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Give ‘Em Enough Rope
By Des Mannay
Out of the mouths of babes
into the minds of morons
Why should her words of praise
be taken as a come on
Why can't she dress just to please herself
rather than desperate you?
You're an empty wasted shell
who should be locked up in a zoo
Why can't you admire the form
without trying to fuck the contents?
Don't think your bravado storm
will hide your impotence
Why should she lock herself away
just to save your stupid pride?
Only free to roam at day
till the pillow where she cried
How come your behaviour is allowed
whilst she becomes the victim
Let her voice rise and shout aloud
of the pain you are inflicting
Put yourself in the woman's place
and turn around and then
Find yourself staring face to face
at yourself in the lion's den.
Then senile old judge
will say that she deserves it
With nods and winks and then a nudge
and justice once again perverted
If you think kitchen, child and home
is woman's only station
Then you'll sink just like a stone
and set the stage for your own castration
GLA Blog “Dear Lucky Agent” Contests
Writer's Digest hosts this recurring free contest at Guide to Literary Agents (GLA) blog. Each contest is focused on a different genre, e.g. contemporary middle-grade fiction. Entrants should submit the first 150-200 words of their manuscript via email. No entry fee, but to be eligible for consideration, you must mention the contest twice through any social media. Contest is judged by literary agents who are seeking new authors to represent. Winners receive critique and subscription to WritersMarket.com.
Global City Press
An offshoot of Global City Review, this NYC-based press aims to be a "literary metropolis of the imagination". Their first title, publishing in early 2020, is The Escapist by David Puretz, which follows a young anti-hero on a quest for his missing father while grappling with his sexuality, substance addiction, and childhood traumas. Multicultural Review calls Global City "a rich treasury of contemporary social thought and artistic expressions, defending a humanistic view of the individual in a complex society."
Global City Review
Global City Press and Review seek to embody New York City's diversity and dynamism, with an international reach. "Edited and produced by writers, it celebrates the difficulties and possibilities of the 'global city' and other constructions of community...while honoring the subversiveness and originality of ordinary lives." Past contributors include Marilyn French, Robin Blair, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Cornelius Eady.
Glossary of Poetic Terms
From abcedarian to zeugma, this is one of the best poetry glossaries we've seen. Hosted by Robert Shubinski, it provides definitions, pronunciation guides, examples and cross-references. Browse through poetry's wide array of techniques, styles and themes. A great place to get ideas.
Glossary Terms at the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation provides this glossary of poetic terms, with links to examples by outstanding contemporary and classic poets.
God Is an Englishman
Richly detailed, lively historical novel set in Victorian England, starring a visionary entrepreneur who founds a haulage firm. The careers of Adam Swann's nine children are a microcosm of British society at the turn of the century, while his wife Henrietta combines femininity and independence in a way that many modern women might envy. One of the best fictional portraits I've seen of a strong marriage and how it changes over time. This is the first book in a trilogy; the other books are Theirs Was the Kingdom and Give Us This Day.
Godot Goes to Montana
By Ellaraine Lockie
My farmer father waited to see
if crops would hail out or dry up
If coyotes would tunnel the chicken coops
If the price of grain could keep
me out of used clothes
If the bank would waive foreclosure
for another year
After hay baling and breech delivering
from sunrise to body's fall
He slept in front of the evening news
Too worn out to watch the world squirm
Too weary to hear warnings from ghost brothers
who were slain by beef, bacon and stress
Too spent to move into the next day
when he couldn't afford to forget
how Brew Wilcox lost his left arm to an auger
How the mayor's son suffocated in a silo
Too responsible to remember the bleak option
my grandfather chose for the rope
hanging over the barn rafters
Never too lonely because every farmer
had a neighbor to bullshit with
To share an early a.m. pot of Folger's
To eat fresh sourdough doughnuts
To chew the fat of their existence
Reprinted from Where the Meadowlark Sings (Encircle Publications, forthcoming 2015); first published in SLAB as the winner of the Elizabeth R. Curry Poetry Contest
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
In this hilarious fantasy novel, an angel and a devil try to stave off the apocalypse because they enjoy life on earth too much. Along the way, the authors slip in some profound insights about the necessary balance between the light and the dark sides of human nature.
Good River Review
A publication of Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing in Louisville, KY, Good River Review publishes short creative writing in a variety of genres: poetry, fiction, essays, 10-minute stage plays or short film scripts, immersive journalism pieces, and book reviews. A notable feature of this magazine is that they publish writing for children and young adults in these genres alongside work for adults. See website for length limits in each category.
Good Show Sir
This humorous blog based in the UK showcases examples of terrible book cover design for fantasy and sci-fi novels. Come for the laughs, stay for the ideas about what to avoid when designing your own indie book cover.
Goodreports.net
News and commentary on book publishing by the uninhibited Alex Good.
Google Ads
Pay by the click (simple) or target a cost per action (such as a sale). If you plan to spend thousands of dollars per year on search engine advertising, consider hiring a consultant to help you avoid wasting money.
Google Fonts Knowledge
Google Fonts is a library of 1,357 free licensed font families and APIs for convenient use via CSS and Android. The Knowledge page adds advice about different font styles and how to choose the one that works best for your project. Learn readability tips regarding line height, kerning, contrast, and more.
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips is a computer-based resource that uses satellite and street view data from Google Maps to visualize the travel routes of characters in hundreds of great books for readers of all ages. Parents and educators can use Google Lit Trips to enliven lessons about geography, history, and foreign cultures.
Gotham City
reborn vultures create mischief in Birmingham
with abandoned parachutes and excessive tattoos
selling insurance against bad weather and bad luck
homeless scarecrows in corduroy search the trash
for empty lipsticks and worn memories
foghorns signal mildew in the night
police battle inner demons on weekends
in a thick soup of deserted hotel,
forsaken church, and abandoned lighthouse
autumn's vague prophesy delivers emptiness
at the doorstep of her beloved
weary evangelists call for repentance
and foghorns whisper secret passwords and jade status
torpedoes head for the opera house in full formation
angels get wings trimmed in barbershop quartets
blind whales flounder through treacherous currents
of underground lakes and river
even as salmon swim the canals on Mars
the morning is dank and hung-over
as smoke from junkyard tugboats
and foghorns speak to passing ships in their own language
Monday's desolate sun sets on abandoned coffins
jazz musicians stand beside corrupt snake charmers
worthless confessions spill out of rusted horns
cold lanterns illuminate nervous encounters in a subway tunnel
gypsies cry obscure and foreign spells
and foghorns play ambient hymns for zombie weddings
pinstripe chain gang swings the hammer in bad neighborhoods
accident-prone clowns sing the blues
from a disappointed balcony
to an aimless congregation of shaggy mutts and
old propellers
gargoyles patrol the sky looking for food
and foghorns signal a call to prayer at the appointed hour
green limousines roam the street in frozen weather
detectives inspect strawberry rhinestones in a warehouse elevator
cheerleaders way past their prime assemble in vacant lots
foghorns breathe clouds of gloom in the cathedral
sigh cranberry sadness over the city
sing velvet songs of lost love
...and foghorns mourn for creeping and forgotten dreams
Copyright 2011 by Charles Kasler
Critique by Laura Cherry
A learned friend of mine told me that there's a fine line between utopia and dystopia. "Why is that?" I asked, and he told me it's because of the rigors of plot. Because a fictional utopia needs drama, the author has to play with the limits of its perfection by introducing threats or dangers or a sinister underside to the idyll. Similarly, for the sake of complexity and richness, depictions of dystopia can and should include some elements of lightness: for example, flashbacks to a happier, pre-Armageddon time, or a contrast between the language and what it describes. Charles Kasler's "Gotham City" showcases an urban landscape in ruins, but cast in such vivid, nearly ecstatic language that readers may find themselves happily caught up in this dark vision.
Kasler's poem gives us Gotham with no Batman in sight; this city is a maelstrom of wreckage and corruption. Images of hope in the form of music are undermined or destroyed ("torpedoes head for the opera house in full formation"). In the first line, Gotham is also referred to as Birmingham, which we can perhaps read as Birmingham, Alabama, with its history of race-related violence, but which could also refer to industrialized Birmingham, England. In this setting, insurance salesmen mingle with "homeless scarecrows in corduroy", evangelists, gypsies, jazz musicians with their "worthless confessions", and chain gangs. The darkened streets are punctuated with fretful bursts of light, color, wealth: "cold lanterns illuminate nervous encounters in a subway tunnel", "detectives inspect strawberry rhinestones in a warehouse elevator".
Stylistically, "Gotham City" plays out primarily in long lines liberated of punctuation and capitalization—a style associated with such notables as e.e. cummings and W.S Merwin—which has the effect of intensifying the scene's confusion and blurring of boundaries. To be honest, this is not normally a stylistic choice I favor, but here I find it suited to the poem's cascade of images. The poem is an accretive spill of sensual details, many of them weird and evocative. The result is not horrific but mesmerizing; we don't know what we'll see next, but we may find ourselves peering around corners for the next spectacle.
Music is important to this poem, and nowhere more than in the repeated foghorns, with their connotations of loneliness, melancholy, and, of course, eerie fog. The foghorns function almost as characters here, and their range of actions ("signal mildew in the night", "play ambient hymns for zombie weddings") adds a delightful series of surprises to end each stanza.
But back to our theme of dystopia. I see "Gotham City" as balanced between the poles of a celebrated poetic utopia and an equally famous dystopia: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land". Written in very different periods and styles, these poems (two of my favorites, I admit) still influence how we write about imagined paradises and brutalized landscapes today. In "Gotham City" I hear the echo of Coleridge's ecstatic language and fantastical scenery:
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Stylistically and thematically, Kasler's poem leans more heavily to Eliot's fragmented collage and disaffected characters:
The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
Having explored what territory Kasler's poem covers, it remains to say a few words about what it leaves uncovered. What does this dystopia say to us? It offers some excellent description and exciting images, which we are free to interpret as we will. Is this the present, the past, or the future? How did the city get here or where is it going? Are we looking at the collapse of the environment, the government, the social contract? Some hint of further meaning would give the poem greater resonance.
Alternatively, if the language and images are meant to be the entire experience, each one should be polished to an elegantly shiny finish. As it stands, the poem contains some slack, less fresh phrases: ("empty lipsticks and worn memories", "weary evangelists call for repentance", and the final line, "...and foghorns mourn for creeping and forgotten dreams"). These, particularly the ending, should be re-imagined to give the reader an uninterrupted Technicolor journey through the questionable streets of Gotham.
Where might a poem like "Gotham City" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Great Canadian Literary Hunt
Postmark Deadline: July 31
This Magazine, a Canadian magazine of politics and culture, offers prizes of C$750 apiece for poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction narratives by Canadian citizens or residents who are new and emerging writers
Aesthetica Magazine's Annual Creative Writing Competition
Entries must be received by August 31
British journal of arts and literature gives prizes of 1000 pounds for poetry and short fiction; enter online
Reuben Rose Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 10
Voices Israel Group of Poets in Israel gives prizes up to $750, plus anthology publication for many runners-up; enter online
This poem and critique appeared in the July 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Gourmet at Seventy Nine
By Robert Joe Stout
Leftovers... but by design. How else can one
who lives alone have home-cooked beans,
grilled chicken, soup? That or crap dumped out
of cans, tasteless noodles, burrito grease.
I like to cook... he tells himself (there being
no one else to tell) clamoring kids,
heaped plates of pasta, applauding guests
ghosting through the vacant room.
One bean meal more then salad, fruit...
Diverted by old notebook notes, memories
of baseball games, he props his feet on table top,
invites himself to share a rich dessert.
Grammarist
Have you ever used the word "flaunt" when you meant "flout"? Unsure about the difference between "affect" and "effect"? This cleanly laid out reference site provides an alphabetical list of commonly confused word pairs, with explanations of appropriate usage. Other features include a list of idioms with their meaning and history, and basic rules of grammar and spelling.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a free online program that will suggest grammatical and style edits for your writing. You can add it as a plug-in to your Firefox browser, and use it on common email and social media platforms (Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, MS Outlook, etc.) as well as documents. There is also a paid premium version.
Graphic Policy
Graphic Policy is an online journal featuring news and reviews for comics fans, with an emphasis on mainstream properties. The site includes TV episode recaps, movie reviews, creator interviews, podcasts, and reviews of comics in various genres (manga, indie, webcomics, action/superhero, and more).
Great Place Books
Founded by novelists Alex Higley and Emily Adrian and literary agent Monika Woods, Great Place Books seeks to publish "rigorous, weird, beautiful books" of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations. Authors in their catalog include Emma Catherine Perry, Julia Hannafin, and Pilar Fraile (translated by Lizzie Davis). They accept un-agented submissions.
Greek Fire
By Stuart Jay Silverman
Family failings. It is too much, or almost,
to have to put up with, with it, or them,
the archetype of them being Odysseus,
almost before the Greeks were Greeks,
before the Romans took over, and the rest,
to whom it was all Greek, anyway.
He was on his way, a touch impatient,
you might imagine, delays a tiresome
consequence of travel, sea monsters,
lotus eaters, sirens tempting as a two-day pass,
the seas a constant torment what with the sea god
spanking the monkey underwater, and what a monkey!
the size of Polyphemus puffed with pain
that time, oh you remember, the stake
sharpened and rolled in the blistering embers
until the point grew hard as bronze
and he sent it sizzling into the socket
of that fish eye, his shoulder heaving,
his hands rolling it like a spit,
the giant twisting up onto his knees
his throat torn open with the howl.
He saw by the fire a gobbet of gore
shake free to sputter like sheep fat
thrown to the gods, a sacrifice.
But what of she who waited, her
propensity to wait her only failing,
playing the woman part dangerously.
How she put the suitors off, Homer
makes much of, the wife who preserves
her honor and his, a match in cunning
to him, the fabric of her deception,
but what of it? They were a bunch of louts,
looking for an easy lay, her juices
untapped for a double decade, if rumor
had it right, the house their object,
of course, though she wasn't bad for
her age, worth a hump now and then.
In the night, as they say, and so on.
Meanwhile, there was the scar by which he
proved his being, and the bow unbent/
unstrung by the rabble infesting the hall,
its gut he hooked easily to the notch,
and the faithful hound that, despite
twenty years of wear and tear—fleas,
burs tangling his fur like wool torn
from the loom, the comings and goings
at all hours, the beggarly rags worn by the
stranger—still knew him and thumped
his tail in recognition, good doggy—
not to mention, but I must, the braggart
who'd whined and begged table scraps
and thought the stranger an easy mark,
but learned his error the hard way.
What of the neighbors? what did they
make of the usual shouts from the house
in Ithaka rising into screams, then cut
off, the dying whimper bubbling away?
They all fade into background, and
the poets fade who made the man over,
Dante sending him to hell, Tennyson
grafting him an English tongue and a
worldview worthy of an English lord,
Walcott and Kazantzakis breaking the
mold, new-fashioning the crafty hero,
all fade, and the fadings fade, and the
light rises like smoke from the pages
again and again and again, weaving
the mantle by which we lend to our
stumbling feet the semblance of gods.
Ground Zero
a sunroof sky
full of kanji and silk
wisteria dancing across the wind
my daughter laughing in that so saturated face
as friend and i sit down to a morning game
i swore i would take advantage of his saki rejuvenation
i seem to remember
the taste of my wife's lips
so sweet a touch of harmony
quickly replaced by the happy wet kiss of my child
giggling so to almost annoy
this fierce competition
my new pocket watch stating
with such fine western precision
you have time to champion
it's just but 8:13
i seem to remember
wind chimes singing
to the laughter
and graceful chatter
that rose to cacophony
as i anticipate movement
then look out and vision
with ancient eyes
the whirl and rash
of humanity
i seem to remember
the distant sound of wings
floating across my sunroof sky
of eyes squinting to see through the roof
and my child suddenly turning white
the brightest white
the hottest white
the darkest white
i shall never see
i can't seem
to remember
where I left my soul
i think it's where my shadow
left a halo
burned into the ground
Copyright 2006 by Shaun Hull
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Ground Zero" by Shaun Hull, offers a devastating first-person account of the atomic bombing of Japan during World War II. Sixty-one years ago this month, the US Army Air Forces dropped nuclear warheads on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first, and hopefully the last, time that nuclear weapons were deployed in warfare.
I held Hull's poem for this issue of the newsletter because the phrase "Ground Zero" also reminded me of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It is hard to believe that it will be five years this coming September. And how many other sad anniversaries will pass this month, and every month, remembered only by the families around the world who have lost loved ones in war? Hull's poem artfully combines these particular and universal concerns, adding enough historical detail to bring the characters to life, but appealing to primal emotions that cross cultural boundaries.
The opening lines immediately convey a mood of elegance and freedom, a lightness that also makes this idyllic world fragile and vulnerable. Sunroof glass can shatter, silk is easily torn. This is a ceremonial and civilized culture, as symbolized by the chess game, the kanji (Chinese characters used in the Japanese language), and the pocket watch's "western precision". There's a subtle irony in the speaker's trust in Western (maybe even American) technology, which will soon incinerate everything he holds dear. Unknown to him, the watch is counting down the seconds until their death.
I admire how this poem is so dramatic yet so understated. Hull doesn't need to use the words "atomic bomb", "World War II", "Hiroshima", or any other explanatory terms that are already overdetermined by the readers' familiarity with these events. The saki, kanji and other evocative physical clues create the Japanese atmosphere, while the blinding light and burnt shadows are recognizable as the effects of an atomic blast. This is how a bombing victim would actually experience it, without the interpretive overlay. The war is the farthest thing from the narrator's mind when the bomb hits, which makes the destruction of his world more poignant.
Hull chose to write this poem in a modern stream-of-consciousness style without punctuation or capital letters, such as e.e. cummings and William Carlos Williams often used. The advantages of this style are its accessibility and spontaneity; the disadvantage is that it can create a monotone effect. "Ground Zero" largely avoids this trap by varying the length and rhythm of the lines, and by repeating "I seem to remember" in order to give the poem a formal structure.
A few lines could use some editing for clarity or grammar. "It's just but 8:13" sounded awkward to me. In ordinary speech, a person would use one or the other of those modifiers, not both. "It's still but 8:13" or "only just" or "still just" would all sound more natural. In the second stanza, the lines "then look out and vision/with ancient eyes" did not make grammatical sense. "Vision" is being used here as a verb, which is unusual enough that it breaks the flow of the poem. Perhaps Hull was thinking of "envision." Since "look out" sufficiently describes the action, the lines could be rewritten as "then look out with ancient eyes/at the whirl and rash/of humanity".
Finally, poets should be careful not to repeat their own good lines within the same poem. The phrase "sunroof sky" was powerful the first time, but when re-used just two stanzas later, it felt belabored, especially since "roof" occurs yet again in the next line. Try a different modifier for the second "sky", something about its color perhaps, or an image from an earlier line (silken sky, wisteria sky, chiming sky). The image of the floating wings is lovely, and heartbreaking when we realize that these are the wings of enemy planes, not graceful birds. Don't distract from it with recycled lines that remind us that a poem is artifice, not real life.
Hull uses paradox to excellent effect in the last part of the poem: "the darkest white/I shall never see". This inversion shows us how dramatically the narrator's world has turned upside down in an instant. From vision to blindness; from light that illuminates to light that, unbelievably, brings darkness. "i seem to remember" becomes "i can't seem to remember". And finally, the ultimate reversal or impossibility: is the narrator speaking to us from the other side of death? His soul is missing, his shadow "burned into the ground". He is like a wandering ghost, a spirit in limbo, unable to orient himself in this new reality. Like radiation, the spiritual fallout from atomic warfare lingers far beyond the victims' lifetime, to haunt the place where the angel of death left his dark halo.
Where could a poem like "Ground Zero" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Joy Harjo Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: October 1
$1,250 award from the Colorado-based literary magazine Cutthroat is named after a prominent Native American poet and activist
Reuben Rose Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 10
Contest run by the Voices Israel poetry society offers $750 and anthology publication for poems up to 41 lines; fees accepted in US, UK and Israeli currency
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Growing Up Once More
Yet would like to sit near the window,
Taste creamy chocolates, ice creams,
Saunter in the parks, sit in the swings,
Learn to crawl, walk, run,
Behind the butterflies, wings, feathers
Learn to count, read, write once more,
Accompany them to the shore, building myriad vanishing sand castles,
Learn to act, react, realize
Pigeonhole to infinite roles—
At schools, colleges, offices, organizations "homes"
Yet doesn't end the cycle
Begins the peregrination with another generation
Same process, same steps, same formulae
Yet everything remains a mystery
To mysterious man,
Never unravels the patterned parcels or pondering puzzles
And continues the race.
Copyright 2010 by Gargi Saha
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
Somewhere during my primary school years, a teacher gave me an exercise that I have never forgotten. We were handed a copy of a poem—I don't recall by whom, but you can imagine someone like a Gerard Manley Hopkins—and asked to connect sounds, both consonant and vowel, by circling them and drawing lines between. The result looked like a plate of spaghetti; no wonder it gave one's mouth so much to chew. It was this same unadulterated mouth-joy that drew me to this month's poem by Gargi Saha, an English teacher residing in Israel. Phrases like "Pigeonhole to infinite roles" or "the peregrination with another generation" simply make one happy to speak aloud. So let us, at the top of a new year, allow a poem whose very subject is the passing of time, to remind us that poetry can do this.
But first, before I say more about Gargi's poem, I'm going to digress briefly to discuss Gargi's submission—the email to me that contained her poem—because proper submission protocol is of relevance to all Winning Writers readers.
Try to imagine the tasks of a contest coordinator and judge, sometimes, but not always, the same person. Imagine the sudden deluge of mail that must be processed, the task of combing out those that will enter a second round, and so on. There will probably be a time when poems need to be separated from contestants' names, another when poems might be printed out. Imagine all this and take pity.
To be kind to a contest judge or poetry magazine editor, keep your submission simple. All that is needed is a single sentence saying that you have pasted below (or are attaching, according to the rules) an entry. Flourishes beyond that are not considered professional in the United States, and you may hurt your chances by adding them.
Then paste your poem in the body in plain text—no html, no fancy fonts, background or images. If you want your work read more than once or twice, make it easy to print out.
One more caveat before I let this go: think several times before you choose to center your poem. I challenge you to go to any of the fine magazines that contribute to the annual Best of the Net online anthology and find a single poem that uses this format. Why? Because English is read from left to right, and anything but a left to right movement interrupts the reading and calls attention to itself. If there is a compelling expressive reason to center your poem—say for example, its title is "Center," then by all means do so. In every other case, and I would be doing a disservice if I were not frank, you are marking your work as amateur.
Now to Saha's poem. No one can ever know the process of another writer, but my instincts tell me that this was a piece that rushed forth from its delighted author in a flow of inspiration. One clue is that there is a grammatical error in the first line: it should be "needs" an escort. A second clue is in the double use of the word "cream" in line 3. It is as if the author is warming up. But right from the beginning, Saha follows where her ear leads: bonEE chEEks nEEd /silVER hAIR/ Silver, cheekS, needS, eScort...
Somewhere, perhaps with the rhyme between "creams" and "swings", it seems to me, Saha hits her stride and begins to understand what her poem will be about, what its logic will be. She then directs her reader toward the predictable conclusion, but with such a tumbling forth of nonschematic rhyme that the journey is like a carnival ride.
It is always useful, when revising one of those pieces that seems to flow from us whole, to ask: where does the poem actually begin? Often, for the initial few lines, poets do the literary equivalent of clearing their throats.
One method to find the best beginning is to identify the first really striking phrase. For this poem, for me, that would be "run/Behind the butterflies, wings, feathers" where Saha moves backwards from whole to part in a way that both surprises the reader and seems true to the expression of a toddler's chase. So, starting the poem with "Run behind the butterflies" is one experiment Saha might try.
Another method for finding the beginning of a poem is to break it into narrative sections. As it stands, there are four lines of set-up, then seven of chronological development, then four lines of response to the development, and finally, four more lines of response to response. That's a lot of movement for a piece of this length, especially the response to the response, which complicates the reading in a good way—a well-paced poem.
But how much of Saha's set-up is actually necessary? How much does this particular ice-cream eater add? She may be the inspiration for the poem, but that does not mean she needs to be part of it. On the other hand, if Saha began her poem with an imperative (which could be lines 3 or 4 or 5), the reader would be invited to participate in the reading. Suddenly it is a poem about the reader, not about a particular woman. Rumor has it, readers tend to enjoy poems about themselves!
Lines 5 through 11 operate chronologically. One experiment Saha might try is inserting one or both of lines 3 and 4 into their correct place chronologically. If she keeps line 3 (for its rhyme with "swing") I hope she will consider changing the first half to remove "creamy" and allow other sounds in the lines to suggest words—perhaps something with a long "i".
While on the subject of lines 5 through 11: a little paring. The words "shore" and "castle" imply the word "sand". Saha might want to cut that word and also "organizations'" (note possessive after the "s".) which is implied so much more effectively with the quotation marks she has placed around "homes".
Within the final six lines, undoubtedly the poem's strongest, line fourteen is the weakest link, not nearly as fresh as the line before it or the two lines after. I'm not sure the concept is completely necessary and think the line could just be cut, but if the concept is important to Saha, she has already well demonstrated that she can make it more fun to say.
Finally, a thought about the title: should Saha choose to remove the woman from the poem, it would no longer make sense. More importantly though, as it stands, the title gives away the surprise of the poem, taking away some of the pleasure of the discovery from the reader. Sometimes the lines we remove suggest titles. "Formulae", for example, might work for the next draft.
But, if I am at all correct about the origins of this poem, I suspect that what will be the most difficult in its revision will also be the most important: Saha must not sabotage its infectious energy. Somehow, she must summon it again, enhancing and honoring what is genuinely delightful about this piece.
Where could a poem like "Growing Up Once More" be submitted? This style of poetry is most likely to be appreciated by local literary societies and publications geared toward emerging writers. The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Virginia (Adult Categories)
Postmark Deadline: January 19
Prizes up to $250 for poems in over two dozen categories including humor, nature, and a variety of traditional forms
Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by January 31
Prizes up to 800 pounds for unpublished poems by authors aged 16+, from a venerable local writers' group in Britain; fees payable in pounds sterling only
Chistell Writing Contest
Entries must be received by February 28
Free contest offers prizes up to $100 for poetry and short fiction by writers aged 16+ who have never been published in a major publication; no simultaneous submissions
Oregon State Poetry Association Contests
Postmark Deadline: March 1
Twice-yearly contest offers prizes up to $100 in categories including traditional verse, humor, open theme
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Guide to Finding Your Published Poems at the Library of Congress
Have you had a poem published in an amateur or "vanity" poetry anthology, which you would like to find again? The Library of Congress website gives you tips and links to start tracking down your poem in various reference archives, as well as advice for avoiding contest scams.
Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments
Iowa State University maintains this website featuring definitions of over 30 early musical instruments, with illustrations and audio clips. Writers of historical fiction will find this site useful for fact-checking or just creating a mood while they envision their characters' next adventure.
Guiding Light
The sun appeared
a shadow of itself today
I could see
dark thunderous clouds
circling as a pack of vultures
close around
as if vying for the right
deciding
who would be the first
to snuff out
its bright light
Alone
in the open fields
There is no haven in sight
and I am afraid now
of heaven's tear drops
on my own dimming light
like a fresh sprig of water
flicked
at a candle's open flame
that I should be put out
a soaked useless wick
as it begins to rain
Copyright 2003 by Sherry Eubank
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Sherry Eubank's poem "Guiding Light" addresses humankind's most basic fears: What if the light of this world, the world that is all I know, should go out? What if I disappear utterly when I die, as if I had never existed? Since human history began, our arts and religions have made the connection between our mortality and the disappearance of the sun.
On the surface, the poem describes an event so ordinary as hardly to be worth recording. Storm clouds begin to obscure the sun, while the speaker is caught in an open field without shelter from the rain. But the extended metaphor of the vultures quickly creates a powerful feeling of menace, showing that much more is at stake than the weather: namely, the speaker's (and perhaps the world's) vulnerability and mortality. The speaker's "own dimming light" is like that of the sun, emerging tentatively like an invalid from his sickroom, "a shadow of itself". Because both the "I" of the poem and the source of her fear are left undeveloped, the effect is more universal and more terrifying.
I perceive the weather in this poem as more than just a metaphor for the speaker's psychological state. There is a spiritual drama going on overhead, a shadowy, elemental struggle between the forces of light and darkness. And these cosmic forces have intentionality; they are not just a scientist's impersonal principles.
I read the poem this way because the speaker's biggest fear seems to be, not that mortal life is meaningless, but that a higher power has weighed her in the balance and found her wanting. How quickly we move from the tender, perhaps too sentimental image of "heaven's tear drops" to the unseen finger that casually flicks water at her life's little candle flame, extinguishing it—a gesture reminiscent of the fearsome, alien God of Puritan sermons.
This spare, conceptually focused poem made an impact on me despite some unevenness in its technical quality. Though I liked the vulture image, I wasn't hooked by the first stanza, which took too long to build momentum. In poetry, every line has to count. When the author ends the line before saying something interesting, the line can fall flat. "The sun appeared" isn't a strong enough opening. It's like saying "The sky was blue". It's not news. Once I read the poem to the end, I no longer took the sun's appearance for granted, but the opener initially led me to expect a more banal series of observations.
I had the same reaction to the line "I could see". There's no rhythmic reason for a break there, and the phrase "I could see" (in this context) isn't strong enough on its own to warrant being set apart that way. A line break calls attention to the phrase, so it had better be able to handle the spotlight.
The pace picks up, and my interest with it, in the second stanza of "Guiding Light". Why does this stanza feel so much more alive than the one before it? Much credit is due to the tighter rhythm and the use of rhymes (right/bright/light) and similar sounds (vying/deciding) to ratchet up the intensity. "As if vying for the right" sets up a strong beat that each subsequent line hammers home. The stanza elaborates on the vulture image, involving us more in the drama.
The third stanza is an example of using line breaks for maximum effectiveness. "Alone" stands alone. After setting the scene ("in the open fields") each line introduces a new aspect of her predicament, allowing the impact of one thought ("There is no haven in sight") to sink in before moving on to the next ("And I am afraid").
As I mentioned above, the phrase "heaven's tear drops" didn't ring true for me, though I liked the assonance of "heaven/haven". It's too familiar and sentimental an image.
The last stanza is very powerful, with a strong rhythm and a chilling final image that dispels any saccharine thoughts of heaven. The line "flicked" is purposely short, as if the unseen deity could only spare an instant of time to think about the poor flame. The rhymes "flicked/wick" and "flame/rain" and the proliferation of edgy consonants ("a sprig of water flicked" at the "soaked useless wick") create a lot of intensity in a small space.
I liked the poet's unusual word choice—a "sprig" of water, rather than the more predictable "drop" or "spray". The sound matches the action, and the unexpected word prevents us from passing over the image too quickly.
Where could this poem be submitted? Before sending it out, the author should probably revise the first stanza so that it has the same tautness and passion as the ending. Because of its accessibility and universal message, "Guiding Light" might be a good fit for some of the contests sponsored by state poetry societies. Check these websites for deadlines and themes:
Pennsylvania Poetry Society
Postmark Deadline: January 15
Poetry Society of Virginia
Postmark Deadline: January 19
National Federation of State Poetry Societies
Postmark Deadline: March 15
These other contests may also be appropriate:
Tom Howard Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: September 30
FirstWriter.com International Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
A spiritually themed but not preachy poem such as "Guiding Light" could also be submitted to magazines such as U.S. Catholic and The Christian Century.
This poem and critique appeared in the December 2003 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
H.O.W. Journal
For each submission, they request a $5 donation that they will send to a relevant charity. H.O.W. stands for "Helping Orphans Worldwide".
Haiku News and Competitions: Poetry Society of New Zealand
The Poetry Society of New Zealand's website features this page of links to contests and publication opportunities for English-language haiku and related Japanese forms.
HaikuOz
Hosted by The Australian Haiku Society. Click the anthology link from the home page for plenty of good haiku. Click here for their links to haiku-related contests, publications and listservs.
Hail and Farewell
By Abby E. Murray. This incisive debut poetry collection from Perugia Press is narrated by a military wife who chafes against the isolation and patriarchal gender expectations of her role on the homefront. Combining plain-spoken heartache and biting humor, these poems explore the erasure of women's labor.
Half Mystic
Half Mystic is a semi-annual print and online literary arts journal dedicated to the celebration of music in all its forms. They publish poetry, fiction, interviews, artwork, essays on music and the arts, and original songs. Diverse voices welcomed.
Halloween
By Sue Gerrard
As lockdown winter approaches and the sun
pulls down its shutters earlier and earlier each night,
I wonder what shapes the trees will take in
the dimming twilight. In early evening mist would
they be bare limbed, open armed, wind kissed,
welcoming and giving comfort in the cold?
Or would their leaf stubbled boughs, gnarled
and old strike down to grab me and turn me over?
Would the autumn air be mellow and filled with
plaintive birdsong that tells us autumn is retreating?
Or would the air be quiet, conversation isolated
within the owners’ ears, their lives shuttered
away as day after day is stolen from them
by the pervading silence of separation?
The leaves turn as the virgin white pages
of my diary turn...
Empty, my plans unmade, my future uncertain
and I wonder if it will snow before
this lockdown winter comes.
Hands Holding Firm
By Thelma T. Reyna
If hands could laugh, ours would've pealed our way
through Rome's catacombs, Spanish Steps, thousand cats
lounging in Coliseum ruins,
and everywhere we roamed on every wheel that
turned—buses, taxis, trains—hands holding firm to
one another, vacationers in love, when we were
young, languoring with afternoon hands circling
warm on weary flesh, sun gilding balconies
outside french doors and marble floors in
alabaster rooms built centuries ago, where
foreign hands speak sentences and poems in
flourishes, and icon cities are for
lovers with palms clasped whenever we strolled
cobblestones, our paths just one, one direction,
together regardless of where.
Hanging Loose
Important influences include the New York School and the "New American Poetry" defined by the Donald Allen anthology of that name, but the magazine is open to a wide variety of styles and themes. Star find: Sherman Alexie. Read an interview with co-editor Mark Pawlak here.
Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales and Stories
This website includes the full text of many of his stories in the 1872 English translation by H.P. Paull, plus links to biographical information and other resources.
Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales and Stories
The 19th-century Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote some of our most beloved fairy tales, such as 'The Ugly Duckling' and 'The Little Mermaid'. This website includes the full text of many of his stories in the 1872 English translation by H.P. Paull, plus links to biographical information and other resources.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Poet
Destined to become a classic among T.S. Eliot parodies.
Harryette Mullen Raps with the Bard
You've probably heard "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" by Mr. Shakespeare. Now hear from Ms. Mullen... My honeybunch's peepers are nothing like neon. Today's spe-/cial at Red Lobster is redder than her kisser. If Liquid paper is/white, her racks are institutional beige....
Haymarket Books
Chicago-based independent press publishes scholarly and popular nonfiction from a left-wing activist perspective. They also publish the International Socialist Review.
Heaven
Sensual, joyous and profound poems make Christian ideas and images fresh again. Required reading for all poets seeking a modern idiom for the language of faith.
Hedgebrook Writers in Residence Program
Hedgebrook's motto is "Women Authoring Change". This retreat for women writers is located on Whidbey Island near Puget Sound, 35 miles from Seattle, WA. Each year, the retreat hosts about 40 women writers from all over the world for residencies of 2-6 weeks, at no cost to the writer.
Heeding Signs
By Diane Elayne Dees
When the snowy egret appears on your curb
at dusk, offering the cast-off fragments
of your soul a peaceful passage
through the perilous landscape of your life,
attention is required.
When the dragonfly lights on your porch,
observing your pain through multiple lenses,
granting you a chance to grasp the meaning
of that life—sit down, open your own eyes,
contemplate iridescence.
When, in your dream, the giant owl
enters your house, startling you
with its mottled feathers, remember
that something has to die so that something
can emerge. When death arrives on giant wings,
prepare to be a midwife.
originally published in Amethyst Review
HELD Magazine
Edited by MFA students at the University of Guelph in Ontario, HELD Magazine is an online journal of writing and visual art that explores "how all systems are interconnected, interdependent, and ever-evolving." See website for themed submission calls. Because "HELD is a platform for contributors to explore the realities and systems that have shaped them," writers and artists from marginalized populations (Black, indigenous, racialized, disabled, LGBTQ or 2-Spirit) comprise at least 70% of each issue.
Help: The Original Human Dilemma
Personal and philosophical meditations on the paradoxes of help—why we offer it, why we need it, and what makes it effective (or not). A former Episcopal priest and English teacher, Keizer has a sparkling aphoristic prose style worthy of G.K. Chesterton, but also a winsome humility that prefers a balance of opposites rather than a neat solution. Everyone should read this book.
Her Body and Other Parties
By Carmen Maria Machado. This splendidly original collection of feminist horror and magical realist stories literalizes the metaphors for women's oppression, going to extremes that break through our numb familiarity with these everyday dangers. Women fade, fall apart, are haunted by cast-off parts of themselves. Yet intimacy and sensual pleasure remain alive like flowering weeds pushing through the cracked cement of the most murderous city.
Here and There, Now and Then
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Here in Los Angeles geraniums
big as bushes, there, where memory
takes me, geraniums in pots
or window boxes, grandma's cellar,
the walls paved with Kerr bottles capped
with sticky discs, each filled with colors
grown, sliced, pressure-preserved
by her own hand, a barn out back
where grandfather slaughtered his lamb
and his year's take of venison into roasts,
the meat hooks now hang from eaves
empty, and not too far from Gram's chicken coop
a stump—where she unceremoniously
wrung the necks of old stewers for Sunday
supper which she doused with yellow-fatted
gravy and dumplings, also from her own hand.
If we did that still—the kill, slit, smell, gut-wrap
and freeze—rather than a nodded head,
memorized blessings or none
at all, we would fall each day
on our knees,
open our mouths in praise
for those bodies,
their lives
and what they give us.
And the geraniums? The colors more precious
for being smaller, fewer.
Here Now
By David Kherdian
I would like to visit
every store and window
in this town,
the last station on the road,
as I would every stone
on this path,
every pebble along the way—
to where I am destined—
Hidden from me, allowing
the events in my Being
to prepare for the final door—
that will open only then
to more than chance,
the defining moment
before the next step
into another land.
Here, Bullet
Recently returned from the Iraq war, this former infantry team leader depicts the agony and adrenalin rush of combat, as well as the moments of unexpected stillness and beauty in a soldier's precarious life in a foreign land. This striking debut collection won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books.
Hey, Kiddo
By Jarrett Krosoczka. This graphic narrative memoir intertwines the author's tumultuous relationship with his heroin-addicted mother and his discovery of his vocation as a professional cartoonist. The result is a lovingly detailed scrapbook of working-class family life in Worcester, MA, with sepia-tinted artwork supplemented by original documents and childhood drawings. Krosoczka was raised by his maternal grandparents, who come across as well-rounded and beloved characters, often gruff and no stranger to alcohol indulgence, but with steady devotion and an unglamorous and patient work ethic that he learns to emulate. Krosoczka's popular graphic novels for kids include the Lunch Lady and Star Wars: Jedi Academy series.
