and imagery, as the lines I singled out above show she is capable of doing. Sticking to familiar concepts may limit the poem's readership to people already inclined to accept its message. To have a wider impact, one needs to get past the skeptical reader's presumption that he has "seen it all" and knows what the author is going to say. This applies not only to religious poetry but to any ground that has been well-trodden by poets over the centuries, such as love poetry and nature poetry.
Where could a poem like "Call Out of Exile" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Bliss Carman Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Canadian journal Prairie Fire offers C$1,250 for unpublished poems
Wild Violet Writing Contests
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Online quarterly journal offers $100 apiece for poetry and short fiction
Writer's Digest Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: December 20
National writers' magazine offers prizes up to $500 and good exposure for emerging writers; no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the November 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Calling a Wolf a Wolf
By Kaveh Akbar. This fierce, dazzling debut poetry collection describes the difficult path out of alcoholism and into the disciplined joy of being present in the moment. Simultaneously self-lacerating and grandiose, the speaker leaps from one aphoristic observation to another, through the ecstasies of Islamic mysticism, his devouring relationships with lovers both male and female, and self-annihilation as the ultimate extreme of pleasure. Yet he discovers that sobriety has its own nearly unbearable intensity, the rupture of his isolation by genuine connection with others.
Calls for Submissions (Poetry, Fiction, Art) Facebook Group
This Facebook group features calls for creative writing and art submissions. Closed group, members accepted by request.
Camp Damascus
By Chuck Tingle. An autistic lesbian teen discovers the horrific secrets of the ex-gay camp that dominates her small Montana community. Forget about demons—the scariest part of this tale is the smiley-face gaslighting that our heroine endures from her parents and the celebrity pastor of the town's prosperity-gospel church. An excellent fast-paced novel with humor and poetic justice served hot.
Can Poetry Matter? an essay by Dana Gioia
Poetry is imprisoned in the cozy cells of academia and specialty publishers. Most people are oblivious to it. "The traditional machinery of transmission - the reliable reviewing, honest criticism, and selective anthologies - has broken down." It's time to unleash great poems again on the public. Here's how. Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly.
