Resources
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For Southern Boys Who Consider Poetry (Saeed Jones)
Pushcart-nominated poet Saeed Jones, author of the chapbook 'When the Only Light is Fire' (Sibling Rivalry Press), blogs about writing, contemporary culture, and the potentialities and limits of the "black gay poet" identity.
For Your Own Good
By Leah Horlick. This breathtaking lesbian-feminist poetry collection breaks the silence around intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships. Jewish tradition, nature spirituality, and archetypes from Tarot cards build a framework for healing. This book is valuable for its specificity about the dynamics of abusive lesbian partnerships, which may not fit our popular culture's image of domestic violence. Horlick shows how the closet and the invisibility of non-physical abuse make it difficult for these victims to name what is happening to them. The book's narrative arc is hopeful and empowering.
Forgotten Child
By Ruth Hill
Alex Gervais committed suicide at the age of 18, after 11 years in British Columbia's child welfare system. - Dirk Meissner, Canadian Press
When young you wanted everyone to know you
sirens call; sirens fall
You should've learned to swim, not run to any him
splashing, dashing
Those throwing lifelines only there to rob you
your marks for sharks
It's the target missed, kissed, then missed again
then machine-gunned
It's the wondering if you'll ever be back again
back where? nowhere
It's the falling off the edge of granite mountain
ragged, jagged
It's the prick, the stick of chemical thick needles
the wane, vein drain
The drowning out of memory with new noises
you fear they're here
Soon even you'll forget what you were born for
sour hour, no power
It's the cost of being lost without a pathway
gurney journey
You're so tired that your bier's a welcome bed
beautician mortician
Your name not even carved upon a gravestone
your birth, your life, your death: forgotten
****
Author's Note: "'Forgotten Child' was featured with a dedication to all the children in government care. Alex's aunt tried repeatedly to gain custody or adopt him. British Columbia social workers have a policy to never contact or grant rights to any next of kin of children in government care. Many of these children are wanted back by their relatives and communities, and the children don't even know that. Information is hidden from both sides. Also, the children in care 'age out' at 19, and are evicted and have their funds cut off. It is so serious that only 1% of children in care ever graduate from High School. Knowing this, the University of British Columbia recently tried to help by granting totally free university tuition to any child survivor of government foster care. Canada has a long-standing feud with First Nations about removing and not returning their children, but non-natives are fighting the same government attitudes. (Read more about this on the Canadian history blog Acres of Snow.) Every child needs a sense of belonging. Laws must be changed."
Forms of Gone
The poetic equivalent of a Chagall painting, this collection by a daughter of Holocaust survivors pays homage to the burdens and treasures of Jewish history. "I hoped to become one/ on whom nothing would be lost."
Forwriters.com
Excellent resources for writers, with special attention to science fiction, fantasy, horror and speculative fiction. Links to markets, publishers, contests, agents, writers groups, author sites, writing resources and conferences. Active discussion forum.
Found Polaroids
The website Found Polaroids is a curated collection of over 6,000 anonymous photos from the past. Readers are invited to submit a short story (250-350 words) based on one of these images. Or use them as the seed of inspiration for your own writing projects.
Four Hidden Dangers of Writing Groups
Jane Friedman's blog features expert advice about today's publishing industry. This guest post by Jennie Nash, the chief creative officer of Author Accelerator, challenges the conventional wisdom that group feedback is always helpful for learning to write. Among other issues, she observes that peers may lack expertise, and that the fear of failure in a social setting may hold writers back from taking necessary risks.
Four Things to Decide Before You Write Your Memoir
In this article from the blog of self-publishing company BookBaby, writing coach and scientist Dr. Dawn Field describes how to structure your memoir so it reads like a compelling story. Some pointers: Focus on a span of time with a defined narrative arc, not your whole life; feel free to move back and forth in time to foreground the most important events; and have a clear take-away message that makes your personal story relevant to others. "The best memoirs are like parables. They are not only intriguing—they help others improve their lives."
Freddy Niagara Fonseca
Poet and spoken-word performer Freddy Niagara Fonseca writes of natural wonders and spiritual questions. His projects include the poetry collection The Bomb That Blew Up God and the anthology This Enduring Gift, a compilation of work by 76 poets from Fairfield, Iowa.
Free Breakfast
By Terri Kirby Erickson
The Springhill Suites free breakfast area
was filling up fast when a man carrying his
disabled young son lowered him into his
chair, the same way an expert pilot's airplane
kisses the runway when it lands. And all the
while, the man whispered into his boy's ear,
perhaps telling him about the waffle maker
that was such a hit with the children gathered
around it, or sharing the family's plans for the
day as they traveled to wherever they were
going. Whatever was said, the boy's face was
alight with some anticipated happiness. And
the father, soon joined by the mother, seemed
intent on providing it. So beautiful they all
were, it was hard to concentrate on our eggs
and buttered toast, to look away when his
parents placed their hands on the little boy's
shoulders and smiled at one another, as if
they were the luckiest people in the room.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive has a large library of royalty-free music clips (up to 15 minutes long) that are searchable by style, mood, pace, instrumentation/vocals, and more. Good for book trailers.
Freedom With Writing: The Paid Publishing Guidebook
Freedom With Writing connects freelance writers with jobs and opportunities. Sign up for their free e-newsletter to receive this PDF directory (100+ pages) of magazines and websites that pay for writing in various genres including news, entertainment, sports, travel, education, philosophy, and religion.
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
This book by a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer inspired the hit movie and TV series. The Permian Panthers' season-long battle to reach the 1988 state high school football championships becomes a microcosm of racial and economic tensions in a West Texas town where the boom-and-bust of oil wealth has left many without a clear vision for their future.
From a Secret Location
This site is the companion to A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980 (Granary Books, 1998). It is a history and digital archive of poetry zines and small press ephemera from the "mimeograph revolution" that circulated work by poets in such movements as the Black Mountain poets, Beats, New York School, Fluxus, concrete poetry, Black Arts, deep image, ethnopoetics, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
from Love Justice
By Bracha Nechama Bomze
[In this excerpt from Bomze's book-length poem Love Justice (3Ring Press, 2015), she is speaking to her partner about the latter's family history.]
My darling, who is this woman who gave you birth?
Brooklyn-born to anti-Tsarist revolutionary immigrants
her father, an escaped Bundist from 1905 failed uprising,
chosen Honor Guard at the funeral of martyred sailors from the Battleship Potemkin
(He quips: "I didn't need to see the movie—I was there!")
Your grandmother denied a job by Triangle Factory bosses
whether for her famed paddy wagon lock-ups
for sweatshop organizing, or for her klutzy sewing skills,
one week before the murderous blaze, March 25, 1911.
What if they weren't paying attention at Grandma Sheindl's interview
as she stitched her trial sample—an only slightly tangled mess?
What if they just needed a body,
a Yiddish-speaking girl's body
to seat, as was their custom, beside an Italian-speaking girl
lest two teenage neighbors, machines hammered down side-by-side,
stitch insubordinate whispers into ready-to-wear plans,
baste strong threads from a common tongue into off-the-rack revolt?
What if her notorious unionism had escaped their cold scrutiny?
What if she'd pulled off a few swift needle tricks and aced their test?
What if, uncharacteristically,
she'd managed to restrain herself,
refrained from needling the bosses with wry, sassy quips?
What if they hadn't sniffed out her apron crammed with subterfuge,
Yiddisher Arbeiter Bund leaflets stuffed in her lunchpail?
What if they hadn't been warned by a prior boss
of her paddy wagon excursions for justice?
Hundreds of young seamstresses
locked down inside towers of ragged scraps
locked down to keep out women like Sheindl
locked down to shut in women like Sheindl.
The only fire escape window, with a secret key,
by a foreman's resolute click, padlocked...
A burning cigarette flickers, hurling sparks.
Dusty mountains of fabric explode in volcanic flame.
Bosses flee the executive door, bolting stairway doors behind them
lest some seamstress child take undue advantage,
escape alive, but with a few spools of thread, a tin of buttons,
a pincushion not yet deducted from her salary
stashed inside her flaming smock.
One hundred forty-six workers, within minutes, morph into ash.
Or, wailing, screaming, the women help each other to leap,
from the high diving board of the ninth floor sill
to the empty pools of Washington Street, Greene Street
empty but for the charred bodies of girls too poor to stay in school.
Joe Zito, elevator operator, escorts his terrified sisters
into a flaming free-fall
no fire ladders can reach.
No nets can sustain the impact
of their bodies slamming the sidewalks
thud after thud after thud after thud.
Each strand of long, dark hair a wick in a blazing memorial candle.
What if what if what if what if...
What if, somehow, Triangle bosses had chosen Sheindl?
Then never could I have chosen—you.
What can be escaped?
What will always follow?
From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals
In this article from the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers Magazine, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley discusses the growing prestige of online publication and the advantages it offers for disseminating your work. Recommended journals include Blackbird, Coconut, and Drunken Boat.
From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals
In this article from the May/June 2009 Poets & Writers Magazine, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley discusses the growing prestige of online publication and the advantages it offers for disseminating your work. Recommended journals include Blackbird, Coconut, and Drunken Boat.
From the Album
That gazes at me from a bygone age
Of monochromes; the family album's place
Where my eyes, captured, fix upon that page.
A gray-beard father of some unknown brood,
Among these fellows in their country dress.
Some with their guns, a posse, hunt or feud;
One man among the others, more or less.
No taller surely, and no better dressed,
But there amidst his, animated, kin;
His hollow eyes apart from all the rest,
As if some old sin brought to mind again.
Without the names, the time or circumstance,
I know no faces from these faded prints;
And only that one halts my casual glance,
Returning stare for stare, a certain sense...
That comrades in the picture failed to find
The specter of some future he must see
That they do not; across the gulf of time
He rests his brooding gaze here, now, on me.
How can we know when we are looking out
Into a void our eyes cannot dismiss;
Despite great faith or hope, beyond all doubt,
The shutter snaps, and springs the dark abyss.
Copyright 2007 by Hank Rodgers
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "From the Album" by Hank Rodgers, pulls off three rather difficult tricks in only 24 lines. It is a well-executed formal poem whose syntax and vocabulary nonetheless sound modern; it makes a philosophical argument feel personal, concrete and immediate; and it sends a shiver down the back of my neck.
Rodgers' work (see here for another example) reminds me of the 20th-century British poet Philip Larkin. In poems such as "Church Going" and "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", he combined nostalgia for traditional forms with a self-lacerating awareness that the old faiths had become exhausted. Rodgers' "From the Album" similarly derives its energy from the conflict between the romantic, backward-looking style of the verse and the speaker's realization that the chasm of mortality is unbridgeable.
Ironically, the only message that the past can exchange with the future is that communication fails. The speaker cannot know what the unnamed man in the picture was thinking, and it seems that his comrades were also a world away from seeing what he saw, despite being nearest to him in space and time. The man's death, which was mystery and anticipation for himself, is a known fact for the speaker; this cannot help but darken and distort his imaginative reconstruction of the man's thoughts.
The photograph, any photograph, contains a paradox. Because on the surface it freezes time, it appears to be a form of immortality. Yet when we, who are still moving forward in time, look back on it, we see that change has occurred, and we remember the moments that will never come again. Reifying the past as a separate world turns it into a thing that can and will be lost, just as the dynamic life in which we are now immersed will someday be reduced to a static image.
"The shutter snaps, and springs the dark abyss." It's said that some Native American tribes believe that taking someone's picture can steal their soul. In "From the Album", being photographed may not literally kill you, but it springs the trap of self-awareness which includes the awareness of death, and that may be worse—the double-edged knowledge that the forbidden apple brought. The subject's haunted face and aura of separation from his comrades lead the speaker to imagine the possibility of a crime, "some old sin brought to mind again," that the passage of time can only bury, not redeem. In its vagueness, it stands in for all the misdeeds we will never have enough time to remedy if this life is all we have.
Rodgers' varied sentence structure is an essential feature that distinguishes well-written formal poems from those that sound sing-song and unnatural. Beginners commonly make the mistake of having the pauses fall at the end of each line or couplet. Rodgers continues sentences across line breaks ("from a bygone age/Of monochromes") and stanza breaks ("a certain sense...That comrades in the picture failed to find"). The resulting voice flows as naturally as a prose paragraph, without being too colloquial for its poetic form.
I would alter certain irregular punctuation that I found distracting: the ellipsis after "sense" in the line just quoted, and the commas around "animated" in the third verse. While slight deviations from exact meter can enhance a formal poem, I think it's unwise to do this in the first line, which needs to set the tempo in an authoritative way. "There is" is also not the strongest phrase with which to begin.
The last line of this poem hits like the crashing final chord of a minor-key symphony. The repeated S sounds create a sinister background hiss, while the plosives P, T and K convey the quick, nasty surprise of a machine that instantaneously severs life from death. It is a fitting end to a profound and disturbing journey.
Where could a poem like "From the Album" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry Society of Virginia Annual Contests
Postmark Deadline: January 19
Prizes up to $300 for unpublished poems with various themes and styles (28 categories)
Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by January 31
British poetry society offers prizes up to 600 pounds for unpublished poems by authors aged 16+; pay fees in UK currency only
W.B. Yeats Society Annual Poetry Competition
Postmark Deadline: February 1
$250 award for unpublished poems includes invitation to ceremony at the elegant, prestigious National Arts Club in New York City in April
This poem and critique appeared in the January 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
From the Box Marked Some Are Missing: New & Selected Poems
This delightful first volume in Hobblebush Books' Granite State Poetry Series offers formal verse that is light-footed, elegant, and full of surprises. Many of Pratt's poems concern his work as an apple-grower in New Hampshire, describing the farming life with humor, wistfulness, and reverence. There are also poems of family life, European travel, meditations on aging and the mystery that lies beyond.
From the Fishouse
Audio archive of emerging poets features text and recordings of work by dozens of contemporary writers as diverse as Matthea Harvey, Leslie McGrath, Tyehimba Jess, and Xochiquetzal Candelaria.
Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry & Aesthetics
Edited by prizewinning poets Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich, aims at furthering communication between poets, critics and philosophers from different cultures and literary traditions.
Full Moon
By Adam Phillips
My friend's weird son
speaks only in terms
of werewolves
One day I pointed
out to him Ronnie, your werewolves
do nothing
differently because of their lycanthropy; in your stories they
Study the city's bus schedule,
shop for groceries after work on Thursday
in order to keep
the whole weekend clear; your werewolves
Are really worried about the economy and their
digestive health; doesn't that
kind of
Defeat the whole purpose, shouldn't
they be
Ripping out hearts, running
through the marsh?
Aren't werewolves just a metaphor
for man's frustrated virility,
for the scarcely repressed
Dark side
of human nature?
Each of us wants
the thing we are not,
said the boy,
Blinking the moonlight out of his eyes.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
This outstanding memoir, written as a graphic novel, intertwines the author's coming of age as a lesbian with her memories of her brilliant, enigmatic, repressed father, who died in an accident that she suspects was suicide. Drawing parallels to sources as diverse as Joyce, Colette, Proust, classical mythology, and The Wind in the Willows, she shows how their shared love of literature substituted for the intimacy they could never express in more personal terms. Bechdel is the author of the long-running "Dykes to Watch Out For" comic strip.
Fun With Words
Anagrams, palindromes, rhyming slang, nym words, oxymorons, pangrams, Tom Swifties and all the many other oddities of the English language. Don't miss the stirring tale of Beeping Sleauty.
Funds for Writers
Grants, contests and markets for writers. Resource-packed online newsletters include TOTAL FundsforWriters, FFW Small Markets, and WritingKid (young writers). Editor C. Hope Clark also offers ebooks with specialized marketing resources for poets, fiction writers and more.
Furious Flower Poetry Center
The nation's first academic center for Black poetry, Furious Flower was established on the James Madison University campus to serve creative writers, literary and cultural scholars, and poetry lovers everywhere. They are committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters, as well as in the whole range of educational curricula. Named after an image in a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, the academic center originated in the acclaimed 1994 Furious Flower Poetry Conference, the first major conference on African American poetry since the 1970s. See their website for educational materials, conferences, classes, and poetry prizes.
G.K. Chesterton’s Works on the Web
This fan site maintained by British computer scientist Martin Ward offers the full texts of books and articles by the prolific turn-of-the-century poet, fiction writer, journalist and popular theologian Gilbert K. Chesterton, best known today for his "Father Brown" mystery stories.
Gail Golden
Activist poet speaks with eloquence and compassion about war and peace, the blessings of family life, and her Jewish heritage. Visit Gail Golden Consulting for her prose writings about racism, domestic violence and social justice.
Garden
I have my gardens recite to me
In many tongues of flowers
In their poppy-seeds
i see sweetness and life without bearing judgement.
For i have learned enough
of my share of my own existence
in the melodious names
of a hundred fragrances
And fruits.
And in their sweetness,
I will buy back something of their Composure
which holds me here for a while
under the scorching skies.
For such bitterness would not chill me
half as much as these mute pleadings
Held with so much promise and wealth.
For that is what i understand:
Ripe fruits and flowers held in their own poetry
Dripping with bolus colours
Set before a thousand canvas
Arrayed in the sun
Exhausted by their own beauty and plight
Copyright 2011 by Kelechi Aguocha
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
For the last two months, this column has considered how and why to add complexity to our poems. This month, with the help of Nigerian poet Kelechi "Kaycee" Aguocha, let's reverse that trend by demonstrating one of the most simple—yet infinitely likeable—revision strategies: "generosity".
Here at Critique Corner we regularly receive poems from all over the world. Although I enjoy reading these, I will confess, I do hesitate to select poems for this series from places truly foreign to me. I cannot write about them in relation to contemporary American poetry, because that is not what they are.
For example, were I to see an American poem with capital letters beginning every line in one, unbroken, stanza, I would suggest those as areas to be questioned in its revision. But such formal conventions are cultural, even, I dare say, fashionable, and I find that I am not sure what is appropriate to recommend.
Another example: if a poem that I believed to be by an American had sloppy spelling, or truly confusing grammar...well, I'd think less of its author. Yet, seeing the same mistakes made by someone very far away, often writing in their second language, I am charmed—and impressed. They're doing way better in my language than I am in theirs. Surely there's more to offering a revision than cleaning up some spelling. It would not make an essay worthy of your attention.
But there was something about Mr. Aguocha's poem that stayed with me. Likely it was those inviting first lines:
I have my gardens recite to me
In many tongues of flowers
It occurred to me that those lines would be evocative to any person anywhere in the world. And that made me think of a revision strategy I have always wanted to share, something I learned in a lecture by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Carl Dennis. He called it "Generosity".
It's wonderfully simple. Take the first person pronouns—I, me, mine—and turn them into third person pronouns—we, us, ours.
So here's the poem again:
We have our gardens recite to us
In many tongues of flowers
In their poppy-seeds
We see sweetness and life without bearing judgment.
For we have learned enough
of our share of our own existence
in the melodious names
of a hundred fragrances
And fruits.
And in their sweetness,
We will buy back something of their Composure
which holds us here for a while
under the scorching skies.
For such bitterness would not chill us
half as much as these mute pleadings
Held with so much promise and wealth.
For that is what we understand:
Ripe fruits and flowers held in their own poetry
Dripping with bold colours
Set before a thousand canvas
Arrayed in the sun
Exhausted by their own beauty and plight
Now the poem is about me and about you and about humanity and about Kaycee—which is what the poet asked to be called.
Now the garden is a garden, but also our collective gardens, and the EARTH, as a collective garden and each of our personal ones.
As for:
For we have learned enough
of our share of our own existence
in the melodious names
of a hundred fragrances
And fruits.
What a lovely sentence. It's a much bigger poem, and I simply find it makes me happier to read it.
Part of what makes me happy is that this poem sings. The sudden change of rhythm in the phrase "For such bitterness" is a sort of key change, perhaps with "would not chill us" to a minor key. With the change of pronouns, it becomes a beautiful song about "us".
If the poet were to make those changes, I'd suggest removing the first two words.
The poem is already generous. One way that poems communicate is to share our common humanity—for example, our common celebration of the natural beauty around us.
Everyone has a poem in his or her file that will fly with just a touch of generosity. Find it, revise it, and share it with the world.
Where could a poem like "Garden" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Founders Award
Postmark Deadline: October 31
Georgia Poetry Society offers top prize of $75 for poems on any topic, up to 80 lines; no simultaneous submissions
Soul-Making Literary Competition
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Prizes up to $100 for poetry, stories, prose poems, personal essays, humor, and literature for young adults, sponsored by a chapter of the National Association of Literary Pen Women; contest looks for original, freshly creative and finely crafted work that embraces all creative interpretations of English poet John Keats' statement: "Some say the world is a vale of tears,/I say it is a place of soul-making"
This poem and critique appeared in the October 2011 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Garden Party
By Silvia Curbelo
The day makes its final appearance,
the sky rubbed out in places
with a blue so understated it's nearly
a memory of blue. Forget the vase
arranged on the table, the tulips
are too vague. Even the white
tablecloth is an erasure.
Imagine the pale drone
of dinner conversation,
the politics of brie, cold soup.
The good china infects everything.
Even now the knife falters,
the wine glass can't be saved.
Think of the blank mirrors
of spoons, the fish
whose whiteness is a given.
Consider the ravenous napkin.
Gary Introne
Sample Mr. Introne's poems on his blog.
Gender Queer: A Memoir
By Maia Kobabe. Playful, emotionally vulnerable, and even cozy, this graphic narrative is a coming-of-age memoir centered on Kobabe's discovery of eir nonbinary and asexual identity. Gentle, accessible artwork with a sophisticated color palette gives the story an intimate feel, as if a friend or family member was sharing confidences with you. As well as being entertaining, this book is a good educational resource for teens and adult allies as well as queer folks looking to understand themselves.
Geoffrey and Margot, After the Breakup
On second thought
he should have brought some wine and cheese.
But he showed up, instead,
with a loaf of plain white bread,
some cold cuts and a box of faded memories.
There wasn't anything to drink,
just water from that rust-stained sink.
He would have liked some tea but
she ran out the other day.
So he squeezed a withered lemon slice
and wondered if the awful price
was something that he honestly
could ever hope to pay.
The years they spent together,
like the vagaries of weather,
were highs and lows and arguments,
the kind most people have.
But the roads were getting much too steep,
the wounds were getting much too deep
to be healed by any ordinary antiseptic salve.
He knew it wasn't meant to last.
She ran her life so god damned fast.
He had trouble keeping up with her
just getting into bed.
She was like a lonely rose
thorns disguised in perfumed prose.
Holding on would leave him
with his fingers freshly bled.
So he finally broke it off
announcing with a nervous cough
that he'd rented an apartment
on the other side of town.
There was a sadness in her eyes
that somewhat softened her replies
though she stung his ears with one last taunt,
"You'll never live this down!"
But like a knitted sleeve's unraveling,
love's tether seems an endless string,
so he'd look for vagrant reasons
to take that crosstown ride.
He'd find her scarf among his things.
He'd hear a song they used to sing
and so he'd go, they'd share some bread
and all the truths they used to hide.
Copyright 2006 by Gene Dixon
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Gene Dixon's "Geoffrey and Margot, After the Breakup" is a bittersweet poem that makes the most of the ambiguous terrain between serious and light verse. Like the ex-husband it describes, the poem does not make a show of its romantic intentions, but sidles up to the reader, seeming to have nothing consequential on its mind, till the poignant surprise of the final lines. The irregular number of lines per stanza, and the relaxed meter, similarly disguise the artifice of the consistent "aabccb" rhyme scheme.
I appreciated how all these elements of the poem worked together to create an unbroken mood of quiet intimacy, tinged with equal parts humor and sadness. The characters' names are well-chosen; I pictured a middle-aged British couple who see themselves as too old and sensible for the operatic language of love, preferring the depth of their relationship to remain unspoken. The ending leaves us wondering whether the price of their newfound trust is too high. Did love have to die before friendship could begin—or will they find their way back to each other?
The opening lines do not give a hopeful prognosis for the relationship. Here are two people who can scarcely be bothered to do anything for each other, or for themselves. He "should have brought some wine and cheese" but the best he can manage is cold cuts and white bread, whereas she is even worse off, with only rusty water and withered lemons in place of tea.
But are they really so badly off, or is this bleak perspective the flip side of the same self-pity that made ordinary "arguments, the kind most people have" look like wounds too deep to heal? Not until the very end of the poem does it seem as if the characters are ready to give up the melodrama and see one another clearly. This poem's stubborn demythologizing of romance, its dissection of the shabby realities beneath our self-serving fantasies, reminded me of the work of mid-20th-century poets Philip Larkin and Alan Dugan.
Later in the poem, we unexpectedly learn that Margot was originally too passionate for her husband. How did someone who until recently "ran her life so god damned fast" become incapable of remembering to buy tea? Perhaps Geoffrey was always after her to tone down her emotions, and now that she has changed into the person he thought he wanted, he sees what a mistake it was. The "awful price" he fears he cannot pay could be the guilt he feels at her apparent depression, or the way in which their separation has cut them both off at the roots and made them only half-alive.
The metaphor of the unraveling sweater in the last stanza prepares the way for the literal scarf that triggers Geoffrey's nostalgia. The touching detail "He'd hear a song they used to sing" shows them in a new, less comical light, as a couple who did not merely bicker over sex and cuisine but whose hearts could respond to art and romance.
There is a feeling of harmony in this stanza, as if the characters' real lives and their imaginations are at last in sync. Previously, all we hear about are mismatched expectations and disappointments, both before and after the breakup. Margot, at least as seen through her ex-husband's eyes, may have been somewhat phony and self-dramatizing ("a lonely rose/thorns disguised in perfumed prose"). But somehow, sharing a simple loaf of bread has become enough to overcome their estrangement and insincerity. The trivial or stylistic differences between them were not the issue after all. The question that remains is whether either one has the courage for a relationship where "all the truths they used to hide" are now in the open.
Where could a poem like "Geoffrey and Margot" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Best New Poets Open Competition
Entries must be received by June 15
Meridian, the literary journal of the University of Virginia, offers $200 and anthology publication for poems by writers with no published books; no simultaneous submissions; enter online only
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: September 30
This contest, sponsored by Winning Writers, includes prizes for verse in traditional forms.
This poem and critique appeared in the May 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
George Saunders on Storytelling
In this artistically produced video from The Atlantic magazine, acclaimed short story writer George Saunders shares his advice for writing a story that is compassionate, surprising, and open to fresh meanings. "Revision is a form of active love; it's love in progress," he says, touting the benefits of listening to your characters rather than controlling them. Saunders is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker whose collections include Tenth of December and Pastoralia.
Georgia Poetry Society
The Georgia Poetry Society is a well-established literary organization with membership in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS). They host a monthly poetry open mic online (not limited to Georgia authors). Other offerings include poetry contests, website listings for members' books, and online courses on the craft and marketing of writing.
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog
This blog from the sponsor of the renowned Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival features video clips of readings by major contemporary poets (see the "Poetry Fridays" sidebar link), plus news about other cultural programs that the Dodge Foundation sponsors in New Jersey and beyond.
Geraniums
By Carmine Dandrea
No geraniums, please.
I want no geraniums—
those funereal flowers found
with their greeny smell
casually erect in pink clay pots
dotting cemetery lots.
I'll have none, please.
Those blown petals parted
by each vagrant breeze.
No geraniums, please.
Next only, in proximity
with deadly death,
to gardenias' anemia—
old faded odor
sifting silently
from ancient ladies' breasts.
So, no geraniums, please. I'll have none, please.
If to avoid a family feud,
I'm pressed to choose,
a few chrysanthemums
would freshly do.
But, for God's sake,
no geraniums, PLEASE.
Get Published Now: Molli Nickell, Publishing Consultant
Molli Nickell, a former Time-Life editor and journalist, now teaches writers to create marketing documents and make effective pitches to agents and editors. She also guides writers through the pros and cons of self-publishing. Her website features monthly contests with the prize of a free consultation. Based on the sample pitches and manuscript excerpts on the site, this service seems most appropriate for writers of genre fiction or commercial nonfiction.
Get Published Now: Molli Nickell, Publishing Consultant
Molli Nickell, a former Time-Life editor and journalist, now teaches writers to create marketing documents and make effective pitches to agents and editors. She also guides writers through the pros and cons of self-publishing. Her website features monthly contests with the prize of a free consultation. Based on the sample pitches and manuscript excerpts on the site, this service seems most appropriate for writers of genre fiction or commercial nonfiction.
Getting a Top Reviewer to Read Your Book
In this blog post, Amazon Top Reviewer "Bassocantor", a/k/a Chris Lawson, gives advice on how to craft a professional, targeted pitch to solicit book reviews.
Getting Along with Grief
"Grief is more a recovery process than a traditional 'healing' process. It is not something we get over, as much as it is a set of experiences and emotions that we learn to live with, as we live on in our own lives." Check website for monthly themes for submissions.
Getting Along with Grief
Author and artist Ysabel de la Rosa launched this blog in 2011 to collect poetry, prose, brief essays, book reviews, and artwork on the theme of living with loss. She writes, "Grief is more a recovery process than a traditional 'healing' process. It is not something we get over, as much as it is a set of experiences and emotions that we learn to live with, as we live on in our own lives." Check website for monthly themes for submissions.
Getting Book Endorsements (Blurbs)
In this 2022 guest post on publishing expert Jane Friedman's blog, award-winning novelist Barbara Linn Probst (The Sound Between the Notes) shares tips for selecting and approaching authors to blurb your forthcoming book.
Getting Smart: 35 Sources for Curated Educational Videos
Getting Smart is the blog companion to Tom Vander Ark's book of the same name, about the digital learning revolution. This post gives a list of educational video archives for children and youth, on subjects including biography, math, science, and the arts.
Ghost of Funeral Past
By G. Greene
seated before the altar,
I mourned you at the inaugural
of the end of our life.
In that same hour today,
the sad ghost I am now
returned to the shrine
of that bitter anniversary
to find a baptism underway,
renovating the echo of your last rites.
From the last pew
I bore silent witness
to the rituals of a newborn life,
as I wept over the remains of ours.
I departed quietly,
a poltergeist with no role in that play,
unseen, unremarked, unrequited,
and made my solemn way to the graveyard,
the very last specter in your funeral procession,
the very first in hers.
Ghost Town
They are looking for fearless and inventive fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Prose should be 7,500 words maximum. They are also interested in translations, letters, cryptic found writings, illustrations, and other oddments. Reading period is September 1-February 1.
Ghosts
By Raina Telgemeier. Children and adults alike will shed happy tears over this graphic novel about a Mexican-American family whose younger daughter has cystic fibrosis. In the days leading up to Día de los Muertos, the sick girl and her older sister cope with impending mortality through encounters with friendly spirits.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
This fan site maintained by British computer scientist Martin Ward offers the full texts of books and articles by Gilbert K. Chesterton, best known today for his "Father Brown" mystery stories.
Girl Flying Kite
By Nancy Louise Lewis. The subjects of this visionary, God-haunted debut poetry collection could not be further from the innocent quotidian scene suggested by the title. In fact, the title itself is our first clue to the menace and mystery Lewis finds beneath the surface of daily life, as it refers to a child victim of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the shadow of her last playful moments forever burned into the wall. Other poems draw inspiration from the author's Appalachian childhood, stories of father-daughter incest, and enigmatic encounters with a divinity whose presence we can neither completely discount nor rely on. Lewis is most at home in the liminal space between belief and doubt, like the constantly eroding and re-forming shoreline of the ocean that appears in many of these works.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
By Patricia Olson
Her amber eyes follow me
deep as earth's core,
pure concentration
from beneath blue silk
wrapping her head,
her day's work done
she sits posed,
poised for the painter,
the portrait that hides
secrets, questions, longings.
Who is she?
Who is the painter?
The thread binds them
In breathless silence.
Golden light flows
Through shutters, stretches
like lace across her face,
her breath clouds the room,
the needle burned in flame
pierces her ear, the blood
wiped away, the pearl
dangles, glistening,
an opalescent tear,
his eyes longing,
painting her to eternity
her eyes, a Madonna
or eyes of God's judgment,
staring, following me,
there is no escape.
This poem is reprinted from:
