Resources
From Category:
Fixing the One-Dimensional Protagonist
Is your main character too bland? 10 mental traps authors fall into, and exercises to help get back out.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
In November, I'm deep into writing feedback for North Street Book Prize entrants. Among other things, this means meeting a lot of empty-feeling main characters over and over again. Here are a few of the usual suspects:
A tough, masculine man who's smarter than most. He's always fair to others, even though he's the victim of a lot of unfairness.
A smart, sexy woman who's not like the other girls.
A down-to-earth, sweet, misunderstood woman who has often come out the worse in love. Her innocence is what makes her attractive to the male romantic lead.
An intelligent, somewhat jaded man who has little patience for normals, but passionate excitement for his chosen field. He has all the time in the world for special individuals who recognize the specialness of his field (and him).
A plucky boy or girl who's wise beyond their years—far wiser than all the other children and adults around them.
A man, woman, boy, or girl drawn straight from the mid-1900s world of Leave It to Beaver.
A fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction hero or heroine whose main character trait is speaking and thinking with slightly more elevated diction than regular people, and never using contractions.
While each of these types can be the basis for a strong main character, so many of the books we get in North Street stop there, at the "basis" part. They don't define the character past the fundamental traits of the type. Often, the characters are static—they tend to weather the events of the book rather than grow because of them.
It's all but impossible for a book to recover from a bland protagonist. No matter how strong the other narrative elements are, an empty main character will leech a book of all immersivity.
As tempting as it might be to blame dull main characters on bad writing skills or lack of imagination and leave it at that, I've found there are a number of preventable mental traps authors fall into that can lead to blandness. Do any of these ten examples apply to you?
1. The author is overfocused on the plot or other aspects of the storytelling
Early-career authors have a special challenge in that they're learning to juggle a range of storytelling techniques for the first time. They may tend to focus either on what's easiest for them or what stresses them out most. Either way, the overfocus on just one or two elements can lead to an imbalance in the book as a whole. Character development is one aspect that tends to get neglected.
For many authors, the point of focus is plotting. The author is concerned about telling the story in a way that makes sense and is so glad when they do, that they move on to querying or self-publishing without firming up the other storytelling elements. Other dominant priorities can include:
Communicating the moral, religious, philosophical, social ideas at the heart of the manuscript
Conveying feelings about what is happening in the book
Making the worldbuilding unique
Working out a personal conflict or trauma
If you find you've been doing this, no worries. There's still time to beef up your characterizations! Read on for more exercises that could help.
Exercise 1: Make an outline of your main character's development from beginning to end. How are they changing at each major plot point? What are they learning? What are they hating about themselves? Liking about themselves? What do they want?
Exercise 2: Get concrete. Make a list of the character's attributes, then a list of physical items that signify those attributes. Throughout your narrative, show the items to the reader at key times to demonstrate static attributes, growth, or both.
Example: A character is always late to things. A friend gives them a watch to help them be on time. Later, the watch gets destroyed or lost, but the character no longer needs it/immediately gets another one/gets a new one but isn't as successful at following it/mourns the old one for years and can't bring themselves to get another, no matter how many times they're late. How the character responds is a concrete demonstration of their character.
2. The main character is an extension of the author's own voice
In this scenario, the author identifies with the character so closely that it's like the character is an extension of the author themselves. The character's ideas, actions, and speech don't differ from the book's tone, collapsing the difference between the character's attitudes and the book's attitudes. At that point, there's a risk the character will blend in with the rest of the book instead of becoming alive to the reader.
Exercise: Give your character more independence. What do they want to keep secret from you? Where would they much rather diverge from the narrative path you've set out for them? Where don't they agree with your personal beliefs? With the message the book is trying to get across? How might all of these things influence their behavior, speech, and thought over the course of the book?
3. Successful mimicry feels like success, not practice
For many early authors, a key criteria for success is writing a manuscript that feels like "a real book". This can lead to reproducing patterns that they've seen before in plotting, prose style, and characterization. Not a bad thing! In fact, mimicking others' styles is one of the best ways to develop as writers. But in some cases, an author who achieves replication and stays there might end up with a bland main character who really does feel like "just a copy".
Exercise: Give your character a spikier profile, including, but not limited to:
More specific limitations, abilities, likes, and dislikes
Inner contradictions
Irrational and potentially ugly or unlikeable sides to their personality
Different levels of ability in one kind of task versus another
A more distinct and individualistic pattern of growth from the beginning of the narrative to the end
4. "This type of character couldn't be any other way"
Authors can sometimes get trapped in assumptions about age, gender, class, race, and more that keep them from making characters dynamic. For example, Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter observes that an author who wants to write a strong male protagonist might fail to imagine that he could have complex relationships that change him. The women in his life end up being objects to protect, rather than participants in the hero's journey.
On the flip side might be a female character who's universally loving and fair to everyone and doesn't have any moral blind spots or prejudices. Adherence to these stereotypes about gender could lead to overlooking the kinds of unexpected inner contradictions, weaknesses, and strengths that real people have, leading to flat characters.
The 2023 North Street First Prize winner in Literary Fiction, Lucy May Lennox, chose a privileged man near the top of his society as her main character in Flowers by Night. Tomonosuke is a samurai in 1825 Japan who enjoys a range of social, personal, and sexual freedoms due to his status. But rather than keep Tomonosuke static in this role, Lennox leads him on a journey that culminates in his rejection of the class assumptions he was born into.
Exercise: Journal on the factors in your character's inner life that are keeping them from living up to their potential regarding some kind of value (i.e., humility, integrity, or something else). What assumptions would they have to shed in order to embody those values more fully? What path will lead them to rethink those beliefs?
5. A stand-out character feels like a marketing risk
Commercial aspirations can make authors cautious about every aspect of their writing, including main characters. What if they go too far? What if, instead of relatable-unique, they cross over into just-plain-weird-or-unlikeable-unique? But overcaution isn't necessarily wise.
Jendi comments that sometimes, "[authors] are expecting all readers to crave an idealized protagonist as a kind of wish-fulfillment, pretending they are living the life of a super strong cop or overpoweringly sexy woman. But that's kind of dull for a more sophisticated reader, and it often reinforces stereotypical social roles."
So how to strike a balance? When considering your main character's level of distinctiveness, it might be helpful to reflect on your goals for the book. If you're aiming to self-publish, playing it safe with the character might be okay. But if you're hoping to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges, it could be important to remember that a literary professional is often a different kind of reader. We've seen many books in your genre, and many protagonists like your protagonist—and we want something new! Pushing out of your comfort zone might reward you here.
Exercise: Journal on whether you're planning to issue your book to the public directly or trying to attract the attention of a professional in the industry. If the second option is true, write down at least 10 unique things that professional might be wanting to see in a protagonist but likely don't see enough of. It might be helpful to reflect on the values of contemporary society and the audience you're ultimately trying to reach through that professional. How can you adapt those values to your character in a stand-out way?
6. The character is vivid in the author's mind, but the portrayal hasn't made it onto the page
You just know your character so well—and it feels like everyone else does, too. But some traits or growth points can fail to make it onto the page due to an author's blind spots. This is something all authors do at some point, and it's a main reason beta readers and editors exist.
Exercise: Ask your beta readers to describe the character's core traits and arc of development back to you. Don't prompt them towards any one response. Are you surprised by anything they say? When they've finished, ask them if anything about the character made them reflect on an aspect of their own inner contradictions, and if so, what.
If the answer to either of these questions is no, or you are surprised by any of the answers, you may still have more work to do in putting the fullness of the character down on paper.
7. Change feels bad
In real life, the goal for most of us is often simply to get through challenges without changing. When something bad happens, we just want things to go back to normal! In most books, though, maintaining a character's initial status from cover to cover takes away from narrative tension. The challenges of the plot are simply a storm for the character to weather, and a happy ending is one in which the character hasn't changed. Desirable for real life? Certainly. But in a novel, it can make everything feel slack.
In the 2022 North Street First Prize Literary Fiction winner, the heroine of Wendy Sibbison's Helen in Trouble is a privileged, white sixteen-year-old from an Episcopalian family in the DC suburbs in 1963. When her first relationship leads to an accidental pregnancy, her decision to get an abortion—a plot device that could have been used to symbolize the desire to "get back to normal"—instead launches a sequence of new experiences that change her assumptions on race, class, and her relationship with her own mother.
Exercise: Make an outline of your current plot points. Then "show" it to your character as they exist in your exposition, before the inciting incident. Ask them: if you were faced with this sequence of events, how would you want to grow during the course of it? How would you not want to grow? Who would you want to be on the other side? Who would you not want to be? What would you be willing to sacrifice to become that? What wouldn't you give up at any price?
Then in your next draft, make the narrative do something different to the character than what they told you, and have them react to their arc from the perspectives of the wants and fears they described to you.
8. Sequels are planned, and the author doesn't want to box themselves in
Authors can fall into the trap of thinking that their protagonist needs to stay exactly the same throughout a series. After all, that's what happens in sitcoms, isn't it? Any changes a character might have undergone during the show are cancelled out at the end so we can start fresh next time. But in the best book series, characters do grow and change. Even in genre fiction.
Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne crime series is a good example. In every book, Thorne, a moody Detective Inspector in modern London, learns a little bit more about relationships and grows as a person. Then his new knowledge is challenged in the next book, making him learn and grow even more. This makes Thorne dynamic, and meanwhile, there's still continuity in the series because of Thorne's core traits, the focus on London, and Billingham's other plot, theme, and aesthetic decisions.
One straightforward argument for character growth in every book of a series is that readers first come in contact with the series just through a single book. It's best to make every book as attention-getting as possible, and that means having the main character change by the end. Readers might turn away from the series if the protagonist doesn't pop. That goes double for agents, editors, publishers, and contest judges, who have likely seen many characters similar to yours.
Exercise: Consider your main character. List ten things that would be good for them to know or be able to do, but would be exceptionally hard for them to learn. These things could be information, viewpoints, behavioral styles, beliefs or something else.
When you have your list, compare it to the most important themes of your planned series. Are there any intersections between the hard lessons and your books' themes? Would it be possible to implement incremental growth for your character over the course of the series, in the areas where the intersections occur?
9. This is not the right character for the plot
Sometimes, the author has not asked themselves whether the character they've chosen will create opportunities for exploring the plot from a unique angle. Likewise, maybe they haven't considered whether the premise and plot they've chosen will allow them to explore the main character to their full potential. In this situation, the mismatch between the protagonist and other elements of the story mean that neither can be shown off to their best advantage.
For example, in detective novels, it's important that the detective be given a crime that only they can solve. Sherlock Holmes's power is logical reasoning based on minute pieces of evidence, and Arthur Conan Doyle only gave him crimes that could be solved with that ability. Miss Marple's talent is using social gossip to solve crimes, and Agatha Christie made sure to give her crimes that could be solved through conversations with other characters that felt social, but had an undercurrent only Marple could appreciate.
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes had been given a crime that depended on social nuance, the way Marple's do! That crime might never have been solved, and meanwhile, we wouldn't get to see Holmes's amazing powers of fact-based reasoning in action. He'd appear dull and flat, and the plot would be boring, too.
Exercise: Think about the features of your main character's premise and plot in comparision to their personality, goals, and past. Is this really the challenge that will get the most out of them? And are they the right character to show off the plot and premise to their full advantage? If not, reworking might be needed for one or both sides.
10. Readers/beta readers already like the character, so no changes needed?
"I've shown my book to readers/beta readers already, and they like the character. Why should I go further?"
This is a response I sometimes get from critique clients when I've questioned the dimensionality of their main character. My reply is usually that if they are seeking to self-publish without the intent to enter book contests, their approach is fine as-is. On the other hand, authors looking to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges might want to remember that literary professionals have read hundreds, if not thousands, of books in that genre. We've already met characters similar to, or the same, as yours, and we're keen to meet someone new.
For example, we received dozens of pandemic novels in the 2022 North Street Book Prize. Most of them were eliminated in the first round because we were tired of reading the same plot points, themes, and characters. But First Prize in Genre Fiction went to Robert Chazz Chute's Endemic that year—a pandemic novel! Why? Because his main character was someone we'd never seen in that kind of situation before: a queer, neurodivergent book editor whose reactions throughout her plot arc were complex and unexpected. That made the whole story pop.
Exercise: Pretend you are a contest judge who's read hundreds of books in your genre, with plot points, settings, themes, and characters exactly like yours. What changes could you make to the main character to make all these elements feel fresh, new, and relevant to today's readers?
Flaming Comforter and American Charybdis
FLAMING COMFORTER by Airlie Sattler Rose
French whistles sing to the coal train moving mountains, the green motorcycle gleaming under stained glass cylinders, tumbling star-like crystals peacefully rolling, comfortably rolling around on the bed on top of the motion of waves, the bare feet of the catalog's down comforter singed with fire.
It's ok, really. Don't you think the swan song is beautiful and the Lorax might find his way home some day? I look at the concrete, the molasses geography and dream of Jesus bursting through radiant clouds skipping on giant sandal feet from building to building. David Byrne's "Nothing but flowers" mark his steps until everything is flattened into life.
There is no more room. It is either going out or going in, breathing, sustenance, fire. Fire is the root, the structure, the comfort. A burn is a sharp thing that cuts. I sing to my children 10,000 songs, but they always want to hear Happy Birthday. Synchronicity when they line up together and—darn—those bare feet sticking out from under the blanket again.
I keep going, but the horizon is grey with smogulous smog and fogulous fog and everyone is coughing. This nation is so small minded. We are such children—gathering our bugs in a jar. We don't know enough to touch the other. The other's touch inflames us. It is how we grow-up. Un believable the American children. Un believable their world of princess dolls and ballrooms. What do they make of the decaying corpse of nature that fills the air with the stench of poetry? Ugh. It is inescapable.
Fleas contaminate the bed. Plink, plink—they're hard to catch, but I don't mind. I like to squish fleas and lie down in flea free luxury. America doesn't have fleas. I live here. The island paradise awaits, and the sun is setting. What kind of boat is this? Why does green flash as the fireball submerges? and did my freckle move?
Copyright 2010 by Airlie Sattler Rose
AMERICAN CHARYBDIS by Airlie Sattler Rose
I step into the lapping edge
of American culture.
My daughter looks adorable in her red ribbon pleated polyester
cheerleading costume
safely within the eyes
of the camera.
My son is safe.
He stands beyond the jetsam line
yelling "Mommy!"
afraid to come closer.
Good.
Cars snake along
ahead behind
I can't slow down
pull out of traffic.
The guy to my left
flips me off when
I swerve to get off of
here. This bridge isn't safe.
I've got kids on board.
It's rotting from the inside
out and
below the water
sucks around the piling
as it bounces and returns to
New couches smell of urethane.
If they catch fire,
they melt
into a scalding puddle
emitting cyanide.
So, I tell my kids not to play with matches.
It's the sucking sound
of the television
arguments over why we
don't buy from Wal-Mart.
The princess ball is surely happening in the heart of that castle and
the small plastic bucket
holds a blue bubble
that looks like plastic
except for muscle-less twitches
and the slow curl, uncurl
of tentacles.
The water was a draining ache when I got in,
but now it feels ok
warm even.
I pack my thrift store specials
into a charity bag
and take out my Chico's
passport card.
I ask the lady behind the counter
if any children wove until their hands bled
to make this garment, and
when she looks at me like I'm crazy
I feel I have done my duty to the children.
Because the only thing
that is real to me
is the slick
wrinkle-free fit of my pants
and the fact I feel professional
in-front of a class.
I like the way it feels
to spend money like smooth silk
spread over the rotting infrastructure.
The murdered land off-gases
beneath our feet.
It all feels normal.
Copyright 2010 by Airlie Sattler Rose
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Many authors have a set of core concerns to which they return, in one form or another, throughout their career. Mary Oliver's prolific volumes of nature poetry share a common message that life is precious and paying attention is a spiritual practice. At the other end of the mood spectrum, Stephen King is obsessed with the artist's evil double, the dark side of genius. With each variation on their theme, writers hope to come closer to finding the best form to express an idea that won't let them go.
For this month's critique, I chose Airlie Sattler Rose's poems "Flaming Comforter" and "American Charybdis" because they represent two such variations on a topic that attracts many contemporary poets: how to survive the unwholesome excesses of American commercial culture. Rose has tried out two poetic forms, the prose poem and the free-verse lyric, each of which is suited to explore different features of this dystopian landscape.
The prose poem is a hybrid form, rapidly evolving, elusive of definition. In this it resembles the mutating, confusing environment that the protagonist of "Flaming Comforter" inhabits. Surrealism is a natural tendency of the prose poem because it lacks the ruminative pauses of lineated verse, and also the logical progression of ideas we expect from prose. The quick succession of associative leaps can overwhelm the reader's analytical mind, just as this poem's narrator and her children are overwhelmed by the seductive pop-culture data stream.
One might say that the prose poem is the perfect form for our wired age. More than ever, it's up to us to connect and filter the random information that engulfs us. No one is going to shape it into a nice sonnet or an executive summary.
From the first paragraph of "Flaming Comforter", the reader is immersed in a stream of gorgeous yet disorienting images. Just as we begin to relax and enjoy it, a note of danger is introduced, "the bare feet of the catalog's down comforter singed with fire", followed by a hasty retreat into false hope: "It's okay, really. Don't you think the swan song is beautiful and the Lorax might find his way home some day?" (The Lorax is a Dr. Seuss character who warned in vain about all the trees being cut down to make consumer products.)
The narrator sounds alternately disgusted by, and tempted to share, the willed naivete of her fellow citizens. It would be a relief from the vain struggle to protect herself and her children from a corporate monoculture that threatens not only their physical ecosystem, but the biodiversity of their imagination: "I sing to my children 10,000 songs, but they always want to hear Happy Birthday."
The childhood references (Dr. Seuss, princess dolls) are part of the storyline of the harried parent, but also suggest the culture's general immaturity and egotism, an inability to grasp the implications of one's desires: "America doesn't have fleas. I live here." In other words, we can't be wrong! It can't happen to us! The stream-of-consciousness voice of the prose poem, which does away with explanatory transitions, makes it harder to differentiate between the narrator's own views and the messages she receives from outside—which is precisely the point.
Bagginess and a loss of direction are special hazards of writing a prose poem. The stream of consciousness must be edited, but it must not seem so. The pitch of the poem falters, it seems to me, in the fourth paragraph, which is a bit preachy and uses nonsense words in a way that feels out of place. The Seuss-ism "smogulous smog and fogulous fog" isn't how the sharply intelligent and wary narrator would speak when she is making a serious argument, in fact the central argument of the poem.
Before moving on to the next poem, I want to say a few words about the wonderfully multi-layered title "Flaming Comforter". As a literal, physical description, the paradox instantly draws us in. The security blanket is on fire. Something dramatic is happening here. I also thought of the Holy Spirit, one of whose traditional epithets is the Comforter. Angels are radiant and terrifying, like fire. That green flash on the horizon...is God going to intervene? Will we be happy to see Him? Maybe not.
In Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters living on either side of a narrow strait. Charybdis took the form of a whirlpool, while Scylla was shaped like a woman with wild dogs' heads coming out of her waist. The story has passed into common parlance as a metaphor for navigating with difficulty between two disastrous alternatives.
As in "Flaming Comforter", Rose uses water imagery in "American Charybdis" to represent the overpowering and chaotic force of a toxic culture. But if the prose poem was a flood, this narrative lyric is a drip-drip-drip, moving with the exaggerated slowness of paranoia, as the narrator must think and re-think the ramifications of the mundane choices that others rush through.
It seems to me that the target of this poem is false individualism, the privatization of public burdens. How interesting to use the first-person lyric, that supremely personal form, to critique an ideology that puts private choices at the center of the universe.
Try as she might, the mother cannot avoid being implicated in harmful decisions that are made at the corporate level. She has all of the responsibility, yet none of the power, to protect her family. Are your couches flammable (the flaming comforter again)? Well, just tell your kids not to play with matches! Simple as that.
Both of Rose's poems create the effect of two voices talking over one another, the ambient noise of the culture and the narrator's interior monologue which is in tension with those media messages. In "American Charybdis", the voices are more clearly delineated by the use of italics versus plain text, yet despite that, the voices bleed into one another as speakers break off mid-sentence and switch typefaces. It's like trying to read a book in a hospital waiting room where the TV is always blaring.
Perhaps because it has a clearer narrative line than the surreal "Flaming Comforter", this poem's political outrage feels a little more heavy-handed. Wal-Mart is almost too easy a target, and I would have liked to end on a more subtle and surprising image than "murdered land". Rose has no shortage of original images earlier in the poem, which makes her work stand out from the mass of other anti-corporate screeds. Some of my favorites are "the lapping edge of American culture", "money like smooth silk spread over the rotting infrastructure", and the lovely and strange sequence about the delicate sea creature in the bucket. Like the spirit of Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box, this little creature offers us relief from Rose's otherwise unbearable dystopian vision.
In style and content, I see similarities between Rose's work and the poetry of Joy Harjo, whose book A Map to the Next World also juxtaposed lyrics with prose poems on parallel themes. Other poets writing in the same vein include Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root, the husband-and-wife team behind the literary journal Cutthroat. Their annual contest will reopen in the summer.
Where could poems like "Flaming Comforter" and "American Charybdis" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Solstice Literary Contest
Entries must be received by March 23
New online journal offers prizes of $500 for poetry, $1,000 for fiction and essays; 2010 final judge for poetry is Terrance Hayes
Foley Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: March 31
Free contest from the Jesuit magazine 'America' offers $1,000 for a poem of 30 lines or less; no simultaneous submissions; past winning poems have touched on morally significant issues, but have not been "religious" poetry in the conventional sense
Bomb Magazine Biennial Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: April 1
Well-regarded literary journal offers this $500 award for unpublished poems in even-numbered years only; 2010 final judge is Susan Howe
Tiferet Writing Contest
Entries must be received by April 1
Tiferet, an ecumenical journal of spirituality and the arts, offers $500 for unpublished poems of any length; enter online
Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Highly competitive $2,000 award from Nimrod International Journal; editors seem to like poetry with a progressive political bent
These poems and critique appeared in the March 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Flamingo Rampant
Flamingo Rampant is an independent publisher of feminist, racially diverse, LGBTQ-positive picture books for children. They publish six titles a year, which must be ordered as a box set. Other forthcoming projects include resource sheets for parents and educators.
Flash Fiction Magazine
Founded in 2014, Flash Fiction Magazine posts a new short-short story online every day. Contributors whose stories are selected for the annual print anthology receive payment. There is also a monthly $100 prize for the best story. Submissions should be 300-1,000 words and be a complete story (no vignettes or prose-poems) with conflict, character development, and resolution.
Flash Fiction World
British site for writers of short-short fiction includes advice for writing in the genre, listings of markets and contests, and a peer critique forum.
FlashFiction.net
Updated daily, this site features short craft essays on writing and marketing your flash fiction.
Floating Girl (Angel of War)
Luminous poems depict the spiritual tragedy of warfare through the idealized figure of the dead child, who amazingly deigns to comfort us with her beauty even as she indicts the ways we fall short of true humanity. The title poem in this prizewinning collection from Elixir Press took first prize in the 2003 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest. The book cover and design are also first-rate.
Flood Delusion
By Rosanne Dingli
In his sleep it comes through pipes and gutters. Spurt Gush
It runs; like in a burst aqueduct bearing weight; litre per kilo
Heavier than the tractor in the barn, fleeting as hay batches donated to feed
His cows. Gout Spout
It comes; over the north fence. Changing his world, changing levels and notches
On termite-eaten four-by-fours marked for decades with dates of past floods;
Over the tombstone in the far paddock where Horrie lies, buried with his gun.
Flow Run Past night windows it eddies; swirls, smelling
Of grass and dung and crushed foliage from gums at the Five Mile
It comes. Whirling and pooling up coronet, fetlock, hock of the last horse standing
Of a team of six. Up gaskin and ergot, over forearm and knee of
A long-suffering mount raising its muzzle
In alarm at the change, the shift, the sudden downpour sheeting
From skies purple with possibilities, with relief. Stream Rush
Remnant streaks of a white sunset turned orange. Orange with silhouettes
Of mill and trees cut from carbon; singed with the soot of flames so close
They warped the gate. That gate Horrie fashioned from lengths of pipe
Welded roughly in the half-light of the shadowy barn
The day he declared he'd never seen it so parched and dry. So hopeless
He took off to the crags and never came back.
Thank crikey he cannot see it now. Rush Surge
Torrents reel against the house, peel away cladding where
Nails were never enough. Where bins and dog bowls are carried away
By current and wave; rise, bounce, wallow. Disappear
Into a creek so swollen it is the stuff of dreams. Dreams
Spurt Stream Steam Dream
Wake, wake to chalky sensation of dry tongue, dulled eyes;
To red red dust and gusts through glass louvres curling eyelashes
With latent heat. Singe Scorch
No change, no change. It's the auction brought this on; hammering head and gut
With figures, totals, sums so poor he swore. Perhaps it's not worth seeing them
Trot, clatter over a ramp onto rivals' trucks,
His cows.
But better than taking the tractor to them, bucket spannered on
With desperate fingers; shake, tremble. Dry as bone. Dry
As horns on a carcase skull going white out there. Ah—better, he knows,
Than piling them for a fire. Out there where two dams are dams no more,
Where silent creek and ghastly memory of fish kills
Assault the mind's nostrils like a plague. And sand pours through fists like water.
Water? Water? No such thing. The future Horrie foretold,
Of water politics and water war is upon them,
Searing, branding onto hide and soul this symbol of desolation.
Two waves, once the emblem of the farm
Now signifies not water, but steam; heat miraging a prospect of fear
As obvious, as blatant as that in their eyes as they climbed that ramp
His cows.
But in his dreams, it flows. Every night a flood to bait and tempt,
Tantalize and bruise, to prove
He cannot help but dream. Rush Splash
Flood Sacrifice
He opened a window,
the cupola's shutter,
sole whimsy to this massive
gopher-wood coffin of a boat.
No mast, no steering possible
to where the world
swirled to an end.
Not time for the dove launch,
the grooves on the ladder's top
rung marked day thirty of
the promised Forty.
A Sound, not rain, spliced
the drifting—
a faint rhythm, a drumbeat ap-
proaching—his own
heartbeat? De-
moralized
panic?
He stretched further,
listing into the celestial river,
beard channeling danger for the remnant below.
Mantle saturated,
rivulets coursed
shoulder to sandal.
The cadence intensified,
steaming reminder of
his only world—
Clamminess of a last chance.
Would that his mantle
billow and hover
above the syncopated waves,
above the constant whump of
outside objects, all
in stages of decay—
rudder and lower planks,
sounding boards of wasted echoes!
Between flashes of lightning
the reckoning:
an ax-shaped image descending.
A beak, a giant parrot's beak?
No, an unearthly outline of a
mouth from which the
drumroll now roared—
overpowering everything.
What to take in,
impossible to tune out,
the pitch polarized his heartbeat—
lethal synchronicity.
What life after this massacre—
were the Nephilim to colonize
the earth after all?
Would the Adamic race
now serve a new kind of creator
whose thirst for
death impaled that
for life?
What sacrifice could ever appease
such a god, a vortex not
even the elements could defy?
***
Some one would have to be offered—
not the beasts.
Replenishing the earth was their birthright;
the fulcrum of flora and fauna
beyond the children's ken.
Undiluted human blood could
distill this cesspool of death,
offer the first fertilizer.
Were the Mother, the Garden, the vineyards
never to return?
What sin had turned the God
he had willingly, fearfully worshipped to this?
*** He didn't know. ***
God had picked him,
relatively righteous.
His own propagation completed,
the couples collected,
he'd become the patriarch of orderly patience,
only to be tortured in
this eternal wet night by
guilt?
Those last desperate souls...
pleading had replaced the jeers:
Ropes!
Seasick, he
opened his palms.
Death roiled about him—
how to cajole an unknowable god?
How to invite infinity, eternity
inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,
to join baby rodent games,
bird song?
The drumming subsided,
he knew what he would do—
unfathomable conviction.
Back down the ladder,
grope in the darkness,
grip the unnamed
stone used only for
cutting the cords of mammals
and for grafting the
vine.
His feet had sunk into
velvet soil for
the last time.
Before raising the stone to his neck, he cried out,
You will teach your children how to play!
Copyright 2008 by Janice Lamberg
Critique by Jendi Reiter
In this month's critique poem, "Flood Sacrifice", Janice Lamberg dramatizes the story of Noah, with a provocative new ending that connects this episode to later Biblical stories of sacrifice, death and rebirth. In her retelling, Noah feels that he has to make the case for the preciousness of earth's creatures, in the face of God's destructive wrath. Lamberg enriches her story with tactile details that demonstrate why this world is to be cherished, such as the "velvet soil" in the closing lines.
Like Moses pleading with God after the Israelites turn to idol worship, the protagonist of "Flood Sacrifice" is willing to back up his plea for God's mercy by offering his very life in exchange. For Christians, this theme recurs most dramatically in the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. The poem's title echoes the familiar phrase "blood sacrifice", often used to refer to the atonement.
From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is convinced that this is a real person in a real place. It is so believable that the ark would have a small touch of "whimsy" to relieve the fear and boredom of a long confinement on a journey into the unknown, and that the inhabitants would mark the days like prisoners scratching grooves on a wall.
Noah is immersed in a chaos of sensations ("the constant whump of outside objects", "sounding boards of wasted echoes"), attempting to cling to his faith in a merciful God when all he can see around him is danger and disorder. These lines were especially vivid: "The cadence intensified,/steaming reminder of/his only world—/Clamminess of a last chance" and "Between flashes of lightning/the reckoning:/an ax-shaped image descending./A beak, a giant parrot's beak?"
We feel how overpowering is the evidence of his senses, which tells him of doom, meaninglessness, confusion. Yet he fights despair with other sensory memories: "How to invite infinity, eternity/inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,/to join baby rodent games,/bird song?" This reminded me of a common pattern in the Psalms where the speaker begins by lamenting his misfortunes and his feeling that God is absent, then revives his flagging faith by recollecting how God has blessed His people in the past.
"Flood Sacrifice" has many eloquent lines that made this poem stand out among critique submissions. However, there were places where the line breaks didn't match the cadence of the phrases, and interrupted the flow of the poem. I'm generally not a fan of breaking a line on weak words like "a" and "the" (e.g. "unearthly outline of a/mouth from which the/drumroll now roared"). While this does highlight the important word at the beginning of the next line, it does so at the expense of making the line break seem arbitrary (in ordinary speech, one would not pause after "a"), which suggests that the author is having trouble maintaining a poetic voice as distinct from prose. A more natural cadence would follow from putting the breaks after "mouth" (or "of") and "drumroll". Similarly, I would have made "for grafting the/vine" all one line.
By contrast, elsewhere Lamberg more effectively uses very short lines for emphasis: "this eternal wet night by/guilt" and "whose thirst for/death impaled that for/life". Prepositions have more forward momentum to carry the reader to the next line; for me, "a" and "the" feel orphaned without their nouns.
How are we to interpret Noah's final outcry, "You will teach your children how to play"? We expect this sentence to end in "pray", a sufficiently serious remedy for a sin great enough to warrant the destruction of humankind. Surely this is no time for playing around. But let's think this through... People who can no longer play are those who take themselves too seriously, wanting to seem too sophisticated to look at God's creation with childlike wonder. Or they are ashamed and self-conscious, like Adam and Eve after they acquired the forbidden knowledge of their nakedness. Noah's dream is that humanity will once again reflect back God's spontaneous, creative spirit, and remind Him—"cajole" Him—to love us.
Where could a poem like "Flood Sacrifice" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
Irish independent publisher offers prizes up to 1,000 euros and reading at West Cork literary festival; enter and pay online only
Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Prizes up to $100 plus opportunity to have your poem presented as an interpretive dance at festival in San Francisco
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Florida Writers Association
President Glenda Ivey is a great person to have on your side.
Fludd
A mysterious curate revives a dreary Catholic parish in 1950s Britain. This magical-realist novel combines the whimsy of Terry Pratchett with Anthony Trollope's affectionate satire of clerical life.
Flying Kites: A Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike
By the Stanford Graphic Novel Project. This fictionalized account of a real-life hunger strike to protest prison conditions exposes the horrors of solitary confinement and the inspiring struggles of families to stay connected to their incarcerated loved ones. The e-book is free to download for your computer or tablet.
Fogged Clarity: An Arts Review
Fogged Clarity is a Chicago-based print and online journal that has published original work by Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and Guggenheim fellows, as well as emerging writers. They accept submissions of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and music. The online edition comes out quarterly, the print edition every two years. Submit online.
Folded Word
Independent literary press with a special interest in adapting short written works into a variety of electronic media. One of their projects is Shape of a Box, the first YouTube poetry journal, which features videos by poets such as Ellaraine Lockie, Dan Nowak, and Pris Campbell.
Folding Ruler Star
Described by its author as "a value-neutral 'Paradise Lost'", this distinctive poetry collection explores the free-floating shame that arises from our simultaneous desires for connection and self-protection. Objects acquire human faces and vulnerabilities, while human faces are deconstructed into schematics ("five security zones"). The book is comprised of paired poems with the same title, enacting the imperfect mirroring of the self in intimacy with another. Runner-up for the 2006 Fence Modern Poets Prize.
Folly Bridge
This poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press charms the senses with narrative poems that sing the particular music of locales ranging from Oxford to the Kansas prairie. One can hear the splash of the oars in the languid call-and-response of "Punt House, River Cherwell", or the off-key enthusiasm of the Midwestern mother in "Roxie Margaret Mouths the Words", who gives her children the gift she was denied, the belief that everyone deserves to find their voice. Alexander creates characters that will remain in readers' hearts.
Food Timeline
Food Timeline is a free open-access archive and research service about culinary history. It is maintained by Lynne Olver, a reference librarian in New Jersey. Fiction writers can use the site to fact-check historically accurate cuisine for their book's setting and time period. Email questions are typically answered within 24 hours. Read a feature about Food Timeline on the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares.
Foothill: A Journal of Poetry
Foothill, a publication of Claremont Graduate University, accepts unpublished poetry by graduate students enrolled anywhere in the world. Submit 1-5 poems by email. CGU administers the prestigious Kingsley Tufts and Kate Tufts Awards for poetry books.
For Girls (& Others)
Two centuries of advice for girls, from Victorian health texts to Internet chat rooms, get remixed and satirized in this playful poetry collection with an underlying serious question: how to secure a space of enjoyment and dignity when one's identity is continually subject to public judgment.
For Love of a Soldier
Heartfelt collection of interviews with military families who have become activists against the Iraq war. These brave parents, spouses and relatives of Iraq war veterans must contend with their loved ones' PTSD, injuries or death, while also facing accusations of being "unpatriotic" for speaking out against what they see as a senseless waste of life. Among those interviewed are the founders of Military Families Speak Out.
For Love of a Soldier
Heartfelt collection of interviews with military families who have become activists against the Iraq war. These brave parents, spouses and relatives of Iraq war veterans must contend with their loved ones' PTSD, injuries or death, while also facing accusations of being "unpatriotic" for speaking out against what they see as a senseless waste of life. Among those interviewed are the founders of Military Families Speak Out.
For Ned Condini, Poet
By D. Elaine Calderin
You made allusions to lost Gods
over cups of NesCafe
in rural coffee shops.
Your eyes never failed to smile.
There were moments when
the wrong word
made you wince,
but the right one made your soul sing.
The rest of us, lost children,
prayer books in hand
looked to you
for the pronunciation of Elysium.
But you were one of us too.
You loved your Micia
and your Marilyn,
the truth self
evident in the gracefulness of your shrug.
You spoke the vernacular
and the vulgate even
as you thought
in glorious septet, sextet, and hexameter.
You shared our jokes with
us even when we were
the joke, a cosmic
a'muse, an aperitif in Life's banquet.
In talent and talents, coin
and culture, you stood
above us but you
never failed to stoop down and aid
us in our struggles and vainglorious dreams.
Goodbye, Ned, dos voydonya,
and yes, Ave Atque Vale.
Hail, and farewell.
We will see you in Ee-lee-see-um.
Your friend for too short a space,
Elaine
For Southern Boys Who Consider Poetry (Saeed Jones)
Pushcart-nominated poet Saeed Jones, author of the chapbook 'When the Only Light is Fire' (Sibling Rivalry Press), blogs about writing, contemporary culture, and the potentialities and limits of the "black gay poet" identity.
For Your Own Good
By Leah Horlick. This breathtaking lesbian-feminist poetry collection breaks the silence around intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships. Jewish tradition, nature spirituality, and archetypes from Tarot cards build a framework for healing. This book is valuable for its specificity about the dynamics of abusive lesbian partnerships, which may not fit our popular culture's image of domestic violence. Horlick shows how the closet and the invisibility of non-physical abuse make it difficult for these victims to name what is happening to them. The book's narrative arc is hopeful and empowering.
Forge Literary Magazine
The Forge Literary Magazine is edited by an international group of award-winning writers. They are open to English-language literary fiction and nonfiction in a diverse array of perspectives and dialects. Pieces under 3,000 words preferred, 3,500 maximum. The Forge is open to free submissions on the 1st of each month until they reach their Submittable cap of 200, after which there is a $3 entry fee. Contributors receive $100.
Forgotten Child
By Ruth Hill
Alex Gervais committed suicide at the age of 18, after 11 years in British Columbia's child welfare system. - Dirk Meissner, Canadian Press
When young you wanted everyone to know you
sirens call; sirens fall
You should've learned to swim, not run to any him
splashing, dashing
Those throwing lifelines only there to rob you
your marks for sharks
It's the target missed, kissed, then missed again
then machine-gunned
It's the wondering if you'll ever be back again
back where? nowhere
It's the falling off the edge of granite mountain
ragged, jagged
It's the prick, the stick of chemical thick needles
the wane, vein drain
The drowning out of memory with new noises
you fear they're here
Soon even you'll forget what you were born for
sour hour, no power
It's the cost of being lost without a pathway
gurney journey
You're so tired that your bier's a welcome bed
beautician mortician
Your name not even carved upon a gravestone
your birth, your life, your death: forgotten
****
Author's Note: "'Forgotten Child' was featured with a dedication to all the children in government care. Alex's aunt tried repeatedly to gain custody or adopt him. British Columbia social workers have a policy to never contact or grant rights to any next of kin of children in government care. Many of these children are wanted back by their relatives and communities, and the children don't even know that. Information is hidden from both sides. Also, the children in care 'age out' at 19, and are evicted and have their funds cut off. It is so serious that only 1% of children in care ever graduate from High School. Knowing this, the University of British Columbia recently tried to help by granting totally free university tuition to any child survivor of government foster care. Canada has a long-standing feud with First Nations about removing and not returning their children, but non-natives are fighting the same government attitudes. (Read more about this on the Canadian history blog Acres of Snow.) Every child needs a sense of belonging. Laws must be changed."
Forms of Gone
The poetic equivalent of a Chagall painting, this collection by a daughter of Holocaust survivors pays homage to the burdens and treasures of Jewish history. "I hoped to become one/ on whom nothing would be lost."
Fortuna Major Press
Based in Western Massachusetts, Fortuna Major Press is an arts collective for marginalized creatives, healers, and community organizers. They accept creative writing and art submissions for The Catalyst, their online journal, and for occasional themed anthologies. Previously published work is eligible.
Found Polaroids
The website Found Polaroids is a curated collection of over 6,000 anonymous photos from the past. Readers are invited to submit a short story (250-350 words) based on one of these images. Or use them as the seed of inspiration for your own writing projects.
Four Hidden Dangers of Writing Groups
Jane Friedman's blog features expert advice about today's publishing industry. This guest post by Jennie Nash, the chief creative officer of Author Accelerator, challenges the conventional wisdom that group feedback is always helpful for learning to write. Among other issues, she observes that peers may lack expertise, and that the fear of failure in a social setting may hold writers back from taking necessary risks.
Four Things to Decide Before You Write Your Memoir
In this article from the blog of self-publishing company BookBaby, writing coach and scientist Dr. Dawn Field describes how to structure your memoir so it reads like a compelling story. Some pointers: Focus on a span of time with a defined narrative arc, not your whole life; feel free to move back and forth in time to foreground the most important events; and have a clear take-away message that makes your personal story relevant to others. "The best memoirs are like parables. They are not only intriguing—they help others improve their lives."
Freddy Niagara Fonseca
Poet and spoken-word performer Freddy Niagara Fonseca writes of natural wonders and spiritual questions. His projects include the poetry collection The Bomb That Blew Up God and the anthology This Enduring Gift, a compilation of work by 76 poets from Fairfield, Iowa.
Free Breakfast
By Terri Kirby Erickson
The Springhill Suites free breakfast area
was filling up fast when a man carrying his
disabled young son lowered him into his
chair, the same way an expert pilot's airplane
kisses the runway when it lands. And all the
while, the man whispered into his boy's ear,
perhaps telling him about the waffle maker
that was such a hit with the children gathered
around it, or sharing the family's plans for the
day as they traveled to wherever they were
going. Whatever was said, the boy's face was
alight with some anticipated happiness. And
the father, soon joined by the mother, seemed
intent on providing it. So beautiful they all
were, it was hard to concentrate on our eggs
and buttered toast, to look away when his
parents placed their hands on the little boy's
shoulders and smiled at one another, as if
they were the luckiest people in the room.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive has a large library of royalty-free music clips (up to 15 minutes long) that are searchable by style, mood, pace, instrumentation/vocals, and more. Good for book trailers.
Freedom With Writing: The Paid Publishing Guidebook
Freedom With Writing connects freelance writers with jobs and opportunities. Sign up for their free e-newsletter to receive this PDF directory (100+ pages) of magazines and websites that pay for writing in various genres including news, entertainment, sports, travel, education, philosophy, and religion.
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
This book by a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer inspired the hit movie and TV series. The Permian Panthers' season-long battle to reach the 1988 state high school football championships becomes a microcosm of racial and economic tensions in a West Texas town where the boom-and-bust of oil wealth has left many without a clear vision for their future.
From a Secret Location
This site is the companion to A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980 (Granary Books, 1998). It is a history and digital archive of poetry zines and small press ephemera from the "mimeograph revolution" that circulated work by poets in such movements as the Black Mountain poets, Beats, New York School, Fluxus, concrete poetry, Black Arts, deep image, ethnopoetics, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
from Love Justice
By Bracha Nechama Bomze
[In this excerpt from Bomze's book-length poem Love Justice (3Ring Press, 2015), she is speaking to her partner about the latter's family history.]
My darling, who is this woman who gave you birth?
Brooklyn-born to anti-Tsarist revolutionary immigrants
her father, an escaped Bundist from 1905 failed uprising,
chosen Honor Guard at the funeral of martyred sailors from the Battleship Potemkin
(He quips: "I didn't need to see the movie—I was there!")
Your grandmother denied a job by Triangle Factory bosses
whether for her famed paddy wagon lock-ups
for sweatshop organizing, or for her klutzy sewing skills,
one week before the murderous blaze, March 25, 1911.
What if they weren't paying attention at Grandma Sheindl's interview
as she stitched her trial sample—an only slightly tangled mess?
What if they just needed a body,
a Yiddish-speaking girl's body
to seat, as was their custom, beside an Italian-speaking girl
lest two teenage neighbors, machines hammered down side-by-side,
stitch insubordinate whispers into ready-to-wear plans,
baste strong threads from a common tongue into off-the-rack revolt?
What if her notorious unionism had escaped their cold scrutiny?
What if she'd pulled off a few swift needle tricks and aced their test?
What if, uncharacteristically,
she'd managed to restrain herself,
refrained from needling the bosses with wry, sassy quips?
What if they hadn't sniffed out her apron crammed with subterfuge,
Yiddisher Arbeiter Bund leaflets stuffed in her lunchpail?
What if they hadn't been warned by a prior boss
of her paddy wagon excursions for justice?
Hundreds of young seamstresses
locked down inside towers of ragged scraps
locked down to keep out women like Sheindl
locked down to shut in women like Sheindl.
The only fire escape window, with a secret key,
by a foreman's resolute click, padlocked...
A burning cigarette flickers, hurling sparks.
Dusty mountains of fabric explode in volcanic flame.
Bosses flee the executive door, bolting stairway doors behind them
lest some seamstress child take undue advantage,
escape alive, but with a few spools of thread, a tin of buttons,
a pincushion not yet deducted from her salary
stashed inside her flaming smock.
One hundred forty-six workers, within minutes, morph into ash.
Or, wailing, screaming, the women help each other to leap,
from the high diving board of the ninth floor sill
to the empty pools of Washington Street, Greene Street
empty but for the charred bodies of girls too poor to stay in school.
Joe Zito, elevator operator, escorts his terrified sisters
into a flaming free-fall
no fire ladders can reach.
No nets can sustain the impact
of their bodies slamming the sidewalks
thud after thud after thud after thud.
Each strand of long, dark hair a wick in a blazing memorial candle.
What if what if what if what if...
What if, somehow, Triangle bosses had chosen Sheindl?
Then never could I have chosen—you.
What can be escaped?
What will always follow?
From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals
In this article from the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers Magazine, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley discusses the growing prestige of online publication and the advantages it offers for disseminating your work. Recommended journals include Blackbird, Coconut, and Drunken Boat.
From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals
In this article from the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers Magazine, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley discusses the growing prestige of online publication and the advantages it offers for disseminating your work. Recommended journals include Blackbird, Coconut, and Drunken Boat.
From the Album
That gazes at me from a bygone age
Of monochromes; the family album's place
Where my eyes, captured, fix upon that page.
A gray-beard father of some unknown brood,
Among these fellows in their country dress.
Some with their guns, a posse, hunt or feud;
One man among the others, more or less.
No taller surely, and no better dressed,
But there amidst his, animated, kin;
His hollow eyes apart from all the rest,
As if some old sin brought to mind again.
Without the names, the time or circumstance,
I know no faces from these faded prints;
And only that one halts my casual glance,
Returning stare for stare, a certain sense...
That comrades in the picture failed to find
The specter of some future he must see
That they do not; across the gulf of time
He rests his brooding gaze here, now, on me.
How can we know when we are looking out
Into a void our eyes cannot dismiss;
Despite great faith or hope, beyond all doubt,
The shutter snaps, and springs the dark abyss.
Copyright 2007 by Hank Rodgers
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "From the Album" by Hank Rodgers, pulls off three rather difficult tricks in only 24 lines. It is a well-executed formal poem whose syntax and vocabulary nonetheless sound modern; it makes a philosophical argument feel personal, concrete and immediate; and it sends a shiver down the back of my neck.
Rodgers' work (see here for another example) reminds me of the 20th-century British poet Philip Larkin. In poems such as "Church Going" and "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", he combined nostalgia for traditional forms with a self-lacerating awareness that the old faiths had become exhausted. Rodgers' "From the Album" similarly derives its energy from the conflict between the romantic, backward-looking style of the verse and the speaker's realization that the chasm of mortality is unbridgeable.
Ironically, the only message that the past can exchange with the future is that communication fails. The speaker cannot know what the unnamed man in the picture was thinking, and it seems that his comrades were also a world away from seeing what he saw, despite being nearest to him in space and time. The man's death, which was mystery and anticipation for himself, is a known fact for the speaker; this cannot help but darken and distort his imaginative reconstruction of the man's thoughts.
The photograph, any photograph, contains a paradox. Because on the surface it freezes time, it appears to be a form of immortality. Yet when we, who are still moving forward in time, look back on it, we see that change has occurred, and we remember the moments that will never come again. Reifying the past as a separate world turns it into a thing that can and will be lost, just as the dynamic life in which we are now immersed will someday be reduced to a static image.
"The shutter snaps, and springs the dark abyss." It's said that some Native American tribes believe that taking someone's picture can steal their soul. In "From the Album", being photographed may not literally kill you, but it springs the trap of self-awareness which includes the awareness of death, and that may be worse—the double-edged knowledge that the forbidden apple brought. The subject's haunted face and aura of separation from his comrades lead the speaker to imagine the possibility of a crime, "some old sin brought to mind again," that the passage of time can only bury, not redeem. In its vagueness, it stands in for all the misdeeds we will never have enough time to remedy if this life is all we have.
Rodgers' varied sentence structure is an essential feature that distinguishes well-written formal poems from those that sound sing-song and unnatural. Beginners commonly make the mistake of having the pauses fall at the end of each line or couplet. Rodgers continues sentences across line breaks ("from a bygone age/Of monochromes") and stanza breaks ("a certain sense...That comrades in the picture failed to find"). The resulting voice flows as naturally as a prose paragraph, without being too colloquial for its poetic form.
I would alter certain irregular punctuation that I found distracting: the ellipsis after "sense" in the line just quoted, and the commas around "animated" in the third verse. While slight deviations from exact meter can enhance a formal poem, I think it's unwise to do this in the first line, which needs to set the tempo in an authoritative way. "There is" is also not the strongest phrase with which to begin.
The last line of this poem hits like the crashing final chord of a minor-key symphony. The repeated S sounds create a sinister background hiss, while the plosives P, T and K convey the quick, nasty surprise of a machine that instantaneously severs life from death. It is a fitting end to a profound and disturbing journey.
Where could a poem like "From the Album" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Virginia Annual Contests
Postmark Deadline: January 19
Prizes up to $300 for unpublished poems with various themes and styles (28 categories)
Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by January 31
British poetry society offers prizes up to 600 pounds for unpublished poems by authors aged 16+; pay fees in UK currency only
W.B. Yeats Society Annual Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: February 1
$250 award for unpublished poems includes invitation to ceremony at the elegant, prestigious National Arts Club in New York City in April
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
From the Box Marked Some Are Missing: New & Selected Poems
This delightful first volume in Hobblebush Books' Granite State Poetry Series offers formal verse that is light-footed, elegant, and full of surprises. Many of Pratt's poems concern his work as an apple-grower in New Hampshire, describing the farming life with humor, wistfulness, and reverence. There are also poems of family life, European travel, meditations on aging and the mystery that lies beyond.
From the Fishouse
Audio archive of emerging poets features text and recordings of work by dozens of contemporary writers as diverse as Matthea Harvey, Leslie McGrath, Tyehimba Jess, and Xochiquetzal Candelaria.
Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry & Aesthetics
Edited by prizewinning poets Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich, aims at furthering communication between poets, critics and philosophers from different cultures and literary traditions.
Full Moon
By Adam Phillips
My friend's weird son
speaks only in terms
of werewolves
One day I pointed
out to him Ronnie, your werewolves
do nothing
differently because of their lycanthropy; in your stories they
Study the city's bus schedule,
shop for groceries after work on Thursday
in order to keep
the whole weekend clear; your werewolves
Are really worried about the economy and their
digestive health; doesn't that
kind of
Defeat the whole purpose, shouldn't
they be
Ripping out hearts, running
through the marsh?
Aren't werewolves just a metaphor
for man's frustrated virility,
for the scarcely repressed
Dark side
of human nature?
Each of us wants
the thing we are not,
said the boy,
Blinking the moonlight out of his eyes.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
This outstanding memoir, written as a graphic novel, intertwines the author's coming of age as a lesbian with her memories of her brilliant, enigmatic, repressed father, who died in an accident that she suspects was suicide. Drawing parallels to sources as diverse as Joyce, Colette, Proust, classical mythology, and The Wind in the Willows, she shows how their shared love of literature substituted for the intimacy they could never express in more personal terms. Bechdel is the author of the long-running "Dykes to Watch Out For" comic strip.
Fun With Words
Anagrams, palindromes, rhyming slang, nym words, oxymorons, pangrams, Tom Swifties and all the many other oddities of the English language. Don't miss the stirring tale of Beeping Sleauty.
Funds for Writers
Grants, contests and markets for writers. Resource-packed online newsletters include TOTAL FundsforWriters, FFW Small Markets, and WritingKid (young writers). Editor C. Hope Clark also offers ebooks with specialized marketing resources for poets, fiction writers and more.
Furious Flower Poetry Center
The nation's first academic center for Black poetry, Furious Flower was established on the James Madison University campus to serve creative writers, literary and cultural scholars, and poetry lovers everywhere. They are committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters, as well as in the whole range of educational curricula. Named after an image in a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, the academic center originated in the acclaimed 1994 Furious Flower Poetry Conference, the first major conference on African American poetry since the 1970s. See their website for educational materials, conferences, classes, and poetry prizes.
G.K. Chesterton’s Works on the Web
This fan site maintained by British computer scientist Martin Ward offers the full texts of books and articles by the prolific turn-of-the-century poet, fiction writer, journalist and popular theologian Gilbert K. Chesterton, best known today for his "Father Brown" mystery stories.
