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Literature and History Podcast
Doug Metzger's ambitious podcast introduces listeners to the foundational works of Anglophone literature, explained in historical context, starting with its roots in Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman texts. The website includes songs, quizzes, and a bookstore. Read an article about the podcast at LitHub.
Literature-Map
Literature-Map is a project of Gnod, the Global Network of Discovery. Type in a favorite author's name to generate a cluster of other authors with a similar fan base. The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map. It's a fun way to find additional books to read in your favorite sub-genre.
Litopia Writers’ Forum
Litopia advertises itself as the oldest writers' colony on the internet, with members in the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Germany and the Caribbean. It was founded by literary agent Peter Cox of Redhammer Management. Free to join, Litopia includes critique and discussion forums, podcasts about publishing industry news and book reviews, and craft essays.
Little Demi-God
You wanted saving, so I tried,
Plug my strange world back in place, you said,
Make me whole with flesh and fire
In the image of your God.
A stranger to your spirit-house,
You opened up and welcomed me,
But inside I found your house was bare,
No spirit, no identity.
Yet then I saw a ghoulish thing
Wand'ring up your creaky stair,
And when I tried the door to leave,
I found it locked, the key not there.
And so, imprisoned, I became your God
While you fingered bones like rosaries
And whispered 'Love and Spirit for my Flesh'
In frantic prayer on bloody knees.
But you read me wrong, I am no God,
No three-in-one, no deity,
I could not save you from yourself,
Or me from you, or you from me.
So it was with blistered eyes I watched
My dreams aborted by your belief
And when you died, your final sacrifice,
I cried, not in mourning, but in relief.
This happened now so long ago
Yet memories still drop by on lonely nights
Like clumsy drunks they lurch through doors,
Slurring words, without invites.
From other lands, from underground,
You clutch and clutch and clutch at me,
There is no God, no after life,
You're dead and gone, so set me free.
Copyright 2003 by Natasha Sutherland
Critique by Jendi Reiter
"Little Demi-God" makes good use of Gothic and Christian imagery to tell a tale of psychological vampirism. While the metaphors are not novel, the emotional immediacy behind them saves the poem from cliché. The reader feels that the author is personally invested in this story. Some beginning writers will use archaic words and images to make a poem seem more lofty and "poetic" at the expense of sounding natural. By contrast, one gets the sense from "Little Demi-God" that these images came naturally to Sutherland, as the lens through which she saw this relationship.
The strength of this poem is its consistent narrative thread. The author advances a thesis—"you wanted me to be your savior, but instead you sacrificed us both for nothing"—and develops it steadily throughout the poem, using the notion of a Christian sacrifice gone awry.
Part of writing an effective poem is to match form and subject matter. Here, Sutherland made a smart choice to use a formal structure (rhyme and meter) rather than free verse. This style gives the poem a more old-fashioned feel that fits well with the haunted-house imagery we associate with 19th-century horror novels.
With some deviations, the lines are generally four iambs long. (An iamb is a pair of syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed.) This regular rhythm resembles a hymn or ritual incantation, which is appropriate for a poem about distorted spiritual yearnings. As the speaker of the poem becomes more trapped in her friend's dark mental world, her fruitless struggle is echoed by the relentless, unchanging beat of the lines.
How much to deviate from the meter in a formal poem is a tricky question. Many poems by beginners display lines of irregular lengths and rhythms, where the tacked-on final rhymes are insufficient to impose a poetic structure. On the other hand, too much regularity and the poem becomes sing-song. You can become so absorbed in building the structure that you forget to invest the words with real passion and vividness.
That being said, there are a few lines in "Little Demi-God" that could benefit from being made to fit the meter more accurately. In the next-to-last stanza, I loved the metaphor of recurring memories lurching against the door like unwelcome drunks. However, the line "Yet memories still drop by on lonely nights" is one iamb too long. "Still memories drop by on lonely nights" is a subtle change that returns the line to four stressed beats, if you say it right: "Still mem'ries drop by on lonely nights." Perhaps a better option is to rewrite the first two lines of the stanza: "Though this happened now so long ago/Mem'ries drop by on lonely nights." (I've contracted "memories" to "mem'ries" to show how it would be spoken, but it should be written out as "memories" so as not to look pretentiously archaic.)
Another line to tinker with is "Plug my strange world back in place, you said." I've selected this one because it's not one of the strongest, thus the poem would not be damaged too much by altering it. "Plug" seems more futuristic and electronic than the rest of the poem. Other too-long lines, like "And whispered 'Love and Spirit for my flesh,'" are important enough to the poem that they can probably be allowed to stand.
Sutherland would benefit from reading Emily Dickinson (wouldn't we all!) Many of Dickinson's poems play off of a hymn-like rhythm (quatrains of four-beat lines) but depart from that meter in creative, visionary ways.
Where could this poem be submitted? Formal verse, especially when paired with images reminiscent of 19th-century Romantic poetry, is hard to place in today's literary journals. I recommend The Lyric (P.O. Box 110, Jericho Corners, VT 05465, 802-899-3993) and Tucumcari Literary Review (3108 West Bellevue Avenue, Los Angeles, CA). Both are good small US journals devoted to formal poetry, where poems like "Little Demi-God" might find a home. Also consider magazines that specialize in dark fantasy and Gothic themes.
This poem and critique appeared in the August 2003 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize Anthology 2010
This engaging and accessible anthology features the winners and numerous runners-up from the first year of this contest, sponsored by a small press in Connecticut whose motto is "Delight, entertain and educate". Well-known contributors include Ed Frankel, Diane De Pisa, and A.D. Winans, alongside a number of writers who are just beginning their literary careers. A concluding section is devoted to the rediscovery of lesser-known authors including Jon Norman, Richard Harteis (partner of the late William Meredith), and Vernice Quebodeaux. The authors' bios are often as colorful as the poems themselves.
Little Red Tree Publishing
Little Red Tree Publishing was established in 2006 and is based in New London, CT. Their mission is to produce books that "delight, entertain and educate". Little Red Tree sponsors a first-book award for women poets, and an individual-poems contest with anthology publication for winners and runners-up. Authors in their catalog include Richard Harteis, W.F. Lantry, A.D. Winans, and Diana Woodcock.
Live Hope Love
Kwame Dawes, the University of South Carolina's poet-in-residence, launched this multimedia site to chronicle the experiences of HIV patients and caregivers in Jamaica. The site features his own profound and lyrical poetry as well as video interviews and background stories of the people who inspired him.
LiveJournal
LJ offers a free service with optional paid add-ons
LiveJournal: Shakespeare’s Sonnets as Haiku
Hilarious "executive summaries" of the Bard's first 20 sonnets, which show that he was obsessed with procreation.
Lives
By Lana Rafaela Cindric
Lives stick to me like the cherry lip gloss I find in
my grandmother's attic, right by the christening dress,
by the first braid I had cut off like shedding my skin.
I was so many things in so little time.
I was fury,
sweltering hot blistering rage summer kind of feral,
sweat pooling in your collarbone and skin sticky with want.
There was no ink-stained grace in how I forged my own gold
out of blood.
No one wanted to keep kissing the girl who only spoke of death, anyway.
(They pull you in and ruin you with their crazy, they do.)
I was the green line dripping down your family tree.
It's all in the genes, your mother's eyes, your father's nose,
how you put your fingers to the piano and Earth
shifts beneath my feet.
But pain, too, huh, did you notice that?
When you burn someone's house down you aren't just
destroying the walls.
You are destroying a history, too.
So put down the matches. Walk away.
This is not yours to ruin.
I was crazy, dirty, absofuckinglutely insane love.
The kind you only get when you've got a desperate soul and don't know
what to do with it anymore.
You've got to pour your heart into something, right?
But no one told you when to stop pouring.
When you bleed out, they step over your body
on the sidewalk.
Wildflowers will grow from your bones.
I was ephemeral, a fleeting moment in time,
now you see it now you don't, blink and you'll miss it.
Keep good eyes on the road and don't look back, find me
when you hear the music that wasn't supposed to be there. More feels like champagne bubbles
in your chest.
Your heart is a riot and you've got grease-stained fingertips
but your hands always looked good to me.
I was a peach orchard once, I'm sure.
I made something grow, light attracts light and man, oh man,
did the moths love me.
I was the summer you stole your first kiss, I was
a swelling symphony. I made something look beautiful and my trees
trapped sunlight.
I was a peach orchard once, I'm sure.
You don't forget that kind of joy.
It always makes the shadows a little less terrifying.
Living Right
By Laila Ibrahim. In this timely, heartwarming novel, a conservative Christian mother is forced to question her beliefs about homosexuality when her son attempts suicide. Their journey to acceptance includes a realistic depiction of so-called conversion therapy and how it can tear apart a loving family with a witch-hunt for nonexistent trauma. Sympathetic to faith, this book shows the diversity of views even within evangelical families, as well as the social pressure to keep silent about one's doubts.
Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam
This Cambridge, Mass. nightclub offers a poetry slam open mike followed by featured readers and jazz band every Sunday evening. Check out their weblog for news and links to some of their regular performers.
Lodestar Quarterly
Lodestar Quarterly was an online journal of gay, lesbian, and queer literature, published 2002-06. Contributors included S. Bear Bergman, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jane Rule, Susan Stinson, Michelle Tea, and Emanuel Xavier. Complete archives are available on the website.
London Proofreaders
London Proofreaders is an online proofreading and copyediting service. They say their unique selling proposition is that they assign two proofreaders to every text, for more thorough error-catching. At 12.50 pounds per 1,000 words, their rates are in line with typical US rates of 1-2 cents per word. London Proofreaders can work with academic papers from undergraduate to Ph.D level, business writing, and literary prose. They also offer novel editing and book proofreading.
London Undercurrents
By Joolz Sparkes and Hilaire. This collaborative collection by two British poets creates a people's history of London spanning five centuries, through persona poems in the voices of women from diverse backgrounds. Notable athletes, activists, and literary figures share these pages with imagined characters who represent factory workers, strikers, and working-class girls enjoying a hard-earned holiday. This book would be a good resource for junior high and high school history classrooms.
Loretta Wray
By Terri Kirby Erickson
My mother, lipstick red, barefoot, toenails painted
the palest shade of pink, stretched out her dancer's legs
and rubbed suntan lotion into a face
that should have been magnified on a movie screen—
the kind that bowled men over even with curlers in her hair
and children dangling from both hands wherever she went.
They never saw the greasy chaise lounge behind our house
where the sun whispered sonnets in her ears
and darkened her skin with hot kisses while the radio
played "Blue Velvet." And the green grocer and the mailman
and the gas station attendants and the jean-clad
teenage boys loitering downtown on Saturday afternoons,
who caught glimpses of Loretta Wray every now
and then, if they were lucky, would have dropped dead with desire
if they'd seen her sunning herself in our backyard wearing
nothing but a two-piece bathing suit and a lazy, sun-drenched
grin, the best years of her life almost, but not quite, past.
#
(Reprinted from A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53); originally published in storySouth)
Los Angeles Review
Each issue is dedicated to a contemporary writer or cultural leader; honorees have included Ishmael Reed, Eloise Klein Healy, Judy Grahn, and Bruce Holland Rogers.
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Los Angeles Review of Books publishes original poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and literary and arts criticism. Their nonprofit foundation also offers publishing workshops, author events, and a book club. Use the online form on their Contact page to pitch an article.
Loss and Blossom
By Jeanne Julian
Everything liquid and solid
simultaneously, thick trunks
and twigs encased
in dripping ice, and between us
and everything, fog
on the way to the funeral
home. She was dead young.
Her father wished out loud
to see her future,
which never was.
Why is this now
never enough?
Humbled by hints of ebb,
coax permanence from
summer's temporary embrace,
let an imagined hammock hold
you warm under magnanimous
sky, and dreaming of daisies, deny
encroaching marmalade-hued mums.
Murmur over and over to the ominous
dark crickets crouched under cobwebs
that cling to the flowerpots,
"The cosmos blossoms
by the rotting stump."
Lost
I take your hand
which has at times enfolded mine,
with fingers certain of their strength and power
I search your face
so familiar as you turn to me,
each line etched upon my heart
by our countless years as one
Your eyes seek mine
yet gone from them is the heat,
the blazing force of passion
now cooled by drifting clouds of fear
Your mind, once compelled to dwell in
fierce logic and complexity,
has lost its way in the fog of disease
leaving you forgetful of even simple tasks
I loved you then; I love you now
yet my heart aches with the memory of the man I knew
as I live with the man who remains
Copyright 2010 by Maggi Roark
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
The difficulty in writing about illness, whether our own or that of someone we love, is that the emotions are so very strong. We long to express their full magnitude but have only feeble words to work with. Poetry presents itself as a way to empower, even venerate, these words, yet poetry requires form—some sort of containment. While this may seem oppressively restrictive in the heat of our urge to communicate, it can—in fact, must—become an asset if we are to write a successful poem. Containing our feelings pressurizes them, and it is this threat of explosion that moves the reader.
In last month's Critique Corner, we compared two poems that wrapped their narrator's experiences in metaphors, much as bitter medicines are wrapped in pill casings. By doing so, they enable the reader to swallow them, and so, feel their effects. This month, for contrast, we will look at another, very different, poem: "Lost" by Maggi Roark of San Diego, California, who told me in her letter that she originally turned to poetry while deep in grief. With "Lost" Roark has been less gentle than last month's poets, forcing the reader to look directly at what she herself is seeing.
The strength of "Lost" is its simple but elegant form: stanzas one and two begin with "I"; stanzas two and three begin with "your"; stanza five achieves a satisfying cadence by balancing "I loved" with "I love." This clean, musical structure helps to quiet the revelations of the text to a volume at which the reader can hear them.
Without it, phrases like "countless years" or "blazing force" might shout. They are, essentially, hyperbole, and hyperbole, when not used as irony or wit, can strain a reader. A second sort of hyperbole evident in this poem is redundancy—in other words, one way to overstate something is to say it twice. "Heat" in stanza three is restated as "blazing force"; "so familiar" rephrased as "etched upon my heart".
Since simplicity is this poem's chief asset, I suggest looking for ways to strengthen that quality, with a particular eye toward removing redundancy.
One way to revise towards simplicity is to scrub the text of extraneous words and syllables. "Helper" verbs, prepositions, articles, and so forth, can often be excised with no loss to meaning. For example, stanza one might lose "has" in line two and "with" in line three.
In stanza three, one word the author might want to reconsider is "countless" for the obvious reason that they are not countless at all, though perhaps seemingly so. Therefore the word needs either to be cut or modified.
More importantly though, as I said above, stanzas two and three contain restatements. Unless there is an expressive reason to do otherwise, only the strongest phrasing should survive revision. In this poem, "familiar" in stanza two could be removed. So could the entire second line of stanza three, especially since the third line with its lovely sound correlations between "cooled", "clouds", and "now" as well as "drifting" and "fear" make it the poem's strongest line.
Part of that strength is owed to the way the metaphor of the line extends into stanza five, as the clouds descend to fog. Following that image up with an explanation greatly reduces its impact. The reader understands line four of the stanza even without its being stated.
As for the final stanza, its beauty is in its balance. Besides, we have "heart" above. I suggest reinforcing the balance by removing everything in lines two and three but "the man I knew/the man who remains".
It can be an amazing and wonderful discovery for a poet to realize how powerful simplicity can be. Poems are constructed upon tensions. The contrast of overwhelming emotions plainly put forth is potent. Organized into an unassuming form, they become a plangent and universal song.
Where could a poem like "Lost" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Abilene Writers Guild Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Prizes up to $100 in a number of genres including rhymed and unrhymed poetry, short stories, articles, children's literature, and novel excerpts
Writer's Digest Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: December 15
Good exposure for emerging writers in this contest from a national writers' magazine, which offers prizes up to $500 for poems 32 lines or less; online entries accepted; no simultaneous submissions
Dream Quest One Poetry & Writing Contest
Postmark Deadline: December 31
Twice-yearly contest for emerging writers offers top prizes of $500 for prose, $250 for poetry; previously published work accepted
Heart Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: December 31
Twice-yearly contest from Nostalgia Press offers $500 for "insightful, immersing" free-verse poems
This poem and critique appeared in the November 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Love in the Western World
Bold, original study of the invention of courtly love and its echoes in high and low culture through the centuries. Themes include the tension between romance and marriage, romantic ecstasy as substitute for religion, and the craving for union with the beloved as a disguised longing for self-annihilation. Nonscholars may skim some of the historical passages, but poets and fiction writers alike will benefit from reexamining the origins and implications of the romantic values we take for granted.
Love Justice
By Bracha Nechama Bomze. This debut poetry book from 3Ring Press is simultaneously a book-length love poem, a family memoir, and an epic of social change. The title's multiple meanings encompass generations of Jewish labor activism, winning the right to marry her lesbian partner, and the heartbreak of a closed adoption system that stigmatized her birthmother. Through all these personal and political traumas, the poet continues to praise the natural world that feeds her soul, and the life partnership that comes as a fairy-tale happy ending to a lonely childhood. The book is an inspiration and a delight.
Love Poem to Androgyny
Fierce, tragicomic poetry chapbook voices the struggles and desires of a lesbian whose masculine appearance leads her (not always voluntarily) to adopt alternate identities in response to others' preconceptions. This writer's fertile imagination was formed by a hostile world in which one best expresses one's true self by wearing a mask. "Who will believe us that deception is only/ a matter of cutting through the red tape?"
Lovecraft Country
By Matt Ruff. This suspenseful and satirical novel-in-stories follows an African-American family in 1950s Chicago who tangle with a cabal of upper-class white occultists. Each chapter cleverly inverts the xenophobic tropes of one of H.P. Lovecraft's classic horror stories, with the implication that the heartless and greedy cosmic forces of the Cthulhu Mythos are more a self-portrait of Jim Crow's America than an enemy from beyond the stars.
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac
The festival, held each autumn, celebrates the life and work of novelist Jack Kerouac.
Lulu’s Veil and Jocasta’s Brooch
By Dana Curtis
In answer to your question: I'm pretty sure
all the birds are dead now—this will teach
them not to think such dark thoughts,
such purple blotches across
a cat's electric fur. In response
to the continental shift, may I
just say: I've always loved
cracks in the earth, web underfoot,
the veil I only wear at murder
trials or someone else's wedding. Think
about it. You'll be pleasantly surprised
at the result, at what holds diamonds,
the silk: the wayward river from
the eye socket. I spent a long time
looking for just the right frame—
black with a dial. It connects
to what I need to connect—historical
fragments jumping out of
the bright red box. In reference to
the shutting of the cemetery, the removal
of your mouth, the selling
of a crystal doorknob: yes
or no, maybe later, vivid.
Luminarium
Full texts of medieval, Renaissance and 17th-century poetry and verse-dramas, with scholarly commentary. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Donne, Milton...
Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine
Literary webzine with a specialized focus on Japanese short form poetry. Several contests throughout the year offer modest prizes for haiku, senryu, free verse, and flash fiction.
Lyttle Lytton Contest
This website collects and publishes the worst first sentences of imaginary novels (and some equally bad quotes from real ones).
M-Moments
By Lind Grant-Oyeye
Silvery hair, bones thinned in-out, of life the silver screen speaks.
Letter M, embossed in audacious colors. It had begun long before her time...
time when clay pots were sanded out to shimmer.
It starts by falling—falling in love. Minute carts tenderly packed
full of moments, full of memories delicately loosely tied together.
It flows with fantasies of prized certificates, a desire for a stamp—the majestic seal of approval.
It flows to the stage of self-journey through dark subways, tunnels to the unfamiliar...
untested promise lands. She heard some had swam bellied-up in wavy pools,
Chillin' to the historic tempest.
Others swim to "bien venue" cat-calls, to honeymoons filled with French kisses,
flowers and fresh caresses, beauty and beautiful feet planted on cozy carpets,
romance lasting into wintery and the hurricane hugging days.
On strange lands were some feet planted. They kissed strangers
and slept with enemies—red juices pressed against their lips,
with the firm force of a heavyweight boxer's strength, kissing Judas' doppelganger
to the sweet sound of the language from Babel, spoken with a lover's passion.
Faint memories show M in the alphabet song, is for Migration, for marriage.
M. Miriam Herrera
See Ms. Herrera's website for mystical, earthy poems from Kaddish for Columbus and Witch Wife.
Mad to Live
A pregnant woman develops a craving for bugs. A couple bond over the failure of their wife-swapping party. A father consoles his child over the dinosaurs' extinction, while wishing his own parents had allowed him to believe in heaven. These are some of the seeds from which spring Randall Brown's quirky, brilliant, heart-rending short-short stories. This collection won the 2007-08 Flume Press Fiction Chapbook Competition. Their book design is also a standout.
Madhouse Media Publishing
Madhouse Media Publishing is a self-publishing services company based in New South Wales, Australia. Their offerings include editing, book and cover design, print/e-book conversion, and marketing assistance. Visit their blog for how-to articles for indie authors. Their Ebook Revolution Podcast features author interviews about craft and career topics.
MagCloud
Self-publish your own magazine through MagCloud. Simply upload a PDF of your issue and MagCloud will handle printing, mailing, and subscription management. Small press runs are no problem here. Participation is limited while the site is still in beta-testing.
MagCloud
Self-publish your own magazine through MagCloud. Simply upload a PDF of your issue and MagCloud will handle printing, mailing, and subscription management. Small press runs are no problem here. Participation is limited while the site is still in beta-testing.
Magic Dragon
Published since 2005 by the nonprofit Association for Encouragement of Children's Creativity, Magic Dragon is a quarterly magazine featuring art and creative writing by children aged 12 and under.
Maine
Offbeat offerings in this winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize include "Hair Club for Corpses" and a sestina in which every line ends with "Bob". Winter can switch from serious to humorous and back again in a blink: "Everyone's losing at something./ It just matters more to some people, for example, Orpheus/ or Ty Cobb."
Make a Living Writing
Freelance writer Carol Tice's blog offers field-tested tips on how to market yourself and increase your earnings. Other services include an e-newsletter and mentoring consultations.
MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine
Contributors have included Joyelle McSweeney, Eula Biss, Gabriel Gudding, and Joe Meno. See website for upcoming themed issues. Editors say, "Chicago is a storyteller's city, and MAKE is the story's magazine. Chock full of fiction, poetry, essays, art, and reviews, MAKE is substantial in both feel and scope. MAKE expands on the Chicago tradition to entertain and to inform."
Making Certain It Goes On
No modern poet captured the essence of a place as well as 20th-century master Richard Hugo, whose tightly paced free verse reveals the dignity of America's forgotten towns.
Making Manuscripts: An Irregularly Braided Conversation
In this interview from the Spring 2021 issue of DMQ Review, poets Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (Morse Poetry Prize winner for Tulips, Water, Ash) and Annie Kim (Word Works Washington Prize winner for Eros, Unbroken) share their manuscript craft tips and intuitive strategies for discovering how poems speak to one another.
Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth
By Carl Siciliano. This luminous memoir by the founder of the Ali Forney Center, the nation's first homeless shelter for queer and trans teens, is both a spiritual autobiography and an incisive social history of the 1980s-90s. Siciliano shows how we could save children's lives with a small fraction of our city and state budgets, yet often ignore this population because of racism, queerphobia, and even respectability politics in the gay community. Moreover, the problem would not exist on such a huge scale without hateful theology from Christian institutions that causes families to throw their queer kids out on the streets. Siciliano poignantly describes a lifelong struggle with his Catholic faith. The church is responsible for a great deal of abuse, but the tradition also gave him role models for a life of sacred service, like St. Francis and Dorothy Day. As a spiritual touchstone, the author returns to memories of Ali Forney, a murdered genderqueer teen, drug user and survival sex worker, who proclaimed unshakeable confidence in God's love.
Mannheim
By Erika Dreifus
I did not cry the first time I went to Mannheim,
when my father and I studied the nameplates
listing the residents of the building on Ifflenstrasse
where his mother had been born, and grown up.
The building she left one April day in 1938, just in time,
and had never re-entered.
I did not cry even when the current second-floor residents
invited us in, and I stood in the high-ceilinged rooms
where my great-grandparents had withstood the Kristallnacht.
In the photos my father snapped
to show my grandmother, back in Brooklyn,
I am smiling.
I did not cry the second time I went to Mannheim,
when my father and mother and sister and I toured the city,
armed with Grandma's handwritten maps,
and visited the shiny blue synagogue.
From the hotel we telephoned Brooklyn
before driving away on the Autobahn.
The third time, the train from Stuttgart stopped.
I descended to the platform.
And the signs read,
Mannheim.
This time my grandmother was gone.
Not just from Germany.
But back in New York her namesake had just arrived.
I blinked a few times. Bit my lip.
Stared at the sign, and swallowed.
Then I walked, fast, through sunbaked streets,
straight to the department store
where I bought the baby a sweater
and tiny socks
before I hurried back to the train station.
Manoleria
By Daniel Khalastchi. Winner of the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize, this collection is a memorable addition to the literature of horror poetry, as well as the poetry of political witness. The narrator of these poems obediently submits to an endless sequence of bizarre procedures that are part surgical invasion, part public spectacle of punishment. Like someone brainwashed or anesthetized, he is quite clear about what is physically happening but has numbed out the normal reactions of fear, anger, or confusion. There is no narrative movement toward freedom or enlightenment, but a strange kind of beauty arises from the speaker's attention to detail.
Manuscript Tips
Literary contest judges read hundreds of manuscripts each year. A professional-looking submission makes your work look good. By contrast, a surprising number of contestants ignore the rules, spoiling their chances. Here are formatting tips from Jendi Reiter, editor of Literary Contest Insider and final judge of the Winning Writers contests.
FONTS AND PAPER
Manuscripts should be typed or printed on white 8.5x11" paper. Use a common, legible font such as Courier New or Times New Roman. A good type size is 12-point. If a different size is needed to fit within a contest's page limit, don't go lower than 11-point or higher than 13-point. Legibility will suffer and the judge will think you're playing games.
Most contests expect poetry to be single-spaced. If double-spacing is preferred, the rules will say so. Fancy paper and flowery fonts are a waste of time and money, and can annoy judges who find them hard to read. Gimmicks suggest you are an amateur.
FRONT MATTER
The term "front matter" refers to the cover page, title page, table of contents, and the acknowledgments page where you list the publication credits for poems in the manuscript. Some contests will specify whether the page limit includes the pages devoted to front matter. When in doubt, assume that it does.
COVER PAGES [sample] AND TITLE PAGES [sample]
The cover page should contain the following information, centered on the page:
Author's name
Author's address, phone number, and email address
You can put "Copyright 2015 Your Name" in the lower left-hand corner. This is not required. Your work enjoys basic copyright protection at creation.
Underline the title. Both the title and the author's name should be in a larger font than you would use for text in the manuscript. A good size is 24-point type for the title, and 18-point type for your name.
Often, a contest will ask you to submit a manuscript with both a cover page and a title page. This conceals the author's identity from the judges until they've chosen a winner. The cover page, which has your name and address, is filed by the contest coordinator. The title page stays with the manuscript. This page has just the manuscript title on it. You can also put "Copyright 2005" but leave out your name.
TABLE OF CONTENTS [sample]
The table of contents should use the same font and size as the poems. It should list the poem titles on the left of the page, with a line of dots matching each poem to the number of the page where it starts. For untitled poems, put the first line or first few words instead of a title. If your manuscript is divided into sections, the table of contents should also list the page where each new section begins. Most word-processing programs will generate a table of contents for you, or you can do it by hand. Always include a table of contents, even when the rules don't request one.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS [sample]
Place your acknowledgments page after the table of contents or at the end of the manuscript. Set it in the same font and size as your poems. Some contests prefer you to submit this page as a separate sheet. Others may ask you to omit it. This page lists the poems in your manuscript that have been published and where they appeared. It's not necessary to list the dates or issue numbers of the poetry magazines that published your work, but you may do so if you have room.
You can include your manuscript title on the acknowledgments page, but leave out your name and address.
TEXT [sample]
Put each poem on its own page. Placement on the page (centered, left-justified, or scattered around) depends on the style of your work. I prefer left-justified over centered, since that's the way most poems are printed in books and magazines. Number every page. Your word-processing program will do this automatically if you activate its page-numbering function.
COVER LETTER [sample]
Your cover letter should use a common, legible font such as Courier New or Times New Roman. I suggest the 12-point size. Standard white paper is fine.
State the following at a minimum: "Enclosed is my manuscript, [title], which I am submitting to the [name of contest]. I have enclosed the entry fee and a SASE for your response."
You can also include the names of magazines where your work has appeared and books that you've had published.
Some contests prefer that you complete their entry form rather than submit a cover letter.
WHAT'S A SASE?
A SASE is a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. (British contests call it a SAE.) Use an ordinary letter-sized envelope for notification of winners, or a 10x13" envelope with adequate return postage if the contest guidelines say that manuscripts will be returned.
We suggest buying a small postal scale at an office supply store such as Office Depot. You'll save money by not putting too much postage on your packages. Current US postal rates are available at http://www.usps.com/.
Good luck!
Manuscript Wish List
Manuscript Wish List is an online database of agents and editors, with information on what they're currently seeking. The site also has a podcast and blog with craft articles.
Maple Tree Literary Supplement
The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, a thrice-yearly online journal, provides a platform for dialogue or interviews on any topic between and amongst Canadian writers, while featuring their work and reporting on literary events, landmarks or festivals in Canada and around the world—with an emphasis on their Canadian composition. The journal accepts submissions of unpublished poetry, short fiction, general-interest nonfiction and personal essays, excerpts from dramatic works, and author interviews. This is a paying market.
Maps of War
Visual history of war, religion, and government. Animated maps show the rise and fall of empires over the centuries.
Maralys Wills
Writing instructor, speaker, and memoirist Maralys Wills is the author of 12 books, including the writers' manual 'Damn the Rejections, Full Speed Ahead'. Visit her website and blog for writing advice and pithy anecdotes about juggling work and family life.
Marc J. Frazier Poetry
Marc Frazier is the author of the poetry collections Each Thing Touches (Glass Lyre Press, 2015) and The Way Here (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks After and The Gods of the Grand Resort, both from Finishing Line Press. Cyrus Cassells calls Each Thing Touches "rich with striking and dynamic questions...refreshingly human, urgent, and disarming." Frazier has had several residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois and received an Illinois Arts Council award in poetry. Visit his website to find out about his workshops.
