Pushcart news

Thanks to Joseph Salemi, editor of the print-and-also-pdf magazine Trinacria, for nominating "The Nuba Christians" for a Pushcart Prize. The poem and another called "The Midden Cross" are in issue 11--first time I have sent there. Mr. Salemi is a highly opinionated poet and professor, but his strongest demand for poetry appears to be that it be formal and well-wrought.

As guest editor at The Raintown Review, he once accepted a poem of mine, "A Fire in Ice" (a riposte to a Billy Collins poem, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes." That one has proved to be popular, as such things go... Here's a video of it.

I think this is my third recent nomination, but I have been quite bad about keeping track of such things, so who knows? Shall resolve to do better... I think that the last one to get a nomination was "I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters" (click for digital copy and audio version), nominated by qarrtsiluni in 2011 (Dave Bonta and Elizabeth Adams, founders and managing editors, Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson, issue editors.)

* * *
Update: I just remembered another recent-ish one. The late (and very great inventer of 'zines) Paul Stevens nominated "The Clock of the Moon and Stars," published in his 'zine, The Flea.

Clock of the Moon and Stars

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for The Foliate Head

Now and then a poem flies out into the world that feels strange but wholly understood... And then as time passes, it becomes stranger to the writer, until it seems almost not hers.

Here's a little poem from The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012) that feels so to me. It was originally published in that magical 'zine, The Flea, created by the late Paul Stevens. I miss meeting Paul online, and I also grieve the thought that never again will he make us such a wondrous, unexpected, and altogether odd place for poetry as The Flea, inspired by a love of the metaphysicals: "Mark but this flea, and mark in this . . ."

Now I wonder if this poem is not a distant child of Frost's "Acquainted with the Night": "O luminary clock against the sky / Proclaimed the time was neither wrong or right."

Clock of the Moon and Stars

O clock of the silver moon and stars, stop
This incessant trickling and spilling in chimes;
Hasn’t there been enough of singing—choir
At its struggles, Magnum Mysterium 
Going backward and forward and inside out,
The women trilling over mops as the doors
Fly open and the suds freeze on the snow,
The poor child with its shrill demanding song
That called the spirits to take possession?
Hasn’t there been enough of dropping
The quarter hours and the whole in chimes?

You harry me, you remind me of much,
O clock of the moon and stars: the silvery
Mysteries and the past and the damned child
Hurtled to hell in a carriage of flame.

* * *
More on recent books:

• Thaliad's epic adventure in verse here and here (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012)
• The Foliate Head's collection of poems from Stanza Press (UK) here
• A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage from Mercer University Press (ForeWord 2013 finalist, The Ferrol Sams Award, 2012) here
• The Throne of Psyche, collection of poetry from Mercer, 2011, here
• Excerpts at Scribd

Lux aeterna: Paul Stevens

Alas, there is need for a second post today--alas, for it too is about a death. Poet and culture-maker and lovely man Paul Stevens died this morning in Australia, with all his family about him. Thanks to poet Janet Alexa Kenny for letting his many fans and friends know. I'm thinking of the close of his poem about Tasmania: "At last to sail free / Between southern capes / Thick with kelp and wild foam, / With wave awash, surging, / Late sun on the headland,  / And shadow down valley / Past all memory."

The Flea.
Cover image by Mark Bulwinkle.

Born in Yorkshire, Paul Stevens lived in Australia for most of his life. He graduated from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in Early English Literature and Language, and studied history and archaeology as well. He taught history and literature in New South Wales, where he lived with his wife and family. He was a wide-ranging reader and thinker and generous to many.

Many of us are grateful to his work in founding magazines of formal poetry. The Shit Creek Review. Chimaera. The Flea. I tend to think the marvelous Flea his crowning glory as a magazine founder, as it is so very different from all other poetry magazines and so interesting in its relation to literary history--binding his love of Renaissance and metaphysical poetry to his love for his contemporaries. Artist Makoto Fujimura has talked about "caring for our culture." Paul Stevens was an example, a caretaker of culture.

Pax tecum, Paul Stevens, father and teacher, maker of poems and marvelous 'zines. I wish that I had known you sooner; I am glad that I knew you in the marvelous aether of the internet, where minds brush against one another despite all distance in space. Even now your words and your poetry 'zines touch us, although we are severed from you in time.

The Relics 

Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed two skeletons 
thought to be 5,000 to 6,000 years old, locked in an embrace. 
Their sex has not yet been determined. (BBC)

Mother to daughter, softly touching, is it?
Sister to sister's delicate embrace?
Friend to friend, companions past corruption?
Brother to brother, face to well-loved face?

The wheat crop rippled in the heat, the cattle
Grazed sweet grass, milk splashed in bowls of clay;
All fell to dust; from dust these rise, recovered
As brush and trowel lift slow time away.

Lover to lover, holding all that's dear,
They gaze into each other's eyes, long blind,
Stripped back to bony gesture: stubborn relics,
So much of earth, so much of human kind.

     Originally published in Poemeleon, reprinted in The Hypertexts

the acutest Angle

Angle, that slanted-toward-the-formal poetry magazine edited by those industrious poets, Janet Alexa Kenny (NZ) and Philip Quinlan (UK) has leaped on metrical feet into the world with a great TADA! If you are a person who cares about poetry, you just might like to visit. The issue is dedicated to poet and founder of interesting 'zines, Paul Stevens. You may download and browse the contents here.

   My presence in the issue (pp. 75-77, p. 101),
along with the first two lines of each poem:

The Fool Glimpses the City 

    --from The Book of the Red King--

Waterfalls of stars from outcroppings,
Torn vigorous lace making dervishes,

Because I Pass, I Pass, While Dreams Remain 

   --a little homage to poet Kathleen Raine--

   Who was it whispered in my dream?
The dream hour's angel whispered in my ear

Lumen Hour 

   --one of those uncanny dreams that want to remain--

Ankle-deep, I stand in sunlit waves,
An enormous disk of sun-lit water

To Make Much of Time 

   --finally a poem about internet frittering!--

Why must you fritter, twitter, play
And want fresh hours to the day?

"Angle welcomes poetry that is acute, possibly oblique, but never obtuse."

***

Favorite facebook posts of the week: 

so pleasant that I'm sharing them.

Carol Jean Treseposted toMarly Youmans

September 30

I read your book yesterday. A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. Wow. I couldn't put it down. I fell in love with all the characters, and I didn't want the book to end. You are a maestra, Marly!

Robin Egg shared a link via Marly Youmans.

September 29

This is a very short blog post, and you don't have to know the context or know Marly or know anything to read it and be amazed at what the English language can accomplish. Go on! Read it! Stop reading this, and go read that! It'll just take a second, and I can almost promise you'll be made to feel more aware and alive. http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2012/09/good-by-to-all-that.html

What lovely comments, one from a brand new e-friend. I liked them so much that I'm saving them here... In a world where chance plays a large role and the number of writers who support themselves by writing is miniscule, such words are sweet.

Readings for the 12 Days of Christmas: Lucid Rhythms at Epiphany

It’s Epiphany and the end of Readings for the 12 Days of Christmas. I entirely missed posting yesterday because it was a child-ferrying day, and I had a round trip to make to Annandale-on-Hudson. This trip is always curious and full of missed-road risks because it is a patchwork: West Kurley Corners and Lowe Road at Seward (which I missed this time) and River and all sorts of tinies out in the boondocks. But I must say that I always see the most fabulous sunsets on my way back from Dutchess County. Since I was still a bit under the weather, I read a bit and then toppled into bed when I came home without giving more than an “eh” to the Readings for the 12 Days. But today I shall toss in an extra poem or two to make up for it. I’m featuring another online magazine.

David W. Landrum is editor of Lucid Rhythms, an online ‘zine out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. David is a writer and “a professor of Humanities at Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has published poetry and short stories in many magazines and journals, including Web Del Sol, The Barefoot Muse, Driftwood Review, Small Brushes, and many others. He is currently at work on a series of poems about 16th Century English poet Robert Herrick.”

Here’s a poem of his that’s not from Lucid Rhythms but from Web del Sol:

Abacus

Shoved side-to-side
by someone's hands—
God's, I'd have to say—
but my own too, since sometimes
I am hardly me—
loving out of pity, camel-considerate,
bearing the burdens of
someone else's soul.
No matter how they bunch
on one side or the other—
I mean the beads—
balance operates—my lacquered frame—
you understand—yes, it keeps me stable—
an equation—your gestures
adding, subtracting—
changing me at your finger's beck.

Ann Drysdale is invariably smart and amusing, and a grand wielder of British slang. She is an interesting poet to follow. This poem is sweeter than most I’ve seen by her, but it’s playful.

Ann Drysdale

Nuns, Skating

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room
Because their spirits can escape beyond
The place that holds them in respectful gloom
To seek the Lord beside the frozen pond.
There He will make their laughter into bells
And turn their breath to incense. He will show
Shadows of magi on the distant hills
And flights of angels shining in the snow.
He will make rushes sing and grasses dance
To the intrusive music of their chatter,
Whispering in their ears that, just this once,
They too can walk as He did, on the water.
Oh, may the year to come be full of these
Small serendipitous epiphanies.

Forgotten your Wordsworth? Here’s the first “Nuns fret not”:

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Ann Drysdale is a British poet, born near Manchester, raised in London, married in Birmingham, ran a small holding and brought up three children on the North York Moors and now lives in South Wales. She was a journalist for many years, writing, among other things, the longest-running by-line column in the Yorkshire Evening Post, which she later made into a series of books. Her recent publications have included two memoirs, Three-three, Two-two, Five-six and Discussing Wittgenstein, both from Cinnamon Press, and a quirky guidebook in the Real Wales series - Real Newport, from Seren. Of her four volumes of poetry from Peterloo, the most recent, Between Dryden and Duffy, appeared in 2005. A fifth collection, Quaintness and Other Offences, was recently published by Cinnamon. She is also the current holder of the Dylan Thomas prize for Poetry in Performance.

Here’s a triolet by Marybeth Rua-Larsen.

Hanging the Wreath
I nail it to the door; it doesn't swing
or fall or blow away; I make it stick,
unlike our holidays, your latest fling,
I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing,
like you, proposing with a diamond ring --
and then surprised by No; I've learned the trick:
I nail it to the door; it doesn't swing
or fall or blow away; I make it stick.

Marybeth Rua-Larsen has had poetry published or forthcoming in The Paterson Literary Review, Concho River Review, kaleidowhirl, Blue Unicorn and The Worcester Review, among others, as well as the anthology Stories from Where We Live: The North Atlantic Coast. She was a semi-finalist in the 1999 Discovery/The Nation poetry contest and a finalist for the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award.

I mentioned Paul Stevens earlier because he edits that imaginative ‘zine, The Flea. Caractacus has many moods, of which this is one:

Australian Christmas Carol

The bushfire's scorching the Santa display,
As the westerly blows the cinders through –
So give me a dozen cold, cleansing ales!
Give me a dozen, do!

Let's go to the beach, play backyard cricket,
Try out new games on the X-box too –
As long as I'm drinking some premium lagers!
Give me a dozen, do!

The temperature's hitting forty degrees,
The blowflies are eating the barbeque –
So give me another dozen cold ales!
Give me a dozen, do!

Paul Christian Stevens teaches literature and historiography to senior high school students, and has widely published verse and prose in both print and pixel. He was born in Yorkshire, lives in Australia, and dreams of Catalunya.

Corey Mesler is productive and widely published:

Again to the Mountain

I asked the mountain my secret name.
I asked it to show me its mouth.
The day was hot like Easter.
Slowly, the clouds began to form a
story, one I had heard many
years ago and discounted. I raised my
hand as if to shade my eyes.
I raised it as if I knew the answer.
The mountain knew my wretched perfidy.

Corey Mesler has published prose and/or poetry in Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Blood Orange, Barnwood, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, Center, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Jabberwock Review, Dicey Brown, Cordite, Smartish Pace, others. . His first full-length collection of poems, Some Identity Problems, is just out from Foothills Publishing. His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. "With my wife I own Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. I can be found at http://www.coreymesler.com/."

John Milbury-Steen

Incarnate Print

The empty space in space excelsus high
is safe but getting down to earth is nigh
impossible, so when they take a dive,
of all the stars that shoot their inner gem
to try to make it down to Bethlehem,
few falling rocks of ice or gods survive
intact, but fall while flaming forth as tinder
and hit the ground, reduced to smoking cinder.
Into the manger of incarnate print
have I here fallen hoping that I might
be beautiful or pleasing in your sight.
Give me your blessing and I shall not want,
else this blood in ink will then have yet
another incarnation to regret.

John Milbury-Steen has poems published or forthcoming in 14 by 14, 32 Poems, Able Muse, The Anglican Theological Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Best Poem, Blue Unicorn, Bumbershoot, The Centrifugal Eye, Chimaera, Christianity and Literature, Contemporary Sonnet, Dark Horse, The Deronda Review (Neovictorian/Cochlea), The Evansville Review, Kayak, Hellas, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Listening Eye, The Piedmont Literary Review, Scholia Satyrica, Shenandoah, Shattercolors, the Shit Creek Review and Umbrella. He served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa and did a Master's in Creative Writing with Ruth Stone at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. He currently teach English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Want more?

Try the flying trapeze: you may fly here with the greatest of ease

Readings for the 12 Days of Christmas: "Mark this Flea"

On the third day of Christmas, I'm recommending an online 'zine, The Flea, edited by that cunning man, Paul Stevens.

In the Flea's own words: THE FLEA Broadsheets are a Seventeenth Century brainchild of Mr. Paul Stevens, upon whom the conviction periodically seizes that he dwelt in that era in a former life, and indeed was an associate of Jack Donne (one of whose metaphysical meditations has inspired the title), Andrew Marvell, Will. Shake-speare, Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, & diverse others.

The intent of THE FLEA broadsheets is to serve the Soveraigne Muse, by publishing first-rate poems which accord with Her Ideal of poetic Delight, in an occasional Broadsheet, using cutting-edge Seventeenth Century Technology, & state-of-the-art Alchemy; as wrought by the excellent skills of Mr. Peter Bloxsom of Netpublish, a cunning & learned Doctor of the dark electric Arts, who, in devising this Metaphysical Flea, to hop nimbly along the Hermetic threads of the Ætheric Web, is a very Dædalus for Craft, & yet himself a poet of most subtle Wit and Cadence, an Orpheus who masterfully plucks the poetic Lyre.

Sample poems, plucked from the swollen belly of The Flea, follow. For more poems or to learn something about these poems, sproing upward like the hoppingest flea to http://www.the-flea.com.


The Drift Glass
by Cally Conan-Davies

Along the spit of shell-packed sand,
while combing for the green, the blue,
the rarer bits of washed-up glass,

I nearly didn’t bend to take
the common piece of bottle-brown;
but shapes embossed across its face

intrigued me, so I picked it up
and found ‘TO BE’—a fragment phrase.
I showed it to a fisherman

and asked him what it might have meant.
He rubbed the risen words, and said:
“A warning. ‘POISON’ once it read,

‘NOT TO BE TAKEN’”. But it was.
The ocean took what hand had tossed,
dulled its gleam with salt and sent

the hazard to be broken up
by tides, the edges blunted by
the run of water over it

and let it drift onto this spit
as if pronouncing from the sea
the curse, the cure, the cusp—to me.


Takeoff
by Janet Kenny

Fasten your seat belt, close your eyes, ignore
the musical panic caused by what you hear,
count very slowly as the engines roar,
clutch at the arm rest as the time draws near
for that unstable moment as the vast
body turns round and moves towards the spot
where it will snarl and tear along so fast
that you relive your past, then like a shot,
up, bumping through the cloud towards the sun
breaking the hold of earth with jolts till high,
suddenly freedom floats you through the spun
wisps Leonardo dreamed of in a sky
he never saw except inside his brain.
You are his heir, through you he lives again.

While I claim to have swooped down on these fleas and pinched them between my fingers with an arbitrary hand, I am not quite telling the truth here, because who can resist plucking up a ditty with the swinging name of "Whigamaleerie," by a poet named Snoddie?

Whigmaleerie
by Alec Snoddie

Oh what a pass we’ve reached, dear wife,
worn down by constant stress and strife,
the arguments like knife on knife,
**the world grown dreary.
Of all but gentler drums and fife
**my heart is weary.

Once, and counting this no fault,
I lived at a lick with hardly a halt.
You mind when I glaggered for sweet and salt
**and was hearty and beery?
But now I am wed tae the merciless malt,
**and oh, my dearie!

The Flea is stout with blood, and you may find Clive James and Ann Drysdale and Anna Evans and many another swimming about in its great blood-belly. Enjoy!

Clock of the Moon and Stars at "The Flea"

The Flea is a wondrous new 'zine, marked by the rare imagination and verve of Paul Stevens. What a sparkling, spanking-new idea for a literary magazine: http://www.the-flea.com/index.html: "THE FLEA Broadsheets are a Seventeenth Century brainchild of Mr. Paul Stevens, upon whom the conviction periodically seizes that he dwelt in that era in a former life, and indeed was an associate of Jack Donne (one of whose metaphysical meditations has inspired the title), Andrew Marvell, Will. Shake-speare, Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, & diverse others." Portrait of the esteemed editor is by Mistress Patricia Jones.

And here I am with my first contribution to this cunningly-designed magazine: http://www.the-flea.com/Issue2/ClockoftheMoonandStars.html