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Shards: Poems from the War
Contemporary war poetry selected by Eugene Volokh. Professor Volokh teaches law at UCLA. Submissions welcome - formal verse sought.
Shark Bait
Sharks close their eyes
the moment before they strike.
They sense the electrical signal
of the heart, they know where to bite,
they can find it blind. The heart
will betray you every time.
It's been a year I've chosen
to be alone. My life is full
of work and talk and the occasional fling
where no one falls for anyone—it's best
to become heartless. No one holds me
back; I don't get that attached.
I say heartless but this is a lie. It beats
red and bloody underneath it all, I am ripe
for slaughter. It keeps getting harder
to hide the signal: the heart wants
to be discovered. Or devoured,
if that's what it takes.
The sharks' own hearts must
crackle with charge as they glide
silently through the leaden water—
do they sense each other's presence
as they sense prey? Do their hearts
call out to each other
in the darkness
beneath the waves? I want someone
to draw my passion like a magnet,
a target, I long for it. So the heart
sends out its signal; I'm a beacon.
Nothing will protect me
from the danger.
I'm just waiting to feel
the teeth sink in.
Copyright 2004 by Ellia Bisker
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Shark Bait" by Ellia Bisker, spins an arresting bit of scientific trivia into an extended metaphor for how our instinctual need for connection may prove more powerful than our "higher" functions of judgment and willpower.
The poem takes a single idea and consistently develops it with skill, using repetition of certain key concepts (heart, signal, sense, electricity) to maintain the narrative focus. Bisker is economical with language, which helps the poem avoid sentimentality for the most part. Short, sharp rhythms and the use of internal rhymes and alliteration create a relentless momentum as the speaker's illusions are stripped away.
The theme of blind fate is evident from the first line, "Sharks close their eyes". The poem suggests that humans no less than other animals are hard-wired to make connections, be it with lovers, predators or prey. While the conscious mind tries to resist a destructive coupling, something more basic and sub-rational in us prefers any interaction, even a fatal one, over solitude. I'm reminded of numerous crime stories (e.g. Ray Bradbury's classic "The Ravine") about women who are drawn to stalkers and serial killers, perversely fascinated by the possibility of a desire so strong that it obliterates its object.
Bisker gives the theme of love and death a clever twist when she imagines sharks finding their mates by the same signals that they use to find prey. It's all the same hunger: "the heart wants/to be discovered. Or devoured,/if that's what it takes." The juxtaposition of similar-sounding words (devoured/discovered) is an effective technique that emphasizes the message of the lines while also creating a pleasing pattern of sounds.
Throughout the poem, Bisker has a good ear for the rhythms of speech, wisely choosing to end many sentences on a powerful downbeat while varying the placement of these end-stops within the line. Some examples that stand out: "It's been a year I've chosen/to be alone" and "I say heartless but this is a lie. It beats/red and bloody underneath it all, I am ripe/for slaughter."
Enjambment—the continuation of a phrase beyond the end of a line of verse—is another technique that "Shark Bait" employs to good effect. In the second stanza, line breaks allow the poet to suggest multiple meanings that are in tension with one another, reflecting the speaker's inner conflict about her solitude. The second line of this stanza asserts that "My life is full", but following the thought onto the next line, we see what it is really filled with. "[W]ork and talk and the occasional fling/where no one falls for anyone"—full of emptiness, in other words. Further down, she asserts that "No one holds me/back", a positive statement of liberation concealing the lonely cry that "No one holds me".
Something about the last stanza left me a little unsatisfied. Though it logically followed from the rest of the poem, it felt slightly less interesting and original. Perhaps it was because the speaker slipped into the passive role of "victim of love" at the end, when previously the poem had been alive with the electrical charge of her passion. In the previous stanzas, she was exercising agency; even though her mind chose one thing and her heart another, they were both trying to take control of her fate, whereas at the end she is "just waiting". I would have been interested to see the speaker try on the predator's or shark's role, realizing that maybe she can take charge of satisfying her heart's craving instead of merely capitulating to it.
Where could a poem like "Shark Bait" be submitted? The following contest may be of interest:
Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award
Postmark Deadline: July 1
Prizes up to $1,000, publication in The Comstock Review; no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2004 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
SharpWriter.Com
Links to dozens of online dictionaries, grammar and style guides, and copyright advice sites are among the most useful features of this website maintained by horror/suspense novelist John T. Cullen.
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders
This witty and eye-opening memoir describes one person's experience of being transgender. James Finney Boylan was a published novelist and English professor who had tried all his life to suppress his feeling that he was female inside. Finally, at age 40, he began the process of transition, leading to an upheaval and rearrangement of his family life, depicted here in anecdotes both comical and sad. Some will feel that the real hero of the tale is the author's wife, who lovingly supported Boylan's transition despite her pain and anger at losing the man she married. Boylan's hilarious narrative voice is the book's chief strength; its weakness is an absence of in-depth reflection on where our ideas of "male" and "female" identity come from.
Sheer Poetry
This British website, geared to teachers and students of writing, offers a collection of materials on poetry and poets by contemporary UK authors such as Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, and Simon Armitage. Features include interviews, critical essays, study guides, and an online forum. Material for children is well-represented, as are women poets.
Shelly Jackson
See "The Body" for linked prose poems and short-shorts in a novel use of the Internet.
Shibai
By Don Mitchell. In this compelling hybrid memoir and true-crime account, Mitchell recounts how the cold-case murder of his friend Jane Britton, a fellow graduate student in the Harvard anthropology department, was solved after 49 years. Shibai, a Japanese word for a stage play, also means "gaslighting" or "bullshit" in the slang of Mitchell's native Hawai'i. As an anthropologist among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville, Mitchell learned early that truth is always filtered through the stories we tell ourselves and the roles in which our culture casts us. When Becky Cooper, a journalist for the New Yorker, contacts him for a book she is writing about Jane's case, he discovers, in retelling the story to a stranger, that his long-held assumptions about the murder don't hold up. With him, the reader relives the Kafka-esque terror of being suspected by the police, the frustration when the investigation is stonewalled or misled by people he once loved, and the sorrow and relief of finally filling in the gaps about Jane's last moments. The resulting saga is a profound and subtle meditation on memory, aging, and our responsibility to the dead. Like a shadow that provides contrast in a photograph, Jane's unlived life stands as a counterpart to Mitchell's honest and self-aware journey through the milestones of his 77 years, from the triumphs and disappointments of his academic career to his deep relationship with the Hawaiian landscape and people.
ShortStops
Literary news site covers contemporary short fiction in the UK and Ireland. ShortStops features listings of live literary events where short stories are read, journals that publish short stories, a directory of authors in the genre, and other related links.
Sibling Rivalry Press
Founded in 2010 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Sibling Rivalry Press is a well-regarded independent publisher of poetry and literary fiction. In addition to publishing award-winning poetry collections, SRP is home to Assaracus, a journal of poetry by gay men; Jonathan, a journal of gay fiction, and Adrienne, a journal of poetry by queer women. Writers of all identities are welcome to submit to the press. Authors in their catalog include Wendy Chin-Tanner, Collin Kelley, Megan Volpert, and Julie R. Enszer.
Sibylline Press
Sibylline Press is a small press with a marketing co-operative that is dedicated to publishing novels and memoirs by women over 50. They are LGBTQ-friendly and trans-inclusive. One could consider them a hybrid publisher in that they require the author's financial investment in the marketing budget. Their website is modern and their book covers look professional.
Side Trip
By James K. Zimmerman
I seek an occasional
side trip to the universe
next door
the next slice in
the cosmic loaf
of bread
there, crows do not
say "caw" nor sneezes
"a-choo"
it is unearthly still
no language to ruin
thought
no heavenly bodies
to memorize
the words
and there, god is a magic
wand to a violin
an open hand
to a hungry dog
or perhaps
to a lurking trout
an angler's passing fly
Significant Objects
DIAGRAM Magazine editor Ander Monson and his creative writing students created this series of impressionistic short pieces inspired by cheap knickknacks from thrift shops.
Silence
The Eskimos had it right
With all their words for snow—
As if one word,
One small combination of letters,
Could describe
That experience
Which bakes its schizophrenic soul
Into so many dishes,
A veritable many-course meal
For those with stomachs large enough to partake
Each different offering,
Savor the flavor
Of each soundless course
Cooked with care for them alone.
Steamed, sautéed,
Grilled and garnished
By different occurrences;
The champagne-bubbly silence of anticipation,
A soufflé baked with precision,
Apple pie-steam and coffee brewing,
The aroma impatiently unbearable;
The crunchy, loud silence of awkwardness,
Carrot bits flying everywhere
Orange and unforgiving,
Spinach stuck between buck teeth;
The hot silence between lovers not yet tasted,
Fajitas sizzling on the grill, their many trimmings
Displayed carefully side by side,
Waiting to be liberally thrown on a tortilla
Spread open and inviting;
The revolting silence of disbelief,
Leftovers left too long in the fridge,
Crammed behind the mustard, forgotten
Fermenting,
Until the rancid smell pervades everything around;
The bitter silence of jilted lovers,
Burned chocolate, milk gone sour,
Food eaten unknowing,
Its salmonella-poison masked
By other tastes;
The cold silence of grudge,
A brainfreeze—
Icy daggers borne of too much introspection—
That punctures logic
And shatters compassion,
Leaving taste buds numb;
The smooth, creamy silence
Of meditation,
Swirls of custard and meringue,
Key lime pie and fruity sherbet,
Bathing the soul in being;
The spicy cinnamon taste of accomplishment,
Warm, dry silence
That momentarily satisfies the palate
But leaves the soul thirsting for more
In just a few hours;
The blubbery aspic of loneliness,
Gelatin wiggling on the tongue,
Silence swilled
Like too much water
Until the stomach distends of its own accord,
Bloated from unwanted gluttony;
The sweet silence of years of acquaintance,
A familiar, lovely taste—
Comfort food—
Calorie-rich with love and memory;
The tasteless silence of death,
Cottonmouth on the tongue,
Unwanted heartburn
Stuck in the throat,
Which will not go away.
Copyright 2007 by Jessica Keeslar
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Jessica Keeslar's poem "Silence" is full of surprises. Leading off with an observation so familiar as to have become clichéd, she reclaims it by force of will, applying all her inventiveness and exuberance to the conceit around which she has built the poem, until she has established her authority as someone with fresh insights to offer. Her zesty, unexpected, yet always apt metaphors disclose the true character of both silence and food, in the same way as the proverbial Eskimo's vocabulary is meant to reveal fine gradations among weather conditions whose individuality we formerly ignored.
Snow is snow, we might say, to justify our lack of attention. Like snow, silence at first appears simple, empty, easily understood. By pairing this austere and seemingly featureless phenomenon with something as varied and abundant as food, almost its opposite, Keeslar makes us notice both the richness of silence and the loss that is the flip side of food's nurturing.
The opening stanzas, which in my opinion are the weakest, have a cute, chatty tone that led me to expect light verse. The poem's playful spirit is one reason it works: the Eskimo-language factoid has been cited so often in a sentimental, didactic "stop and smell the roses" context that Keeslar's over-the-top descriptions strike a refreshingly self-aware note of parodic humor.
It wasn't until the stanza beginning "The crunchy, loud silence of awkwardness" that I realized something important was happening in this poem. This is where she starts to let it all hang out, digging into the experience of awkwardness with a messy scene that makes us laugh and cringe at once. A bad poem often fails because the author has no humility, that is, no sense that her powerful emotions might be ridiculous in a certain light. I was worried by the portentousness of the first two stanzas, but here, Keeslar winks to let us know she's in on the joke.
The metaphors become more creative as the poem progresses. "The cold silence of grudge,/A brainfreeze—" how clever to pair (sweet) ice cream and (bitter) resentment, forcing us to puzzle out the underlying similarity. Both can be pleasures we gorge ourselves upon, thinking at first to nurture ourselves, but later finding that this self-indulgence is more of a headache than it's worth. "The spicy cinnamon taste of accomplishment" and "The blubbery aspic of loneliness" transcend reductive explanation by analogy. These lines directly translate mental states into physical sensations that startle us because the connections are at once so unexpected and so right.
Keeslar makes the interesting choice to end the poem on a note of deprivation. Though not all of the emotions explored in the poem are happy ones by any means, up to this point the overall mood leaned toward affirmation and abundance. As in meditation, where both pleasant and unpleasant feelings are to be studied and embraced without judgment, Keeslar seemed to be setting negative experiences (awkwardness, anger, loneliness) within a larger, more generous and positive frame of reference. Even decay has its own rich palette to be savored, she says. But ending with the death stanza, rather than slipping it in earlier before an upbeat conclusion, somehow undermines this hope. As a reader, I feel disappointment, maybe even betrayal, because my expectations for the poem were frustrated. As a critic, I'm not sure this is a bad thing.
The descriptions of the different kinds of silence are pitch-perfect and I wouldn't change them at all. I would, however, seriously condense the opening three stanzas. They lack the musical rhythm and unusual imagery of the stanzas that follow, and their tone is somehow too precious. If Keeslar wants to keep the over-used Eskimo-snow reference, which does have the virtue of setting this poem within an instantly comprehensible tradition, she might want to lead off with her own original thought, instead of placing too much weight on an observation already handled so often by her predecessors. Below, a rough attempt at a new beginning for this poem:
Silence serves up as many dishes
as the Eskimos' words for snow—
For those with stomachs large enough to partake
Each schizophrenic offering,
Savor the flavor
Of each soundless course
Cooked with care for them alone:
The champagne-bubbly silence of anticipation,
etc.
In this revision, I tried to preserve the phrases that were most individual, substituted the stronger and more specific word "schizophrenic" for "different", and foregrounded the poem's true subjects in the first line. I eliminated phrases that seemed merely repetitive of concepts already introduced. The Eskimo reference suffices to convey the inadequacy of a single word to convey a multifaceted experience. Thus, I cut out the first few lines of the second stanza, which spell out this message in a way that felt like overkill. I might like to see a more tactile, unexpected word in place of "schizophrenic" (mental illness being nearly a poetic cliché itself) to express the dissonance of flavors that Keeslar is about to ask us to swallow. This author has a great talent for the objective correlative that she needs to put on display right from the beginning of this adventurous poem.
Where could a poem like "Silence" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Second Light Poetry Competition
Entries must be received by October 1
British group of women writers over 40 offers prizes up to 300 pounds; entries may be published or unpublished
Beullah Rose Poetry Prize
Postmark Deadline: January 1
$200 prize for unpublished poems by women, from the journal Smartish Pace; online entries accepted
Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry
Postmark Deadline: November 1
Prize for unpublished poems includes $500 and publication in Reed Magazine, the literary journal of San Jose State University
Wild Violet Writing Contests
Postmark Deadline: November 30
Literary e-zine Wild Violet offers prizes of $100 for poetry and fiction; online entries accepted
This poem and critique appeared in the September 2007 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Silence. Struggle. Salvation.
By Judith Cody
for Guy, he'd have understood
Crash in the rose garden. Crash. Crash. Crash.
Suddenly a full petaled wide open Tea Rose
Known as Mr. Lincoln, let go of most of
Its immense maroon, elderly petals (this all at once)
Sending them fluttering helplessly to the bare
Ground, some of them struck a furtive Brown Towhee
Who was scratching noisily at the base of the shrub
For a few errant earwigs who normally rest in the day,
But now must fight wiggle for their lives (though lost)
For a second, now the descending cascade of petals distracted
The disheveled bird allowing the exposed insects
To escape (this afternoon).
Reprinted from Garden on an Alien Star System (Finishing Line Press, 2020); first published in Phantasmagoria 5(1):8
Silliman’s Blog
Thoughtful reflections on contemporary poetry and poetics from award-winning poet and editor Ron Silliman.
Singapore Unbound
Founded by award-winning poet Jee Leong Koh, Singapore Unbound is a cross-cultural literary organization that builds connections between Singaporean and American authors through projects such as the biennial Singapore Literary Festival in New York City; Gaudy Boy Press, publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by authors of Asian heritage; and the SP Blog, with book reviews and artist interviews.
Singing of War
War poetry scholar Peggy Rosenthal reviews two anthologies on the topic, and discusses the place of poetry in the curriculum of the famed West Point military academy, in this article from Christianity Today.
Sinister Wisdom
Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian space. Sinister Wisdom seeks to open, consider and advance the exploration of lesbian community issues. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgment as lesbians evaluating our community and our world. The magazine currently welcomes work by transgender women who identify as lesbian. Read back issues online for free in their archive.
Sistah Scifi
Sistah Scifi promotes speculative fiction by black women. Site founder Isis Asare says, "Sistah Scifi is a cauldron of all things afrofuturism; afro-mysticism; Black sci-fi; and voodoo casting spells to uplift literature written by Black women."
Six and Rain Sestina
SIX by Charlotte Mandel
At six, my cheeks were apple red.
Relatives pinched me like fruit on a stand,
testing me. I longed to be pale,
glassy and flat like the people
reflected in black mirror windows
staring in the howl of subway tunnels.
Riding to Coney Island, the tunnels
blasted into daylight. Veiny red
blobs flooded my eyes. Sun melted the windows.
I jumped and slid off the wicker to stand,
squares imprinted on my thighs. I smelled people
and corned beef. I could hear the rattle of my pail.
Under my wet wool suit, sand rubbed the pale
hidden chinks of my body. I dug tunnels
with care, my fingers creeping like people,
sandhogs meeting, their torches red
fire boring through. I mixed mud to stand
firm, fit in bits of shell for windows—
white, like eyes of a fish. Windows
couldn't be trusted. Glass looked pale
but might be backed with silver, force you to stand,
rigid, planted in a screaming tunnel
watching faces staring in the dim red
narrow passage, the eyes of bodiless people.
In the movies, behind the screen, real people
ballooned like silhouettes in windows.
My mother sat beside me, offering a red
apple that felt cold and black in the pale
gigantic flickering talking tunnel.
A man was touching me—I didn't understand
why my mother looked away, letting me stand
it, letting me suffer eyes and hands of people—
the man's fingers groping for tunnels
under my dress. The wall in front was a window
framing a strange man's eyes magnified, pale—
a scream in my throat like sand, burning red—
"We'll go home, your skin is red." My mother made me stand,
pulled off my bathing suit. Pale bodiless eyes of people
stared through black mirror windows at my body screaming in tunnels.
Copyright 2010 by Charlotte Mandel
RAIN SESTINA by Chuck Levenstein
Patience is a virtue nurtured by endless rain:
Old forests are proud of their ability to wait
While lesser shrubs insist on irrigation ditches
And pipes of stolen water, streams diverted,
Dams inserted to pool and pump the skies
While the trees and I are dry or wet as Nature wills.
My tribe is not inclined to subdue weather with its will
Our rites include no prayer or sacred dance for rain
Or sun; legend tells that for forty years we had to wait
With backpacks and flat bread, trudge through desert ditches
And dunes behind old Moses, from refuge diverted
Because the fool struck a rock, impatient with the skies
A pity we were abandoned to sand and white skies,
And a jealous god insistent on his will,
When there were swimming deities who loved rain,
Imbibed heavenly nectar and were content to wait
While we stumbled away from digging Egyptian ditches
(Desire to escape from slavery, of course, not to be diverted.)
Suppose, just suppose, the fleeing caravan had been diverted
And dark Atlantic waters parted under Brazilian skies,
And we trailed the Amazon drenched as a wet god willed,
My ancestors might have learned the Portuguese for "rain",
And armed with arrow and bow we would wait
To ambush Herzog's Jesuits in soggy ditches!
Alas, we were not born with the britches to sit in ditches!
The fate of a destined stream cannot be diverted,
Exiled tribes may yet find their way to Himalayan skies
Where upstream Tzaddiks spin the wheel of no-one's will
And on Bhuddish heads snow falls, quiet as this summer's rain,
And Godot! There he is! Sits but doesn't wait.
These umbrella musings keep us dry while we wait
For slippery waters to cease slithering by in roadside ditches.
Our wetlands misery, malarial mold and all, must be diverted
Until clouds dissipate, as in memory did clear the skies
And they filled with radiant Apollo's will.
How long will our patience be tried by this damned rain!
Yes, even flowery patience will wilt if forced to wait
For an end to endless rain, the petals diverted
From terran skies end their short lives in a ditch.
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Levenstein
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
The sestina is scary. That's what I think most poets think, and I find that sad because the sestina is one of the most enjoyable ways I have ever found to write a poem.
But I think I know why they're scary (I have three reasons, actually) and this month in Critique Corner, with contributions from two highly accomplished poets, I'd like to see if I can allay some fears.
They are Charlotte Mandel with "Six", which was originally published in her collection A Disc of Clear Water (Saturday Press, 1982), and Chuck Levenstein, editor of the former online zine Poems Niederngasse, with "Rain Sestina".
Scary Thing #1: I Flunked Math
These charts one sees all over the Internet! They make the form appear like kabbalistic numerology comprehensible only to pattern-seeking savants. No! Remember this is a form invented by people who wove their own belts; the rules of the sestina are no more complicated than tying a macramé knot, each line of poem, a cord of twine. As a string of knots, the pattern doesn't refer back to the first knot but just to the previous. The stanzas spool off of one another: 6,1/5,2/4,3 of the previous stanza, 6 times—a simple braid.
Now to finish a row, some sort of edging stitch is needed. In sestinas, this is called the envoi. Although once there were traditional patterns for the envoi, they have long ago been abandoned to more general rules: all the end words appear somewhere in the last three lines, usually two per line, one at the end and one somewhere in the middle. Also, most sestinas end with the last word of the poem's first line. Not only does this not require any computer programs to remember, but it is a pleasure of the form to exploit it to expressive effect.
Notice how Charlotte Mandel does this in "Six". The end words correspond with the end words from the first stanza as 1,2,3,4,5,6—not just a clever reference to the title and form, but highly expressive as well: a childish counting up suiting the theme and adding an ominous touch.
Now, the evolution of variations on the envoi is an essay in itself, which brings us to...
Scary Thing #2: History is Long
It seems one can't enter a discussion of the sestina without first encountering its long history. To be fair, its history is quite interesting, in part because more details of it are known, at least more so than some of the other forms of its day. It makes a good story that no one can resist. Unfortunately though, all this ado has the effect of casting the form as unapproachably venerable. No again. Sestina is not venerable; it is vernacular. (Allow me just one colorful factoid: its main proponent, Arnaut Daniel, was depicted in Dante's Purgatory as the vernacular poet.) More importantly, the sestina has had numerous revivals amongst poets since, clearly attesting to the pleasure they give one to write.
Why? Because the sestina is a prose form, built in sentences not phrases, unlike its more design-dependent contemporaries, the triolet and the villanelle. As opposed to these phrase-repetition forms in which the phrase drives the poem, the end words in a sestina serve more as destinations. Choosing how to get from one to the next is much of the fun.
As a prose form, the sestina is particularly suited for argument. In Levenstein's poem, for example, stanza four begins with "Suppose" and stanza five with "Alas." These are rhetorical terms, meant to propose new facets.
Most sestinas are written in the third-person form, often covering big sweeps of time as Levenstein has done. Elizabeth Bishop's famous "Sestina" offers an interesting contrast. This poem reads as if it were a screenplay—so many shifts in vantage point.
Bishop has chosen present tense for her narrative. It did occur to me to wonder how that might work for Mandel's poem, especially in the first line of the sixth stanza, if not all the way through.
In both cases, the guideposts of end words elicit surprising turns in the journey. In this sense, the sestina is a poetic form.
It is poetic in another sense as well, that is, in its music. The sestina has a way of generating riffs. Scan the left-hand column of "Rain Sestina," and you will detect a pattern of "and"s resolved in the envoi as "an end".
Now a form that shifts and riffs lends itself to humor. (Though the all-humor-all-the-time mode that dominates the form's latest revival, the postmodern sestina, is admittedly amusing—all right, often very amusing—it limits the expressive range of the form to glib to outrageous.) Levenstein made me laugh twice in stanza five, just the right time to vary the tone and keep the poem lively.
A second characteristic of the postmodern sestina, obviously, is to be self-referential, or perhaps more apt in this case, form-referential. Charlotte Mandel accomplishes this nicely in her envoi as mentioned above. Her title is a hint as well.
But there is a problem with being too self-referential: it can be paralyzing.
Scary Thing #3: But, But...What If I Choose Wrong?
All the free advice out there about homonyms and words that can be used in multiple tenses and invisible words and words from the same family and so on, turn a form so relaxed it could easily be used by a child into an ordeal. Moreover, cute as the postmodern wink can be, too much self-consciousness about the end words puts an inordinate emphasis on something secondary to meaning.
In practical terms, you need about 45 words in your first stanza. You can get those words from anywhere, a diary entry, the back of a cereal box, one of the poems in your unfinished file. Now pick some words you think you might like to work with. Choose wisely: thematically, musically, sure, but don't fret it. You will discover that it is possible to make adjustments.
In fact, so adjustable is this form that you can begin with any stanza and the pattern will hold. Pin the cut stanzas back onto the end. Often the meaning will render this ridiculous and new lines will need to be composed, but sometimes they merely need a bit of reworking. At best, sometimes this is just the leap a poem needs to keep it energized.
Here's how this revision would work with using the poems of both of our guests as examples:
In Levenstein's "Rain Sestina" the last two stanzas and envoi would now be:
These umbrella musings keep us dry while we wait
For slippery waters to cease slithering by in roadside ditches.
Our wetlands misery, malarial mold and all, must be diverted
Until clouds dissipate, as in memory did clear the skies
And they filled with radiant Apollo's will.
How long will our patience be tried by this damned rain!
Patience is a virtue nurtured by endless rain:
Old forests are proud of their ability to wait
While lesser shrubs insist on irrigation ditches
And pipes of stolen water, streams diverted,
Dams inserted to pool and pump the skies
While the trees and I are dry or wet as Nature wills.
Yes, even flowery patience will wilt if forced to wait
For an end to endless rain, the petals diverted
From terran skies end their short lives in a ditch.
In Mandel's "Six" the last two stanzas and envoi would now be:
why my mother looked away, letting me stand
it, letting me suffer eyes and hands of people—
the man's fingers groping for tunnels
under my dress. The wall in front was a window
framing a strange man's eyes magnified, pale—
a scream in my throat like sand, burning red—
At six, my cheeks were apple red.
Relatives pinched me like fruit on a stand,
testing me. I longed to be pale,
glassy and flat like the people
reflected in black mirror windows
staring in the howl of subway tunnels.
"We'll go home, your skin is red." My mother made me stand,
pulled off my bathing suit. Pale bodiless eyes of people
stared through black mirror windows at my body screaming in tunnels.
In both cases, there is most certainly something to be said for the choice. As Levenstein's poem currently stands, the final stanza is sort of a summation, resounding themes that have been previously stated—another god brought in, a return to the theme of patience. This poem has just been something to do to kill time while it rained. But in the new arrangement, the thematic statement "Patience is a virtue nurtured by endless rains" is now offered as a wisdom discovered—way more worthwhile than a time killer (at least to me as a reader). The address shifts too, from "we" to "I," adding another level of cadence.
What is lost is the inviting first line. "My tribe..." is less generous, less inclusive, less obvious too—that is, it takes more parsing. The opposite effect is true for Mandel's "Six," where much is gained by beginning with the second stanza with its active, in-progress, "Riding to Coney Island, the tunnels/blasted into daylight."
Simply tagging on the first stanza with no revision would be risky in this case. Personally, I like it. I like the shift from the memory to the adult reflection upon it coming at this point in the poem. Reworked or not, what it definitely does demonstrate is how a digression of some sort at this point would heighten the drama of the mother's response in the envoi. This revision sacrifices the form-referential design of Mandel's envoi, but she might yet be able to save that idea.
The larger general point, though, is that the sestina is more flexible than one might think. So relax, pick a few words, and settle in for a long poem. There's nothing to be afraid of.
Where could poems like "Six" and "Rain Sestina" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Virginia Warbey Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by May 19
UK-based literary society offers prizes up to 800 pounds and possible anthology publication; no simultaneous submissions; fees in pounds sterling only
Connecticut Poetry Award
Postmark Deadline: May 31
Connecticut Poetry Society offers prizes up to $400 for unpublished poems, 80 lines maximum
New England Poetry Club Annual Contests
Postmark Deadline: May 31
Various themed contests, including a members-only category for poems in traditional forms, with prizes of $100-$1,000
Bridport Prize
Entries must be received by June 30
One of Britain's largest and most prestigious awards for unpublished poems, short stories, and flash fiction by authors aged 16+, with top prizes of 5,000 pounds in each genre; enter by mail or online
Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for Traditional Verse
Postmark Deadline: June 30
Prizes up to $3,000 and online publication for published or unpublished poems in traditional forms; Winning Writers assists with entry handling for this contest
These poems and critique appeared in the May 2010 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Six of Crows
By Leigh Bardugo. In this young adult fantasy novel, set in a cosmopolitan and mercenary city-state modeled on 19th-century Amsterdam, a crew of six thieves and underworld denizens must break into an impenetrable fortress to rescue the inventor of a magical weapon that could spark a devastating war. The world-building, social conscience, diversity of characters, and twist-filled plot are all outstanding. The story continues in the sequel Crooked Kingdom.
Six Video Poems at Poets & Writers
Multimedia presentations of poems by Anne Carson, Thylias Moss, and Aaron Fagan add new dimensions to the spoken word through interpretive dance, music, and graphics.
Sky Island Journal
Launched in 2017 in Luna County, New Mexico, Sky Island Journal is an online literary quarterly of poetry and flash prose (1,000 words maximum). Each piece opens in a read-only MS Word document, rather than a scroll-through webpage, to encourage readers to focus wholly on one thing at a time. The journal is free to read and has no advertising, but there is a $3 submission fee to keep this business model sustainable. Editors say, "The Florida Mountains Wilderness Study Area is our muse; its landscape is the source of our positive energy, our rugged independence, and our relentless tenacity."
Slam News Service
Keep track of upcoming poetry slams and bouts across the US and the world. Hosted by "teacher, poet and traveling man" Michael Brown.
SlashGear’s List of Best Websites to Find and Download eBooks for Free
SlashGear, a technology news site, compiled this list in 2023 of their favorite sites for free and low-cost e-books and audiobooks. These include OverDrive, an e-book lending library, and LibriVox, which offers free audio versions of public-domain books.
Slate Article: ‘Poems of War’
Six leading writers and editors - Robert Pinsky, Alice Quinn, Judith Shulevitz, Dan Chiasson, Anthony Swofford, and Robert Fagles - discuss the poems that they turn to in times of war. Includes audio clips of them reading the poems.
Slated
Slated is an online marketplace for film packaging, financing, and distribution. Writers can network with industry professionals and receive feedback on how to make their scripts more marketable.
Sleep
By Judy Kronenfeld
May you fall into it
groggy and disheveled as a baby
who lets go of his mother's
nipple with a thwuck—head lolling,
cowlicks sticking up,
lips open and glistening.
May you fall into it
like a drunk keeling
over onto his own stoop,
having staggered the last possible
step on his slog from the bar.
May you not stand alone
on the shore at 3 A.M.,
longing to extricate yourself
from the gritty sand
of consciousness, when everyone
you know has been swept out
by the sea of sleep.
May you reclaim once or twice
the gauze-fine sleep of childhood—
calmly gliding from flickering shadow
to light, from flickering light
to shadow, like a punt
on a tree-lined river.
And may your last be utterly
black and quiet,
and last forever.
Slingshot
By Cyrée Jarelle Johnson. The title of this ambitious debut collection by a black genderqueer poet-activist refers to the bikini costume they wore as a strip-club dancer, but also calls to mind the legendary weapon that young David employed against the giant Goliath. Like the Biblical youth, the narrator of these poems fights back, with brilliant style and ferocity, against seemingly insurmountable forces like racism, transphobic violence, familial abuse, and the floods that Hurricane Sandy unleashed on New York City. The propulsive force and fragmented and recombined syntax of these poems command so much attention that only at the end will you reflect, "Damn, was that a crown of sonnets?" and read it all over again.
Slippage: Previously Uncollected, Precariously Poised Stories
If there's hope for Harlan Ellison and his dark, existential science fiction, there's hope for us all. From the back cover, "When I told Houghton Mifflin that Jesus Christ had given me a quote to help promote Slippage, boy, did they go ballistic! It was a great quote, a real 'money quote'. Jesus said, 'I love Ellison's writing. I'd have a Second Coming, or even slouch toward Bethlehem, just to read this new collection!'"
Slouching Towards Guantanamo
In his second full-length collection from Main Street Rag, Ferris interrogates America's concept of "the normal" and finds it wanting. His own disability is the lens through which this prophetic poet brings every other shade of inequality into focus, asking us to shed the burden of our ego so that differences between ourselves and others can simply coexist without comparison or judgment. Notwithstanding the spiritual weight they carry, these poems are playful, musical, satirical and passionate.
Small Beer Press
This independent press based in Western Massachusetts was founded in 2000 by the husband-and-wife team of Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, award-winning authors and editors of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror anthology series. The press publishes an eclectic mix of magical realist and literary fantasy and science fiction, as well as the Working Writer's Daily Planner, an attractive and useful datebook that includes contest announcements and writing advice.
Small Press Database at Poets & Writers
Poets & Writers Magazine offers this free online database featuring submission guidelines for over 100 small literary presses. The database is searchable by name, keyword, genre, openness to simultaneous and electronic submissions, geographic region and more. A very useful service.
Small Press Economies: A Dialogue
In this 2023 article in Chicago Review, CSU Poetry Center director Hilary Plum and poet Matvei Yankelevich (co-founder of Ugly Duckling Presse) examine the barriers to small press books being carried in bookstores or featured in major review outlets. Among other recommendations, they call on independent bookstores to do better at supporting small press titles.
Smashwords
This website helps authors, agents, and publishers convert their books into a variety of popular e-book formats and sell them on the Smashwords site. Membership is free; Smashwords takes a percentage of net sales proceeds.
Smith College Alumnae Poets
The Poetry Center at Smith College celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2008 with readings by alumnae from the past 60 years. Poems by the participants and other Smith graduates are featured on this web page, including Celia Gilbert, Jane Yolen, CB Follett, Gail Mazur, and Claire Nicholas White.
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions
Author of the acclaimed Sandman graphic novels mashes up literary classics, myths famous and obscure, and the conventions of the fantasy genre, with effects that are sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, and always a witty tour de force. Some of the best selections derive their humor from the collision between the mythic and the mundane, as when an elderly British widow finds the Holy Grail in a thrift shop, or the inhabitants of H.P. Lovecraft's Innsmouth behave like characters in a Monty Python skit.
Smoke and Mold
Founded by Callum Angus (author of the story collection A Natural History of Transition), Smoke and Mold is a literary journal publishing transgender and Two-Spirit writers on themes of nature, the environment, and the climate crisis.
So You Wanna Write a Black Person
In this blog post from Queeromance Ink, a site for promoting LGBTQ fiction, romance and erotica author Sharita Lira gives advice on writing non-stereotypical African-American characters, from her own experience and that of the romance readers and writers she polled.
So You Want to Talk About Race
By Ijeoma Oluo. This manual on contemporary race relations by an up-and-coming black woman journalist should be required reading in high schools and colleges, and is also invaluable for writers to recognize prejudiced tropes in their characters and plots. Using personal anecdotes and examples from everyday life, Oluo liberates essential concepts like privilege, structural racism, and intersectionality from the academic jargon and toxic call-out culture where conversations about racism often get stuck. She neither condescends to, nor coddles the reader, showing vulnerability with stories about her family's experiences with poverty and racism, while maintaining strength and clarity in her demands for justice. Reading this book will make you feel like you've made a new friend who respects you enough to give you constructive criticism.
Social Media Hashtags for Book Authors
Web Design Relief is a site with articles on social media marketing, site design, and building your author platform online. This article from 2017 suggests 55 popular writing-related hashtags that can boost your profile on social media and give you entry into useful conversations and communities. The article includes examples of how to use them effectively.
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is one of the largest existing organizations for writers and illustrators. It is the only professional organization specifically for those individuals writing and illustrating for children and young adults in the fields of children’s literature, magazines, film, television, and multimedia. SCBWI offers advocacy, networking, and grants for members of the children's publishing community.
Solace at the P.O.
By Sandy Longley
So, it's my turn and I place an envelope
on the counter. The clerk asks:
"Does this package contain any hazardous liquid?"
Only a thousand tears, I reply.
"Is there anything flammable or breakable?"
Just my heart, I say.
"Would you like this sent express mail
for an additional $7.50?"
Actually, I'd prefer a slow delivery,
maybe in a canvas saddlebag, on a
dappled mare, rambling through mountains,
through valleys lush and deep, pausing
for long drinks in stony creeks.
"How about insurance?"
We both know there's no insurance,
no deductible, for matters like this;
I know what I have given,
what I have received.
He glances at the customer line lengthening—
impatience spreading like a virus.
I want him to close his window and ask me
to meet him out back. He'll be wearing cowboy
boots and smell like fresh cut locust burl.
He'll drape his tattooed arm (wild boar)
around me, offer a cigarette and say
"A dog walks into a bar..."
SOLRAD
A publication of Fieldmouse Press in California, SOLRAD is a nonprofit online literary magazine dedicated to the comics arts. SOLRAD publishes comics criticism, original comics, essays, interviews, and features new, underrepresented, and otherwise marginalized creative voices, in addition to the work of well-established cartoonists, critics, journalists, and authors.
Somewhere in Time
These amusing columns from Vulture.com music critic Dave Holmes are useful for writers researching popular culture of the 1980s and 1990s. They're also a humbling reminder of how quickly our favorite media seems dated. Trend-chasers beware.
Sonatina
This award-winning Israeli poet's new collection pairs themes of high art and nature's simple beauty. By turns political, pastoral and erotic, Simon uses musical metaphors to evoke compassion and nostalgia for his homeland and its people.
Songs and Metaphors
For Modupe
I know
There are tunes
My soul should hum
To you, but my throat
Is too sore to attempt them.
I know
There are words
My heart should say
To you, but my mouth
Is too dumb to let her.
I know
My love
You don't love me
But in you
Am too lost to turn back.
Yes
I know
Oh sable homeland
We practice democracy
But my heart
Is too hurt to believe it.
I know
My love
There are spots
My lips should touch
You, but my eyes
Are too blind to see them.
So I say
Oh poor soul sing
Sing of love
To warring homeland
Love too soft to touch
Love much quieter than a burial rite
Love that struck me dumb like thunderstorm
Love that punished my father's purse
But made us one
Love that we lack in Africa!
Open
Pray hungry mouth
Speak of love
Love that weaved webs to steal my sight
A woman too mighty for words to try
Love the silent sky of our earth
Once obsessed
With light like a palace court!
Ah!
Love the thunderous voice of our ancestors!
That blind Africa may regain her sight.
My love
Tell me
How it came to be
That we
To a fierce duet, tempt
The friendly spirits of the gods
By slaughtering ourselves.
Beware!
I say
Recoil from this draw with Liberty.
A portion poured out
To the gods
Isn't for us—poor mortals to sup
Yes
I know I hear
The break of day approaching
Though silently
A voice
Drowned in the chorus
Of tonight's wars
Hush,
Be calm
The sun is returning to her court!
The dews soon
Should descend upon
The slumbering field
Take my hand
Love
It is a sign of daybreak!
Copyright 2009 by Akpoteheri Godfrey Amromare
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Nigerian poet Akpoteheri Godfrey Amromare returns to these pages with "Songs and Metaphors", a stirring combination of the romantic lyric and the war poem. Read his August 2008 critique poem, "Whisper Without Words", here.
"Songs and Metaphors" reminded me of Wilfred Owen's famous World War I poem "Greater Love". Both poems interweave tenderness, tragedy, and prophetic hope, refusing to let the personal remain merely personal against a backdrop of large-scale atrocities, yet valuing that one-on-one intimacy as a possible cure for the desensitized attitudes that perpetuate violence.
The first three stanzas of Amromare's poem lead us to think that it is a traditional love poem. I welcomed the few touches of originality: "tunes/My soul should hum/To you" (rather than the expected "sing") and the personification of the heart as "her" instead of "it" in the second stanza, which gives the interaction a more protective, affectionate tone. But then, in the fourth stanza, an epic lament—"Oh sable homeland"—breaks into the potential narcissism of the lyric. Sentiments that could verge on banality are transfigured by their connection to relationships beyond the two lovers, such that the narrator's personal heartbreak does not distract him from his community's suffering but rather provides a means to empathize with and critique it.
Throughout the Bible, there is the recurring theme of the individual whose pains and triumphs are representative of his entire nation, for good or ill. I'm thinking particularly of the messianic "suffering servant" prophecies in the book of Isaiah, and St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive." In Amromare's poem, the fate of Africa seems similarly intertwined with the fate of his narrator. The collective wound has left him personally scarred. Like the scorched earth of a conquered village, he feels too damaged to produce the fruits of love. Yet if he can heal, if he can find stillness and tenderness amid the clamor of war, could that be the first green shoot that brings the "slumbering field" back to life?
So I say
Oh poor soul sing
Sing of love
To warring homeland
Love too soft to touch
Love much quieter than a burial rite
Normally I tell poets to be sparing with their exclamation points, but the ones that proliferate in the second half of this poem seem as essential as the crescendo at the end of a symphony, lifting us with the narrator to ever more sublime extremes of joy and grief. Perhaps this technique works because the poem starts out in a restrained, even numb, mood. When passion finally breaks through, we rejoice with the narrator that "The sun is returning to her court!"
I would change a few lines of this poem to make them clearer and correct some word usage. "Love that struck me dumb like thunderstorm" should be either "a thunderstorm" or "thunderstorms". To keep the characteristic rhythm of Amromare's voice, which is tight and assured throughout, I might opt for the plural, though the singular better captures the suddenness of the event.
In the lines "Love that weaved webs to steal my sight/A woman too mighty for words to try", the verb "weaved" should be "wove". I wasn't sure of the meaning of the next line. The woman is probably the beloved to whom the poem is addressed, but what are the "words trying" to do? He seems to be saying that his beloved is beyond words, in a good way. However, "steal my sight" has negative connotations—is his love a delusion? That would be contrary to the positive role that love plays everywhere else in the poem.
Further down, when he asks "How it came to be/That we/To a fierce duet, tempt/The friendly spirits of the gods", I feel like there is a missing verb after "we". It might be smoother to replace "To" with "In", since one doesn't generally speak of tempting someone to a duet, whereas one could conceive of the dance of seduction as a duet. Finally, in the lines "A portion poured out/To the gods/Isn't for us—poor mortals to sup", I would replace the dash with a line break, because I like the pause there but the dash seems out of place in the sentence structure.
These awkward spots aside, I love this poem's prophetic voice and the earthiness of its imagery. Its old-fashioned flavor might not appeal to some of the academic literary journals but it could do well in contests with a more populist aesthetic. Amromare is a poet to watch.
Where could a poem like "Songs and Metaphors" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Yeovil Literary Prizes
Entries must be received by May 31
British cultural center offers prizes up to 1,000 pounds for unpublished poems, stories and novel excerpts by authors aged 18+; online entries accepted
Keats-Shelley Prize
Entries must be received by June 30
British contest offers 5,000 pounds in total prizes for poetry on a Romantic theme (changes annually) and essays on any topic relating to Byron, Keats, or the Shelleys (Percy and Mary)
Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards
Postmark Deadline: July 1
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation offers prizes of $1,000 in adult category and $200 in youth categories for poems exploring positive visions of peace and the human spirit; 30 lines maximum
This poem and critique appeared in the May 2009 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Sonnet Central
An extensive archive of English-language sonnets with a discussion forum where poets can post their own work. Includes a selection of World War I poems by Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and other contemporaries.
Sonnets from Aesop
Witty sonnets by an award-winning poet retell 100 fables from Aesop, including many lesser-known tales worth rediscovering. Lively watercolor illustrations for each tale are sure to delight both adults and children. A great read-aloud book. Sonnets from Aesop received an IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) as one of the ten "Outstanding Books of the Year" published by an independent press in 2005. Acclaimed formalist Annie Finch says, "What more could Aesop have wished than to address the 21st century in these dry, whimsical sonnets complemented by a series of soft, edgy watercolors. This beautifully produced book is a rare treat."
Soot
Plain-spoken and passionate narrative poetry in the tradition of Philip Levine seeks out moments of tenderness and joy amid the grit and grind of mass society. Co-winner of the 2009 Keystone Chapbook Prize from Seven Kitchens Press.
