Resources
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Jane Friedman’s “MBA for Writers” Lectures
Digital publishing expert and former Writers' Digest executive Jane Friedman's blog contains a wealth of resources for professional writers. Her 6-part "MBA for Writers" online lecture series covers the principles for success in today's rapidly changing industry. You can purchase access to the whole series or individual sessions.
Jane Friedman’s Guide to Getting the Most Out of a Writing Conference
Publishing expert Jane Friedman has been speaking at writers' conferences since 2001. In this article from her blog, she gives tips on how to select the best conference for your goals, being a well-prepared speaker, making the most of networking opportunities, and more.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Links
Digital publishing expert Jane Friedman compiled this extensive list of resources about how to publish an e-book, find the right e-publishing services, and stay on top of changes in the industry.
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Tutorial
This 2017 blog post from publishing expert Jane Friedman walks you through the steps of self-publishing a book. Video tutorial included.
Jane Friedman’s Writing Advice Links
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman's blog offers a wealth of information on marketing your creative work. This page collects links to her most important articles about writing, publishing, and promoting your book. Topics include getting started on social media, fact versus fiction in memoirs, the pros and cons of creative writing groups, finding an agent, and much more.
Jay Wurts, Writer and Editor
Editor Jay Wurts offers a range of services to indie authors, including developmental editing, ghostwriting, and coaching on how to make your book project more marketable to agents and publishers. He has experience helping culturally diverse and ESL authors package their work for a mainstream audience. He also works with publishers as a freelance editor or ghostwriter.
Jealous
By Laurie Klein
Morning, with your pillowed hands
twisting over the bed, do you envy
human desire, its midnight hinge,
covet our slack-jawed alpha waves
morphing to REM and then
a prance of neurons, an in-burst
of the invisible? All those covert
sleep spindles slowing the heart,
cooling the body—yes, we are
lapped 'round with rest: one delta
astride a deepening river, one dream
richer than silt.
Poor Great Ante Meridiem!
Another graveyard shift, the looping,
half-world commute—no wonder
you snap the shade on its roller,
muttering, headboard to folded quilt,
that this life-size space we share is our first
and final host;
you rise alone.
And we bend, drawing the linens smooth,
makers of beds moving in tandem
toward that omega breath, unfazed,
plumped and glowing,
skins fragrant as June, tattooed
with our storied nights—oh, to be taken in
again and again and then, limp, fading,
folded away: two prayer flags, unpegged.
Jeff Goins, Writer
This literary blog features profound reflections on creativity and spirituality, along with more practical advice about good writing habits and marketing your work.
Jendi Reiter
Editor of Winning Writers and author of the poetry books Barbie at 50, Swallow, and A Talent for Sadness. Follow her on Twitter (@JendiReiter) for poetry videos, upcoming readings, blog posts, new book releases, and articles of interest to writers.
Jerusalem Slim
By Michael Topa
I did not know it was Joy
And her fingers
Blessing me from words
Trapped in stone
Now in Gethsemane
You who could not wait
One hour sleep like salt
Scattered on the ground
But even now I forget
Where the difference falls
Some say Elijah
Some say John
But Joy you say nothing
And take me on
*This is what my father called Christ, alone
and muttering to himself, while nursing his
Four Roses whiskey at the kitchen table.
Originally published in America: The Jesuit Review, June 26, 2017, as one of three runners-up for the Foley Poetry Prize
Jessica Hische
Jessica Hische is a successful graphic designer specializing in lettering (typefaces), as well as the author and illustrator of the bestselling children's book Tomorrow I'll Be Brave. Check out her website to get cover-design inspiration, purchase fonts for your book, or hire her for a design project.
Jewel Beth Davis
Jewel Beth Davis is a writer and theater artist who has performed, directed, and choreographed professionally throughout the US and UK. She teaches writing and theater at NHTI-Concord Community College. Visit her website to read her stories and essays, which have appeared in such journals as Compass Rose, Lilith, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She writes about Judaism, family life, humor, the theater world, and much more.
Jewish Review of Books
Launched in 2010, this print and online journal features critical essays about religion, literature, culture, and politics, as well as fiction, poetry, and the arts.
Jewish Storyteller Press
Founded in 2007 by filmmaker and author Scott Hilton Davis, Jewish Storyteller Press is an independent small press that uses print‑on‑demand and e‑book technology to bring English translations of 19th-century Yiddish writers to 21st-century readers. They publish new translations, adaptations, and original stories based on the works of once-famous Yiddish writers such as Sholem Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), Jacob Dinezon, I.L. Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem.
Jim Landwehr
Jim Landwehr is the author of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir (eLectio Publishing, 2014) and Written Life: A Poetry Collection (eLectio, 2015). His poetry and essays have been published in MidWest Outdoors, The Tattooed Poets Project, Parody Poetry Journal, Torrid Literature, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
JJ Peña
JJ Peña (he/they) has won prizes for flash fiction from Blue Earth Review, Cutbank, and Mythic Picnic, and serves as a flash fiction reader for Split Lip Magazine.
John Amen: “Walking Unsure of Myself: Election Day, 2004”
Hallucinatory meditation on the political culture of wartime America, by John Amen, editor of the bimonthly journal The Pedestal Magazine.
John Clare Literary Festival
The John Clare Cottage Trust now hosts an annual literary festival each fall in his onetime home in the village of Helpston. Events include the Bard of the Fens Competition, a storytelling and performance poetry contest for authors who live or work within an hour's distance of the Fens region.
Journal of the Month
Journal of the Month is a curated subscription service that sends a different literary journal each time, giving subscribers an overview of the contemporary creative writing market. "Decide how often you want to receive magazines—every month, every other month, or once every three months—and during that period of time, you will receive a brand new literary magazine by the 10th of the month. Exactly which literary magazine you'll get is a tantalizing surprise that changes every month. And you'll never receive the same literary magazine twice." Participating journals include Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, December, and many more.
jubilat
Based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the literary journal jubilat aims to publish not only the best in contemporary American poetry, but to place it alongside a varied selection of reprints, found pieces, lyric prose, art, and interviews with poets and other artists.
Jubilate Agno
Like a black kite
from another dimension,
God appears
circling above
the dying lamb—
unhurried hunger
weaving through
an ordinary sky—
His poisoned eyes
reflecting the knowledge
that his flesh
will become
His flesh,
his blood
His blood.
Sweeping down
in an ever decreasing
vortex,
black wings
shrouding the sun,
He steps down
from His throne of air.
Carrion eater,
tearer of flesh,
purifier,
His terrible
skull red
from holding
back the sun—
shit-stained
legs and feet
clawing the earth
in time's shadow,
patient, waiting,
His skeletal breath
stinks of centuries
of rotting meat.
After an exploratory
peck or two
He grunts, hisses,
then starts with the eyes,
as He promises
Paradise.
Copyright 2011 by Jack Goodman
Critique by Jendi Reiter
There's something about Christianity and gothic horror that seems to go together, as we see in "Jubilate Agno" by Jack Goodman, a poet from Twin Falls, Idaho. Many of our classic fright-fest plots could be seen as variations on Christian imagery, but with God's goodness and trustworthiness removed from the picture. Compare "Rosemary's Baby" to the Virgin Birth, or zombies to the Resurrection. After seeing the "Twilight" vampire movies, I had a hard time not hearing Edward Cullen's seductive voice in this hymn we often sing during the Eucharist at my church:
The Bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world,
and they who eat of this bread,
they shall live for ever,
they shall live for ever.
Unless you eat
of the Flesh of the Son of Man
and drink of his Blood,
you shall not have life within you,
you shall not have life within you.
What are we to make of these parallels? One could object that artists in this genre are merely appropriating sacred images for the shock value of seeing them profaned. Such was some conservative Christians' objection to the scene of ants crawling on a crucifix in AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz' short film "A Fire in My Belly", which led to the film's being removed from a Smithsonian exhibit. Yet a brief tour through medieval art shows that blood, death, torture, and the grotesque have been part of the Christian story from the beginning. Part of the tradition's power lies in how it faces these realities of the human condition and promises ultimate redemption from them.
That hope, however, is not always as evident to our senses as the suffering, and so the latter threatens to dominate our imaginations, stifling faith. The horror genre voices our fear that unredeemed suffering is the only reality, or that we will have to save ourselves from it via brute force or magical talismans. In this respect, its spirituality can sometimes be more genuine than the G-rated kitsch that's often sold under the label of Christian art.
Given the long history of "the blood of the Lamb" in devotional art and its darker counterpart, horror, how is a poet to approach this theme in a fresh way? Goodman has made several choices that help him out. First, he sticks to describing the action in concrete terms instead of editorializing. He does not need to talk about loss of faith, or the terror of the victim. We feel these directly as we are caught up in the graphic scene. Second, the form of the poem works against any impulse to be florid and wordy, which seems to be a particular temptation for writers of gothic horror because of that genre's roots in the Victorian era. Short lines and simple words keep the action moving and build suspense.
At key points in the poem, Goodman pairs visually arresting images with a sound pattern that is strong and well-paced. The opening K-sounds in "Like a black kite" resemble the harsh caws of crows, while the words themselves instantly create a menacing atmostphere. The stately yet inexorable approach of the bird of prey is heard in the measured rhythms of "black wings/shrouding the sun,/He steps down/from His throne of air." The last phrase carries a subtle allusion to the devil, one of whose traditional epithets is "the Prince of the Air".
Another fine passage is "His terrible/skull red/from holding/back the sun". Regular readers will know I'm critical of over-using line breaks to manufacture drama. Here, though, the technique works perfectly because nearly every word is a strong one and essential to the phrase: terrible, skull, red, holding, back, sun. I can hear the strain of that holding-back. The almost sublime image is then followed by "shit-stained/legs and feet" just to crush any fleeting thought that this deity might be worthy of worship after all.
I would suggest reworking or cutting the second line, "from another dimension", a cliché that's been used to promote too many sci-fi B-movies. I don't know if the poem really needs "Carrion eater" in the second stanza, either. "Carrion" is close to becoming an archaic word that only shows up in gothic horror tales, and could be seen as overwrought. Also consider ending that stanza at "stinks of centuries", which still conveys the notion of decay without the obvious image of rotting meat.
The poem concludes with sibilant menace in the S-sounds of hisses, starts, eyes, promises, Paradise. It's a nice twist to end with a suggestion of the Lamb's masochistic pleasure, since the eroticism of submission is another sublimated strain in Christian imagery that the horror genre brings forward with a vengeance. Believing in God's power but not His love, some opt for the tragic beauty of knowingly trusting the untrustworthy, hoping thereby to manufacture their own transcendence. Jubilate agno—rejoice in the Lamb. Indeed.
Where could a poem like "Jubilate Agno" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Flatmancrooked Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 1
Sacramento-based small press offers $500 prize, plus anthology publication for top 30 entries, for poems up to 500 words; enter online
Poetry 2011 International Poetry Competition (Atlanta Review)
Postmark Deadline: March 1
This well-regarded journal offers $1,000 top prize, plus publication for top 20 entries; enter by mail or online
Balticon SF Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: April 1
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society offers $100 top prize for poems with science fiction, fantasy or horror themes; winners invited to read at Balticon, their annual convention, in May; previously published work accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the February 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Judith Goldhaber
Her collection Sonnets from Aesop, a retelling of 100 fables in verse (beautifully illustrated by Gerson Goldhaber), is available from Ribbonweed Press.
Juneteenth Book Fest
From writers, to artists, to industry pros, the goal is to shine a light on the width and breadth of Black American literature, to strengthen the connection to the communities we write for, and to honor the legacy of Black American storytelling. The inaugural 2020 festival took place online because of the COVID-19 epidemic, but the organizers hope to plan in-person events in future years.
just femme & dandy
Launched in 2021, just femme & dandy is a biannual literature and arts journal created for and by queers on the topic of fashion. See their website for each issue's themed submission call. Editors say, "just femme & dandy embraces all the layers of hybridity that push against the tensions that pressure us to conform. Nothing is off limits. To get an idea of what we accept, think of the following, and beyond: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, illustration, drag, dance, video, film, photography, tutorials, interviews, reviews, listicles, thinkpieces, commentaries, historical investigations, and so on."
Just Publishing Advice
Derek Haines, a speculative fiction and thriller writer, maintains this useful blog with advice for self-published authors, with detailed and timely articles about such topics as using social media to sell books.
Kaleidoscope Magazine
They accept poetry, fiction, essays, interviews and book reviews. Submission deadlines are March 1 and August 1 annually. The editors say: "Unique to the field of disability studies, this award-winning publication expresses the experiences of disability from the perspective of individuals, families, healthcare professionals, and society as a whole. The material chosen for Kaleidoscope challenges and overcomes stereotypical, patronizing, and sentimental attitudes about disability. Although content always focuses on a particular aspect of disability, writers with and without disabilities are welcome to submit their work."
Kansas
I'm being dropped. I took a turn pulling the head of our long line of humming wheels and bobbing legs traversing the empty landscape, and now I've rotated to the back, following behind my neighbor and longtime riding partner. Marc is still getting stronger, but age and injury have started to exact their toll on me.
The peloton is a loosely coupled train. Gaps develop and widen as the pace quickens, and I find myself slipping off Marc's tire. I try to sprint back, but there's no starch left. He spins up to another rider in front. Gradually the riders in front grow smaller in the distance and finally disappear. I am churning along with my aching quads under the blue dome of the sky, pulling only myself, being pulled by no one. Suddenly I am no longer in Vermont, but in a place I've been blown back to all my life. I am in Kansas.
I was a child in Leavenworth, in a large brick house beside the Penitentiary. A guard tower stood in our yard, and behind the house the wheat began. I watched squirrels chase each other through the tops of the tall elms. I stood on a wall and directed the black storm clouds in their advance. I built a paper zoo, with paper cages for paper lions. I waited each summer day for my father to come home from the prison in his suit and tie, newspaper folded under his arm. I walked to school across the wide reservation and through the leafy neighborhoods alone.
Father bought me a red Schwinn a few days before my ninth birthday, and taught me to ride it, running along beside as I wobbled. On my birthday, while I was at school, he pulled away, borne beyond the horizon on a swift coronary. His last words were "What a beautiful day!" My mother packed our things in cardboard barrels and we left Kansas. I later marveled at how few memories I carried, as if I hadn't been paying attention.
Still doggedly pedaling on today's empty road, I spare a look around. The flat fields of Addison are pleasant on this beautiful day, but the winds in Kansas rippled the wheat fields like waves of a golden ocean. I made friends with myself while watching them. I learned to enjoy my thoughts. Today I feel the winds of age blowing against me, a privilege my father never had. I try to imagine my young self riding out of my childhood not fatally damaged or condemned by circumstance, but just another odd variation of the human species. It's time to rewrite myself.
Marc is lying on a church lawn. I thank him for waiting, and he says that he wasn't sorry to let the group hurtle on without him. We resume a brisk pace of our own. I'm grateful for his friendship. I'm happy to be riding right now, right here, with a mind and body that could be worse. I'm grateful even for Kansas.
Copyright 2010 by Ken Martin
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
Free writes, automatic writing, journaling, the Amherst Writers & Artists method—what we have here are a lot of expressions that, when applied to the composition of poetry, all amount to same thing: much poetry begins with prose. This makes sense. We think in prose. We are natural with it. Streaming our consciousness through a pen can, indeed, help us discover and explore our material with an ease that may elude us when faced with the more formal concerns of constructing a poem.
But then what? How do we locate and shape a poem from the raw material we have produced? This month, Critique Corner is indebted to Ken Martin of Vermont for allowing us to use his flash memoir "Kansas" as an object lesson. Though far more polished than a typical sample of, say, automatic writing, this 500-word personal essay does provide clues that may help us lift the poems from our prose.
To begin, let's recall a few notions discussed in last month's Critique Corner, which addressed some of the differences between story and poem. Poems, I wrote then, "verse", which is to say, turn away from themselves, sometimes returning, sometimes not. Obviously, "Kansas" does this. The first two paragraphs establish a frame to which Martin returns in his final paragraph.
What makes this set-up and return an essay device, as opposed to a poetic one, is that the first paragraph clearly establishes a theme (aging) and the final paragraph provides an epiphany relating to that theme (the gratitude he feels for his vigor, his friendship, even his awareness that he is grateful). A poem is usually not quite so tidy. We do not neatly sum the turns we take in our poems. Rather we leave the reader to make of them what he or she will, inviting participation. While this is a large part of what makes reading a poem enjoyable, the conclusive nature of essay is what makes it satisfying. Every form of writing has its merits and uses.
Remove that frame, however, and what remains reads very much like a poem. Recall once again last month's essay, in which I stated that one way poems unify is through sound devices, and one way to create a sound device in a narrative poem is to create parallel grammatical structures. Now look at the third paragraph of "Kansas". Beginning with the third sentence, every sentence has the same construction. It begins with "I" then uses a simple past-tense verb. In the first two sentences, the nouns in the second half of the sentence are modified with adjectives. In the next sentence, all the nouns are modified with the same adjective, "paper". Language need not be ornate or grand to be musical; rather, it requires pattern. See for yourself how these two plain but effective repeated structures organize the remaining sentences of the paragraph.
Often, when using prose as a pre-writing technique, we fall into this type of repetition. Noticing it will help pull the poem out from the prose. Reinforcing it or building it in revision can help give the material shape. Be sure to vary the pattern as you work to keep the ear surprised.
Paragraph four has a graceful balance between specificity and abstraction, furthering its resemblance to poetry. In the first sentence we are given a color, a brand name and a number. In the second, the phrase "pulled away" comes, in context, to have a double meaning. It refers to the previous information. But then, without further ado, Martin pivots the phrase to apply to what follows, the abstract "borne beyond the horizon", then quickly returns to more concrete diction with "swift coronary". Though subtle, this shift of tone is enough to underscore the heightened importance of the event. There is no need for explanation or italics.
The sharper turn, however, takes place in the final sentence of that paragraph. Staying true to the timbre of the piece, Martin uses no artifice to move from the memory to his present-day reflection upon it. With this, he progresses from the specifically personal to the universal, that is, from his childhood in Kansas to the way all adults feel at some time about their own childhoods. This would make a fine ending to the poem.
But then, so would "It's time to rewrite myself" which concludes the following paragraph. Is that material also part of the piece? Taste and author's intent would ultimately govern that decision, meaning some close analysis will be useful to inform the decision.
The first sentence of paragraph five is really there to tie back to its frame. By simply removing the word "still", the poem would continue along the new path the previous paragraph laid for it. So, it could "work" but what would it add? Well, it adds what the larger frame gave the essay: a springboard to the memory.
Next, there is a comparison between the present and the past. This might be a worthwhile contrast for the poem, though the simile of wheat fields to ocean waves is not nearly as original as the paper zoo. Anthropomorphizing the fields (making friends with them), on the other hand, is considerably fresher.
The deeper question, however, rests with the final three sentences of paragraph five. The choice ultimately is: does the author want this to be a poem about the nature of childhood memory, or about living past the age at which one's parent dies?
This is a decision that only the poet can make. The more relevant point to our consideration today is what to do with the raw prose material. I submit that paragraph five could be divided in two. The first half might begin the poem, establishing a frame and context. The material starting with "Today" might end the poem.
I point this out not because I think it's the best choice, but only because I want to demonstrate how malleable the prose pre-writing can be. Just because the thoughts occur to us in a specific order, or because we conceive of them originally as being part of the same paragraph, does not mean that they should remain that way as we redraft. One practical technique for re-opening prose for reshaping into poem is to separate every sentence from its predecessor—cut them apart, if need be—and then experiment with new arrangements.
Of course the poem is not finished. It will require a title—which the raw material seems almost magically always to offer—and a form—stanzification, line breaks, etc. Surely these topics merit their own discussions. (You will find a few tips on breaking lines in June's Critique Corner.) My point today is that before all that, the poem requires something more basic: it requires recognition. If you find yourself just breaking your prose pre-writing into lines, then you will have prose broken into lines, not a poem. So look for pattern and repetition, look for turns and shifts of tone or subject or audience, and perhaps before any of that, look for what will be your final line. You're on your way.
Where could an essay like "Kansas" be submitted? The following contest may be of interest:
Writers' Workshop Annual Memoirs Contest
Postmark Deadline: December 30
The Writers' Workshop of Asheville, NC offers $300 for personal essays up to 4,000 words; fee includes critique
In addition, this upcoming contest may be a good fit for narrative poetry based on personal experience
Founders Award
Postmark Deadline: October 15
The Georgia Poetry Society offers $75 and anthology publication for poems up to 80 lines on any subject; no simultaneous submissions
This essay and critique appeared in the September 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Karen J. Weyant
Ms. Weyant's chapbook Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt was a contest winner from Main Street Rag.
Kari (my best friend)
Some monster lay deep in the water that day.
It put its fingers to our mouths when it drifted
towards what was left of Kari's lungs.
Our eyes had never heard death, never tasted
that moment when what makes us whole,
separates.
I remember Kari, afraid of monsters,
willing herself to jump from the highest cliff
in the pits of the old quarry.
It was just that kissing game, truth or dare.
The water was deep and black, cold.
The monster cut through her with pure mean
that thickened the day into ice.
I stirred myself into a cocktail of warm.
After all, we were making snow angels in the air.
We were just teasing her a little.
It was all just fun.
Dangling arms and pretentious fingers
waited for childhood to choke as her weight
slammed the rocks and her flesh sliced
down to the water in long strips
making wet slurping sounds.
She jumped too soon.
That summer the pits had no bottom
but open earth sores watered up
to keep Kari's hands spilling over limestone.
A blood angel fades here kids
aren’t allowed to swim anymore.
Copyright 2007 by Kim Mayhall
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Kim Mayhall's poem "Kari" intersperses the awful physical sensations of a girl's death with metaphorical and fantastical images in order to capture the onlooking children's shock when their game collides with a deadly reality. Perhaps any poem about death is as much about the feelings of those left behind as it is about the person memorialized. Here, despite the title "Kari", the primary focus is the impact on her playmates.
Kari, about whom we know nothing except her fear of monsters and her closeness to the narrator, is not an individual so much as a representative of the children's own mortality, which they confront for the first time through her. She becomes a sacrificial symbol, a "blood angel" reminding them of their guilt. They feel responsible for goading her to take the fatal dive, of course, but the guilt is also something more primal that is bound up with their new consciousness of death. The immunity of youth fails in both directions. How much harm even a child can suffer is also a measure of how much harm a child can inflict on others.
Mayhall engages all of the reader's senses from the beginning, a technique that gives this poem much of its power. Fingers to mouths, eyes that hear, a moment so affecting to body and mind that it can actually be tasted. What to make of the synesthesia "Our eyes had never heard death"? The clue may lie in the contrast between wholeness and separation in the next lines. That earliest childhood state, when the self is undifferentiated from the world, and sensations flow in without being consciously recognized as "sight" versus "hearing", is like the unity among the children before Kari steps into the spotlight. Her death names and individuates her. The others are simply "we". (There is a first-person singular narrator in some lines, but she speaks for their collective experience, not revealing any special interaction with Kari.)
The children at first displace the guilt of the accident onto the "monster" that "put its fingers to our mouths" and "cut through her with pure mean". But Kari, though "afraid of monsters", jumped because she was even more afraid of losing face before her peers ("that kissing game, truth or dare"; "We were just teasing her a little"). Who then are the true monsters? They plead innocence ("we were making snow angels in the air") but the next stanza refers back to this gesture in a more candid, less flattering way: "Dangling arms and pretentious fingers/waited for childhood to choke". The end of childhood means that one can no longer blame imaginary forces outside one's control.
The physical realism of the penultimate stanza is almost unbearable, as perhaps it should be, but the lyrical yet horrifying opening of the final stanza takes an already memorable poem to a new level. Again outside the realm of realism, we are in a ghost story where the earth itself will not let the dead rest, but this time the haunting cannot be dismissed as a child's fear of the dark. Everything we fear is already within ourselves.
The grammar of the last two lines is irregular, a stylistic choice that does not show up elsewhere in the poem, which makes me think Mayhall may have meant "A blood angel fades where kids/aren't allowed to swim anymore". However, I like the cadence of "A blood angel fades here" and I feel that two shorter declarative sentences ("A blood angel fades here; kids/aren't allowed to swim anymore") has a stronger rhythmic impact than the longer single sentence. Also, the overstatement of "kids aren't allowed to swim anymore" (ever? anywhere?) conveys the totality of their expulsion from Eden. More has been lost than access to a specific watering hole. What this line tells me is, kids aren't exempt from human nature, and sometimes they discover that in the most painful ways.
Where could a poem like "Kari" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Oregon State Poetry Association Contests
Postmark Deadline: August 31
Twice-yearly contest offers prizes up to $100 in categories including traditional verse, humor, open theme
Robert Frost Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: September 15
Competitive award for poems "in the spirit of Robert Frost" includes $1,000 and featured reading at festival in Lawrence, MA
Lucidity Poetry Journal Awards
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Free contest offers prizes up to $100 (doubled this year) for clear, understandable poems in any form dealing with people and interpersonal relationships
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Karla K. Morton
This Texas-based poet's book/CD combo, 'Wee Cowrin' Timorous Beastie', is a 17th-century Scottish epic story, written in rhyme, and set to an original musical score by the Juno award-winning Canadian composer Howard Baer. Morton's creative multimedia project brings the old world of European epic poetry together with a modern cinematic score.
Kate Greenstreet’s Poetry Interviews Blog
Poet Kate Greenstreet blogs at Every Other Day, where she's compiled an archive of over 100 interviews with contemporary poets about the road to first-book publication and how it changed their life (or not). Highlights include advice from Steve Fellner, author of 'Blind Date with Cavafy', on how the right title can help your manuscript get past the contest screeners.
Kathryn Magendie
"Kick-ass woman who says and does what she wants cause she can."
Katie
A dozen scrawny children run and play
rags for clothes, and silly boots meant for bigger steps
scuffing, jumping, clomping across the rubble strewn square
burnt brick, mortar, shattered glass and scrap metal
to me a dreadful remnant of war costly won
to the children, an undiscovered country
to conquer, to tame, to slay dragons therein
One lad slips and scrapes his knee
I hobble over, and set him on my lap as the others gather round
Tell us mister how you lost your leg?
I wipe clean his scrape
tear off a piece of empty trouser leg to bandage the hurt
A German wanted it more than I
I find myself smiling
an unexpected joy, to bandage a child and not a soldier
in his eyes, wonder, hope, and mischief
his world burned and bombed and taken away,
still he dreams, thanks me kindly
and off to battle dragons again
Children heal so quickly
I have much to answer
all done rightly, all done proudly
I am told
grieves my heart the same, never any peace
I know how the stories end
I know the moment
I know their names
I know what we've done
Katie is lost as well
she doesn't know it's over
she doesn't know her name
I gave her Katie, my wife's name
when she needed it
Katie lay trapped in a cellar with her dying family
no one knows how long
her building bomb-collapsed
hour after wretched hour alone
finally hiding too deep to be found
to be four
to be there
The children wave and smile as I enter the hospital
Katie is such a pretty, tiny thing
her eyes terrible as any nightmare
she lives in that cellar still, oh God
She deserves what peace I gave away
broken, scattered, tearful eyes shut tight
I kiss her cheek
place my hand over her mouth and nose
Copyright 2012 by L. Kerr
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Juxtaposition is creative writing's path to insight. Placing two narrative threads side by side, without immediately explaining their connection, prompts the reader to search out areas of sympathy between them. This leads to a deeper understanding than if we analyzed each topic separately. The same is true of the uncommon pairings of images that characterize a fresh and effective use of metaphor in a poem. Practiced with empathetic attention, this kind of reading can cultivate a habit of mind that breaks down barriers between our own life and the lives of others who seem superficially different from us. This month's critique poem, L. Kerr's "Katie", demonstrates both the technique of surprise juxtapositions and the opening-up of moral vision that it can produce.
In the first half of the poem, the narrator, a war veteran, affectionately watches children at play in a bombed-out neighborhood. Their imaginative transformation of the ruined streetscape presents a hopeful contrast to his memories of battle. Unanswered questions keep the reader engaged. Who is the "Katie" of the title? Is the "rubble strewn square" a casualty of the same conflict in which the narrator was wounded, or another war, or the daily violence of the ghetto?
The juxtaposition of children's games of heroism and the ugly realities of battle, for ironic or tragic effect, has become a cliché of war poetry, and if "Katie" pivoted on that comparison, it would not be a memorable poem. Instead, the poem gains dimension by shifting, without warning, to another story: "Katie is lost as well".
Crucially, we do not learn what the stories have in common until other details have stirred our emotions. Had Kerr introduced the change of topic by saying, in effect, "This reminds me of Katie, whose home was also bombed," it would seem heavy-handed and preachy. Besides, factual similarities miss the deeper point. What is universal in all these stories is loss—collateral damage, the loss suffered by innocents too young to know what death means, even when it's all around them. The gap in information between "Katie is lost" and "her building bomb-collapsed" makes space for the reader to intuit this shared experience.
Katie's story also complicates our picture of the narrator, in a way that enriches the poem. The first scene is all sweetness—too much so, if left to stand alone. The veteran idealizes the children, and their optimism calls forth his better self, so that he accepts his wounds without bitterness toward the enemy: "Tell us mister how you lost your leg...A German wanted it more than I".
Shortly thereafter, he hints that this saintly behavior is an inadequate attempt to make amends for the atrocities that warfare requires. "I have much to answer...I know what we've done". It was justified, it was heroic, according to the official line—but is this as much of an illusion as the children's fantasy that a junkyard is a land of dragons? The reference to Germans suggests World War II, which many Americans think of as the last "good" war. But the narrator reminds us that even a justified war leaves soldiers with stained souls. To save Hitler's victims, we bombed civilians in Dresden, and then in Hiroshima. Again we see how paired narratives naturally ask questions of one another, without the poet spelling them out.
The last line adds another wrenching twist. It appears that the narrator had to smother Katie because she would otherwise have died a terrible slow death, trapped under immovable rubble. In retrospect, the poem has earned the sentimentality of the veteran's kindness to the children, as a relief from the awful ambiguity of a world where killing and saving are nearly indistinguishable.
My main criticism of this poem is the stylistic inconsistency between its two halves. Beginning at "I have much to answer", the narrative is delivered in a taut, plain-spoken style that suits the persona of the "everyman" soldier. Unadorned language gives the sound of sincerity to dramatic and painful revelations.
The first section of the poem is wordy and old-fashioned by contrast. It does not always sound like the same narrator, and seems less immediate to me, like a tableau observed at a distance. Phrases like "a dreadful remnant of war costly won" and "to slay dragons therein" have a musty Victorian flavor. Because the scenario of the battle-weary soldier refreshed by childhood innocence has been so over-played, it is especially important that the style hold no trace of sentimental straining after dramatic effects.
Juxtaposition is not patchwork. For the conversation between narratives to work, they must both be speaking the same language. A consistent voice is the holding environment where the drama of contrasts is played out. Condensing the opening stanzas, possibly by as much as half, would make "Katie" an even stronger poem about the hard-won victory of empathy over violence.
Where could a poem like "Katie" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 30
Irish independent publisher offers 1,000 pounds and reading at West Cork literary festival in this contest for unpublished poems; online entries accepted
Press 53 Open Awards
Postmark Deadline: March 31
Small press in NC offers prizes of $250 and anthology publication in 5 genres: poetry, short story, novella, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction; enter by mail or online
This poem and critique appeared in the February 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Kattywompus Press
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In the engagement photo, my father looks taller
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She had two inches on him.
She told me, "I bent my knees."
You can just see, if you look carefully,
two bulges of knee half-way down her skirt.
That's why he married her. She knew
what mattered to him, how she could mend things.
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Once heartthrobs and icons
now shuffling on and off stage
often supported by a sturdy arm
of a trusted companion
Words still remembered
messages still clear
sung by voices less vibrant
Surgeries, injections
cannot mask aging faces
bearing witness to
too many years
too many drugs
too many drinks
too many nights
Why do they go on—
the crescendo of applause
the swaying of contemporaries
mouthing words
they've known for decades
standing ovations now automatic
as if part of the script
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wondering if I will know when
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needing an escort to where
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