Resources
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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
This small press based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio publishes chapbooks of innovative, contemporary writing in a variety of genres: poetry, a chapbook-length essay collection, a rollicking long prose poem or gaggle of shorter prose poems, a clutch of micro-fictions, one incredible short story, or a chapbook-friendly slice of autobiography, travelogue, art criticism. $15 reading fee. Enter online only. The no-simultaneous-submissions rule is unusual for manuscript submissions, but they promise to respond within four weeks.
Keening
By Kathleen McCoy
It comes back in a rush as you hold the one
who's at that border-bog between
greenness and fever-fire: your dream
where she stands tremulously then falls,
falls into you, heart to beating heart,
passes through your body, rises as a rush
of smoke toward the stained glass
high above your heads.
With nurse's hands now upon her wrist
comes the somber nod. A low horn howls
deep in distance yet grows nearer, red
and black and green, coyote call clawing
over many mountains in dim mist,
watery wail that worms its way
through, in a fit of frisson,
whatever beast you have become.
Keeping It Legal
Lawyer and self-published author Helen Sedwick writes this blog to help writers, particularly self-published ones, navigate the legal issues involved in publishing, promoting, and protecting their work. Topics include fair use, defamation, and copyright.
Keeping Poetry Close: Copper Canyon Poets Read to You
Monica Sok, Ellen Bass, Philip Metres, and other authors of recent titles from prestigious poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press share excerpts from their work in this video series. Editor George Knotek says, "For this time when poetry is abundant but in-person communion with our loved ones is not—a time when we're turning to technology to help us connect with the faces and voices we miss—we offer here the faces and voices of our spring 2020 poets reading from their newest books to bring you both poetry and human connection, from their homes to yours."
Keith Wheeler Books
Children's book author Keith Wheeler creates lively, informative short videos with advice on writing, designing, and marketing your self-published books.
Key Book Publishing Paths
Publishing expert Jane Friedman explains different tracks to book publication in this annually updated chart, which compares the key features of Big Five traditional publishing, small press, indie, hybrid, and self-publishing.
KidLit411
KidLit411 is a site that collects information of interest to children's book writers and illustrators. They post contests, grants, and pitch opportunities. The site also features weekly profiles of writers and illustrators.
Kids’ Book Review
Kids' Book Review is an online journal that showcases authors, illustrators, and publishers in the children's literature field. They publish news, reviews, interviews, articles, guest posts, events, and specialist literacy articles. The site also hosts monthly themed creative writing contests.
Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference
Founded in 2006 by writer/filmmaker Clay Stafford, the Killer Nashville Writers' Conference provides unique educational and networking opportunities for genre and non-genre writers whose work contains elements of mystery, thriller, or suspense. Held in Nashville, TN in August, this four-day event boasts 500+ participants annually. Three crime-writing honors (Claymore, Silver Falchion, and John Seigenthaler Legends) are awarded during the conference.
Kind of a Hurricane Press
This small press publishes several poetry anthologies a year on various themes, in POD print and e-book formats. Recent themes have included "Barbie in a Blender" and "Poised in Flight". The press also sponsors online journals for different types of poetry.
Kingdom Poets
Canadian poet D.S. Martin edits this blog showcasing classic and contemporary Christian poets.
Kirkus Reviews: Complete Self-Publishing Guide for Authors
This free 21-page online guide from Kirkus Reviews, a leading book-review publication, walks new authors through their basic options for design, marketing, and distribution of self-published books.
Kismet Magazine
Founded in 2025, Kismet is an online literary journal for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction "offering a fresh perspective on spirituality, religion, and mysticism for seekers and skeptics alike." Kismet is a project of Nearness, a resource for facilitating small-group discussions about life's big questions. Authors published in Kismet include Derrick Austin, K-Ming Chang, Fady Joudah, and Natasha Oladokun.
Kissing in Manhattan
Brilliantly written novel-in-stories seduces the reader with witty sketches of Manhattanites in love and lust, but what began as social comedy ends as a surprisingly moving tale of darkness and redemption. Aspiring short story writers should study Schickler's way with the details that reveal character and milieu.
Knees
By E. Laura Golberg
In the engagement photo, my father looks taller
than my mother in her war-time dress.
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.
In the photo forty years later, when he receives
his honorary doctorate, he stands in his red robe,
orange sash. She's next to him again, wearing
her silk suit. Her legs are straight this time.
Know Your Rights: Key Provisions in a Publishing Contract
In this 2021 article on Anne R. Allen's publishing advice blog, literary agent and attorney Joseph Perry explains typical terms in a book publishing contract, such as the grant of rights, advances, royalties, and option clause.
Knowing When
By Mark Fleisher
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
Now I approach similar days
wondering if I will know when
or will I stubbornly go on
needing an escort to where
my words will be heard
then helped to a comfortable chair
before taken home
It is said of musicians
athletes, politicians
perhaps even poets
go out while on top
Advice hard to heed when
the roar of the crowd
still rings in their ears
Korean War Stories
Vivid personal anecdotes and poems based on the experiences of US veterans in the 143rd Field Artillery during the Korean War.
Koss Web Design
Poet and illustrator Koss, a winner of our Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, is also an accomplished graphic designer who creates logos and websites for writers. See examples of her site designs here and here (logo and website). She also redesigned the Ventura County Poetry Project site and managed their social media.
Kris Spisak’s Writing Tips
Affect or effect? Riffle or rifle? Even experienced authors are tripped up by common words and phrases that are often mistaken for each other. Kris Spisak's blog highlights hundreds of these and explains their etymology to help you remember proper usage.
Kseniya Simonova’s Sand Paintings
This unique and moving 8-minute video shows young Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova creating a sand painting that narrates the devastating impact of the Nazi invasion.
Kwame Dawes
This site, Live Hope Love, features the profound and lyrical poetry of Kwame Dawes as well as video interviews and background stories of the people who inspired him.
Kyoto Journal
See website for submission guidelines for poetry, prose, and artwork. Recent themed issues have included "Unbound: Gender in Asia" and "Transience: Dwelling in the Moment".
Lake Overturn
This standout first novel paints a tender, comical portrait of an Idaho small town in the 1980s, where a motley collection of trailer-park residents yearn for connection (and sometimes, against all odds, find it) across the barriers of class, sexual orientation, illness, separatist piety, drug abuse, and plain old social ineptness. You'll want to linger on the luscious writing, but keep turning the pages to find out what happens to the characters who've won a place in your heart.
Lambda Literary Foundation
The LLF hosts a book review blog, readings and workshops, and the annual Lammy Awards for the best LGBT books.
Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women
The Poetry Foundation website features this essay on landays, a traditional poetic form among the Pashto-speaking people of Afghanistan, which has become a clandestine outlet for women to express dissent and speak of forbidden subjects like love and sensuality. The essay includes many examples of landay couplets with cultural context and photos.
Lannan Foundation Audio Literary Library
An extensive collection of audio recordings of poets and writers reading their work. In 2004, The Lannan Foundation awarded $925,000 in awards and fellowships in poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset
I bought you, lantana plant,
because you are drought tolerant—
or is it drought resistant? I forget.
Your pointed label reads SATISFYING
The defiant flames of your gold and orange
clusters force me to stare
Looking ahead, I wager that your five pound
maturity can handle neglect
Lantana camara, HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE.
Spreading Sunset, you grow on me.
I knew I would leave, doubtful
the occupants after me would stop to stoke
your star-like blooms
or lean closer to attend each berry,
red, purple, charred rippled black
ripening toward poison,
changing colors with mood
Renters' sandals slap their beat
on painted gray planks and
drown out your quiet
restless offerings
Vacation a mere week—they almost water you,
the drought-tolerant plant right there on the steps
I knew all this but I bought you anyway
placing my momentary pleasure
above your very existence
Sunsets spread, spread, gold and orange
I return to your blooms, paper ashes
Your leaves clench against the heat.
I try to revive stalky ugliness but your hardened
roots reject my water offering.
No longer a sprawling potted plant, you have become
something a car would whiz by
or a mower would run over.
Lantana camara, spreading sunset.
Next morning I kneel and water again
you cautiously begin to unfasten.
Fruit and bloom are silent, but your leaves—
Were they always so cilia-soft to touch?
Veins like roadmaps stretch out, no longer cloistered
they accept drops of sun offering
As if to say, "I don't care what you think."
Copyright 2009 by Delia Corrigan
Critique by Jendi Reiter
I chose this month's poem, Delia Corrigan's "Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset", because it illustrates poetry's gift for exploring the universal through the particular. A good poem can devote itself to a small object or event, and by looking at it more closely than we do in everyday life, reveal something of broader significance about human nature. Some examples are Theodore Roethke's "The Geranium" and Stephen Dobyns' "Indifference to Consequence". The poem shows the fractal qualities of its subject matter, replicating in miniature our higher-level patterns of interaction.
Occasionally, Corrigan's poem lapses into an overly colloquial or prosy voice, which is a common problem for contemporary writers of narrative free verse. These "off" notes are most noticeable in her opening and closing stanzas. While I think "Lantana Camara" needs a bit more work before it's ready for professional publication, I decided to feature it in the newsletter because the descriptions of the plant and the woman's evolving relationship to it are so vivid and well-observed, containing complex shifts of emotion in the space of a few lines.
Through the narrator's decision to purchase a plant for her temporary lodgings, we are invited to consider the anonymity and transience of our interactions with others in this highly mobile society, and how this situation can make us selfish. The narrator wants to believe the puffery on the plant's label ("HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE") because it relieves her of responsibility for taking care of the plant she's picked out for her short-term enjoyment. She doesn't bother learning whether the lantana is "drought tolerant" or "drought resistant", or if there's a meaningful difference. Quotes from advertising can be an effective way to inject dramatic irony into a poem, since ad-speak tries to force words into a single unambiguously positive meaning, while poetry is about teasing out the ambiguities and unlikely associations between words.
Here, it's ironic that the plant's "pointed label reads SATISFYING" since whatever satisfaction she gets from the plant will be short-lived because of her own plans to move away. "Satisfying" is a word we see on a lot of product labels (not to mention Snickers' unintentionally gross-sounding variation "satisfectellent") although economic logic dictates that the product not satisfy for very long, otherwise we wouldn't need to buy more.
This habitual discontent comes through in the narrator's description of how she and the other occupants of the house are constantly on the move. Their lifestyle works against the tranquil and appreciative state of mind that would let them nurture a specific place and its nonhuman inhabitants: "I knew I would leave, doubtful/the occupants after me would stop to stoke/your star-like blooms", she writes, and later: "Renters' sandals slap their beat/on painted gray planks and/drown out your quiet/restless offerings". The combination of sandals, quiet, and "offerings" made me think of the atmosphere of a monastery, an association that's strengthened by the word "cloistered" later in the poem. The lantana, which has to grow where it's planted, simply devotes itself to existing and making the best of its surroundings, while the humans are rushing around to satisfy their temporary cravings.
The plant's quiet perseverance awakens the narrator's ethical sense. She feels remorse that she's treated the plant as an object for her enjoyment and not as a fellow living thing: "I knew all this but I bought you anyway/placing my momentary pleasure/above your very existence". Corrigan made the right choice in writing this poem as an address to the plant, not a narrative about the plant. If the "you" were replaced by an impersonal "it" or a sentimentally anthropomorphized "she", the poem would miss the chance to have the form reinforce the content, namely the passage from self-centeredness to relationship.
I thought the beginning of the poem was too weak, undercutting the authority of the speaker's voice before it had a chance to establish itself: "you are drought tolerant—/or is it drought resistant? I forget." Since we already know from the title that the poem is about a lantana, and we learn later on that it is drought-tolerant, it would be all right to open with a revised version of the second stanza:
The defiant flames of your gold and orange
clusters force me to stare
Your pointed label reads SATISFYING
Looking ahead, I wager that your five pound
maturity can handle neglect
Lantana camara, HARDY, INDIGENOUS, INVASIVE.
Spreading Sunset, you grow on me.
...
The other part that I would revise is the ending. "I don't care what you think" was too trivial a phrase to sum up the beautiful imagery and serious self-exploration that preceded it. It also seemed to contradict the lessons of compassion and interdependence that the rest of the poem teaches. What would the lantana really say, if it could talk? I don't think it would be this hostile. "I will survive"? "Grow where you're planted"? (Not that I would want to see either of these cliché phrases in the poem.) Actually, I don't want the lantana to speak at all, even in the narrator's mind. Its otherness, its nonhuman quality, has been necessary to expand her moral imagination. By not speaking or moving, it made space for her to examine her own thoughts and actions.
The poem could end by reversing the two penultimate lines to end on the stronger one: "they accept drops of sun offering/Veins like roadmaps stretch out, no longer cloistered." Since the word "offering" occurs three times in the poem, this might be a place to take it out, ending the line at "drops of sun". The travel imagery suggests that the plant has also been transformed by the interaction, taking on some of the narrator's energetic and adventurous qualities while she in turn has taken on some of its stillness.
Where could a poem like "Lantana Camara, Spreading Sunset" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Texas Annual Contests
Entries must be received by August 15
Prizes up to $450 for unpublished poems in 100 different categories (some are members-only); no simultaneous submissions
Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by September 1
Prizes up to $1,000 for narrative poetry, from a new literary journal based in Western Massachusetts; enter online only
White Mice Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: October 15
This $200 prize for poems on an annual theme (2009 is "Renewal") is sponsored by the Lawrence Durrell Society; Durrell was a 20th-century novelist who wrote The Alexandria Quartet
This poem and critique appeared in the July 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Largehearted Boy
Founded in 2002, David Gutkowski's literary blog explores the intersection of books and music. Features include Book Notes, which has authors create a mixtape relating to their latest book; Note Books, where musicians explore their literary side, Soundtracked, where directors and composers discuss their films' soundtracks; and "The Largehearted Boy Cross-Cultural Media Exchange Program," where authors interview musicians (and vice-versa).
Last Look
By Charles Burns. This volume collects Burns' acclaimed graphic novels X'ed Out, The Hive, and Sugar Skull. Imagine that Samuel Beckett and Hieronymus Bosch dropped acid together and wrote a Tintin comic. These horror comics braid the real-world story of Doug, a photographer and failed performance artist obsessed with his lost love Sarah, with the nightmare visions of his alter ego, Johnny 23, a low-level functionary in a breeding factory where woman-like creatures produce monstrous eggs. The features of his grotesque dream world gradually reveal parallels to Doug's real life and the relationship patterns that trap him in isolation. Subtle clues toward the end indicate a Buddhist message about purifying one's mind to escape the wheel of rebirth.
Last Rites
By Roberta Beary
chest pains
breathing in
the sunset
hospice bed
the get-well roses
stunted bloom
thin sunlight
eyelids flutter
in morphine sleep
deathwatch
the arrival of fresh
coffee
day moon
we windowshop
caskets
day of the obit
inside his wallet
me at eleven
This poem is reprinted from her chapbook Deflection (Accents Publishing, forthcoming 2015).
Last Rites
By Pamela Sumners
It rained cottonmouths for 30 days after you died.
They wore proud boots and took over the streets,
slithered and kicked through the steel-plated doors.
They sat coiled or casually dropped in your special recliner.
They ate the last Tyson's chicken in Arkansas—they did!
and then ravaged the okra and bean patches out back.
Then they took the tomatoes and purple-hull peas,
cutting a swath like Sherman's army marching to sea.
Their white mouths turned a deep heliotrope purple.
We plied them with offerings of heavy red wine
and they turned all purple and died. We swept snakeskins
for weeks. Next the bats came, echolocating what we
humans heard only as a series of slight erratic clicks.
We developed a decoder that could read bat-tongue for us
and learned that they repeated through the walls a gossip chorus:
"You know he heard the wind chimes just before he died, a music
that played so hauntingly on the listening ears of time."
We banged every pot and pan in the house like a marching band
starting off a Fourth of July parade with John Philip Sousa's brass
until they gave up their roost, a lonely, leaning excuse for a chimney.
When finally we wept and muttered a flood of desolate words
over your cavernous deep rhombus in the earth, a dark hole really,
an aunt we barely knew said to me, "Give me your last skinny-back
wishbone hug and tell us how thin we've become."
Later Bloomer
Debra Eve has been a software executive, archaeologist, and professional writer. She started the site Later Bloomer to collect inspiring stories of creative people who achieved great things in midlife and old age. Examples include Inge Ginsberg, the Holocaust survivor who fronted a heavy metal band in her 90s, and Leo Fender, the former accountant who designed the iconic electric guitars. She offers an e-newsletter and a sister site called the Imaginarium with book discussion groups and skills-training classes to boost your creativity.
Laura Thomas Communications
Laura Thomas Communications hosts a blog with writing opportunities for authors aged 21 and under. There are free poetry and fiction contests (no cash awards) and a personal essay prize based on Thomas's book Polly Wants to Be a Writer, a YA fantasy novel that is also a creative writing manual. The LTC online store sells workbooks inspired by the novel, with writing prompts and an overview of basic concepts.
Layering Place: In Ourselves, in Our Writing
In this 2018 piece from Ruminate Magazine, a faith-informed literary journal, essayist Catherine Hervey discusses ways to flesh out literary characters through the details they notice about a place and the memories that overlay it.
Le Jaseroque
Frank L. Warrin's translation of "Jabberwocky" into French weds nonsense to high culture. "Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux/Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave." Whatever it means, it sounds very important in the language of Racine and Moliere.
Learning English Language Arts with the New York Times
This feature on the New York Times website collects archived content that can be used to teach writing skills such as dialogue, narrative, and criticism.
Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith
Part memoir, part religious history, this compelling, controversial book by a Harvard-educated sociologist describes the fallout from her recovered memories of sexual abuse by her father, a leading Mormon scholar. Her anger is leavened by compassion as she delves into the complicity of a secretive church culture in creating and shielding abusers with split personalities. Though the topic is a dark one, readers who accompany Beck on her healing journey will be rewarded with her account of her strengthened connection to God's love and her own inner truth.
Leeway Foundation
Based in Philadelphia, the Leeway Foundation offers grants to women and transgender artists in the Delaware Valley region who are creating social change.
Legal Shield
A good value for writers who can't afford traditional law firm fees, Legal Shield is a monthly subscription plan that allows you to call their attorneys for consultation on specific issues. You can ask for a lawyer with a particular area of expertise, e.g. intellectual property. Recommended by publishing industry expert Jane Friedman.
Lemon Hound
Poet Sina Queyras runs this blog about the theory and practice of poetry criticism. Lemon Hound's "10 Questions for Reviewers" series interviews prominent poet-critics about their goals and techniques. The "How Poems Work" series features a poem by a prominent contemporary author, plus a critique by one of his or her peers.
Leonard Gontarek
God rubs shoulders with ghosts and mailmen in Gontarek's dreamy verses, which hover on the edge of abstraction like a Turner painting, and are often suffused with the same melancholy golden light. As he writes in "Amnesty": "When the earth & snow is apricot for seconds & your dreams fall fast as water Out the window, wouldn’t you say in the middle of that uncontestable joy, is sorrow, Like a metal sliver?"
Lesbian Poetry Archive
Julie R. Enszer, editor of the long-running lesbian-feminist literary journal Sinister Wisdom, maintains this free digital archive of poetry chapbooks, pamphlets, anthologies, and out-of-print journals of lesbian writing.
Letter from Dhahran
January 15, 1990
You learn to live on the back of a snake
that's always shedding its skin.
When you hike out, you can't
navigate by distance or by dunes.
Sand walks through tent walls.
The grains dance on wires. Wind
is a visible darkness. You don't recognize
duffle bags crumpled on your jeep.
You look as grey and as flat
as a plastic tarp.
* * *
You move with the two-beat undulation
of hands entrenching shovels.
When it feels like you're staying on
at a campsite you don't like anymore,
you argue over the size of city blocks
pace off remembered lots and back yards,
recall the green penetration of oleander,
how you worked to make hedges civilized.
In uniform, it's the same push and pull,
the same heartbeat of sweat.
Like following a lawnmower,
blades shearing down grass, the world
through a haze of clippings, the slashed
green scent in your nostrils, the whir
inside you. Like the time you mowed clean
into the garden and butchered the spinach.
* * *
Only when you stop to eat, do you slow
enough to start seeing behind the wind.
You pop open a can of pudding and lick off
the lid, making trails in the vanilla.
Ever notice how sugar sears
your mouth when it dissolves?
How your jaw aches? Almost wounded.
As if tears bled from your tongue.
Copyright 2004 by Heather McGehee
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Letter From Dhahran" by Heather McGehee, depicts the cognitive dislocation of a soldier beginning a tour of duty in the Saudi Arabian desert. Dhahran is the site of a US military base where troops were stationed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The poem captures the obstacles that the soldier must surmount before even seeing battle: homesickness, fatigue, and a punishing environment that adds risk to the simplest tasks.
The ever-shifting desert sands contribute to the dissolution and re-formation of the soldier's identity, as he struggles to integrate his old self, with a home and personal memories, and his new role as a more impersonal unit of military force. (In order to avoid repeating "he or she" throughout the critique, I am assuming the soldier to be male, but the poem could just as well be about a female soldier.) To adapt, he must become as mutable as the landscape, "a snake/that's always shedding its skin."
The personal and the impersonal change places in McGehee's imagery, creating a sense that the soldier is fighting to maintain his psychic boundaries against a landscape filled with invisible enemies. Sand "walks through tent walls" like a sinister spirit, while the soldier feels like he has turned into an object, "as gray and as flat/as a plastic tarp."
One way that the soldier stays centered is to map memories from his old life onto his new one, sometimes in an absurdly literal way, as he plots out familiar streets and backyards on the grounds of his base camp. Digging ditches, he remembers happier exertions, "how you worked to make hedges civilized."
This last word, "civilized," is the closest the poem gets to noticing the ironic contrast between the two types of work, cultivating a garden and digging trenches in preparation for killing other people. His ultimate mission seems absent from the soldier's mind, not even as a repressed source of tension. Is it because he's sure that his work here is also on the side of "civilization"? Or is he just so preoccupied with his daily physical and mental hardships that he cannot look that far ahead? "Like the time you mowed clean/into the garden and butchered the spinach." The poem here hints at the dangers of focusing too narrowly.
The last section, indeed, shows the soldier beginning to reach for a fuller emotional perspective. "Only when you stop to eat, do you slow/enough to start seeing behind the wind." Nurturing himself with food, he discovers the sadness concealed in the sweetness, as the poem returns to its opening themes of hidden perils and complex identities. Still, one senses that the sadness is primarily for himself, not for the larger conflict in which he plays a part. Does he realize that he is like the sugar, able to wound as well as nourish? Paradoxically, the poem raises this question most effectively by leaving it unsaid.
Where could a poem like "Letter from Dhahran" be submitted? The following contests, sponsored by journals that favor narrative free verse, may be of interest:
Arts & Letters Prize in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: April 15
Florida Review Editors' Awards
Postmark Deadline: April 2
Marlboro Review Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: April 30
Greensboro Review Literary Awards
Postmark Deadline: September 15
This poem and critique appeared in the February 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Letter Review
Letter Review is an online lit mag with contests, publishing opportunities, and articles about the craft and business of writing. They offer a reasonably priced critique service for short fiction, and an annual poetry and fiction contest with attractive prizes. An interesting feature of their publishing advice columns is that they tell you the going rates for selling work in various genres.
Letter to My Parents Long Gone from 853 Riverside Drive
By Norbert Hirschhorn
I think of you often,
especially on your birthdays
(July 19, November 29),
each of you divine,
your spirits nesting inside me.
You gave me life. Full stop.
What you endured to see me through:
abandoning your parents to the Shoah,
uprooted, flight, turmoil in America.
And I, know-it-all, hardly knew
what you went through—I fled,
abandoned you, even as
you stayed faithful to me.
My most sorrowful apologies,
Your firstborn son
Levellers Press
This small press based in Western Massachusetts publishes literary novels and short story collections through its Thornapple Books imprint, and poetry collections through Hedgerow Books. The press has also published nonfiction books relating to local history and progressive social thought. Poets in their catalog include Annie Boutelle, Patricia Lee Lewis, and Anne Love Woodhull. See website for submission guidelines.
