“After Magritte’s THE LOVERS” Accepted for Paper Dragon

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bianca.maggio. René Magritte, The Lovers. Uploaded 4 June 2017. Flickr. PD.

I am happy to report that Editor Reagan Prior, of Paper Dragon, sent me an acceptance to their upcoming horror-themed issue 8. Paper Dragon is the literary journal of Drexel University‘s MFA program. I have been rejected there a couple of times, but I had a feeling that the poem I submitted was right for the interpretation of “horror” in their submission guidelines, which asked for “creepy vibes.” It was gratifying to find that my ekphrastic take on Magritte‘s The Lovers was just what they had in mind.

This poem was an assignment in my prose poetry workshop at The Forever Workshop. The exercise was to note down my reactions to a work by my favorite surrealist painter. I love Magritte but didn’t remember this painting. Nevertheless, the moment I saw it, I found I had a lot of thoughts.

Among other things, I enjoyed the challenge of imagining how the lovers would experience one another if they never took off their face coverings while courting. Keeping in mind Magritte’s dim view of modern capitalism, I took note of the opposition between the man’s office-appropriate attire and the woman’s bare arm. Pursuing the symbolism of their covered faces, I imagined them appraising one another in terms of their own desires for security (hers) and sensuality (his) without regard for each other as individuals. I also imagined the feeling of French kissing through cloth. Finally, I projected them into the future and imagined what would happen when, over time, the veils slipped. I did this partly because the veils, with their wet-drapery marble look, evoke death, and this seems to counterpose a memento mori against their love. I wanted to pursue them to their deaths to reflect on this aspect of the painting as well.

In short, I imagined not very nice people having a not very nice but perfectly ordinary relationship, only with the not-knowing at the start of all relationships physically present as the face coverings. In the end, they led not very nice but perfectly ordinary lives and died. And this was sufficiently creepy and melancholy for the Paper Dragon team. Many thanks to them. I look forward to seeing my poem in the issue 🙂

Always a Bridesmaid: “The Burial” Up in T’Art Online

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National Library of Ireland on The Commons, Four bridesmaids with rather large bouquets. 2 August 1933. Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

For the third time, the t’Art team has accepted my work but consigned it to the online portion of the magazine, specifically the Winter online edition. Not that I’m complaining (at least, not much). It’s nice to know that pieces I’ve produced that I believe are worthwhile can quickly find a home with an organization that uses print, online, and community engagement to promote progressive values, especially through support of queer people.

And don’t get me wrong, I am also happy that Editor Amelia Brown and the t’ART team have published my poem, “The Burial” because I think it is a good villanelle and deserves to see the light of day. I wrote it in response to the video you can see here, though the Twitter posting didn’t have the musical soundtrack, as far as I can recall. I found the video moving, and at the same time, the simplicity and universality of the emotions of the dog seemed to lend themselves to the villanelle form, which I had been wanting to try. Although it is set in Ukraine, not Gaza, I wrote it when the genocidal atrocity of Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza was first becoming apparent, and this poem is still the closest thing I have written to a response, owing largely to the sensitive ethical conflicts involved and the ignorance I feel regarding my understanding of political considerations in the region.

All this is to say that, even though I am not in the print version of t’ART, I am pleased by their team’s interest in my work and grateful for their efforts.

Please check out my poem. Also, as an affiliate marketer for Chill Subs, I urge you to subscribe via this link for a discounted membership: https://subclub.substack.com/dfa0fa9d The site not only has a large, detailed list of places to submit but will also hook you up to many targeted articles, online workshops, and even virtual meet-ups to assuage your writing pains and anxieties.

“Refuse I and II” and “Personality Test Question” to Appear in Alien Buddha Zine

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My prose poem, “Refuse I and II,” is set in Mary Mary (as I learned the words) Quite Contrary’s world. I immediately knew this illustration, the first one Wikimedia Commons served up, was the one I wanted for this post because the maids look vacuous, the cockleshells appear to be goofy, girl-crazy dolts, and even without hearing them, one can easily see how the silver bells could get annoying. Finding out that the illustrator was W. W. Denslow was an added bonus. Up until now I only knew him as the original illustrator of The Wizard of Oz. How did he anticipate my use of the Mary, Mary poem so accurately?

“Refuse I” was the result of the first assignment in my prose poetry workshop: “Write a surreal prose poem about how to write a surreal prose poem. . . .” I liked it, but I felt there was more to Mary Mary’s journey after she got the surrealist’s advice. Did the advice work? I believe I failed to answer that question. So what is the meaning of my babbling in “Refuse II”? Maybe that destruction and cruelty are inevitable and insufficient responses to conventionality (which perpetrates its own restrictive cruelty), but despite its destructive side, creativity nevertheless intersects with life in ways that open up new, transcendent possibilities.

That’s the best I can do, anyway. The workshop also encouraged us to write whatever came into our heads, and let the chips fall where they might. I did that, and it was liberating, but at the same time, not comfortable for me. I am torn between my love of experimenting and pushing the envelope and my skepticism about whether creative works that embrace the random and eschew structure have any true significance. I believe this wariness is a legacy from my father, who continued to write fugues and sonata form amidst the upheavals of the 1960s and 70s.

The other piece was from a later exercise in the same workshop that asked us to respond creatively to a personality test question. Being an introvert and at least as much a contrarian as Mary Mary, I was happy to shred the first question I encountered, which asked me to rate how much I agreed or disagreed with the statement, “You regularly make friends.” Here, I had a clear focus and a recognizable vocabulary from the slow food and slow fashion movements. It’s a light piece, but accomplishes its purpose.

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I submitted these pieces to Alien Buddha Zine and, as usual, heard back right away. As always, thanks to Editor Red Focks for his hard work and good taste. I look forward to seeing these poems out in January.

Photo credit: W. W. Denslow, Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary 1, from the Project Gutenberg EBook of Denslow’s Mother Goose, by Anonymous. 1902. Wikimedia Commons. PD. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.net.

“Wonder” Up at Fevers of the Mind

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AI Wonder image.

David L O’Nan, editor of Fevers of the Mind, put this evocative image up to inspire submitters a little while ago. I didn’t know “Wonder” was the name of the AI that generated the image, so I interpreted it to be the title, and I was immediately drawn to the association of wonder with the picture. By way of a disclaimer, I know there are many opinions on AI out there, and on the whole, I am no fan. But I also believe that AI can be a creative tool like many others (cameras, for example) that were once viewed with suspicion as pretenders in the arts. In the case of AI Wonder, which creates images based on writing, AI algorithms interact with the human brain, with interesting descriptions attaining to more creativity than clichéd ones, in my view. In any case, one’s ekphrastic response is indisputably creative, and if the image inspires, it inspires, regardless of how it was generated.

I like my response because it is lighthearted and encourages readers to live imaginatively and take creative risks. Apparently Editor O’Nan liked it as well. (Thanks again, David.) Added bonus, I found out how long a goldfish’s memory really is–five months, or longer if behaviors are repeated regularly! So check “Wonder” out–see what you think. 🙂

Poem After Baudelaire’s “Be Drunk” Up at Fevers of the Mind

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Étienne Carjat, altered by Notwist. Charles Pierre Baudelaire. 3:4 portrait crop, clonestamped dust and scratches, converted to grayscale. 1863; altered 14 Jan. 2009. Wikimedia Commons. PD. {{PD-US-expired}}.

One of the prose poems I wrote to fulfill an exercise in my prose poetry workshop was an “after” poem, one that responds to another poem. I have been wary of these. If the reader doesn’t know the original, much of the import of the “after” poem is lost. Also, who am I to respond to another poet’s work? And what if the “after” poem is just using the original as a sort of crutch, leaning on the language and ideas of another creator? Relatedly, how is one to know how closely to stick to the original?

I still believe all these misgivings are valid concerns, but seeing as how it was just an exercise, I put them aside and went blithely ahead with almost the first work I came across in my internet search–Baudelaire’s Be Drunk, which I have now read in French and several English translations. Although it goes without saying that Baudelaire is a poetic giant compared to me, I did feel that it was possible to rationally disagree with some aspects of his recommendation to “be drunk,” even while appreciating the validity of his insistence that it is important to be absorbed in one’s passions, whatever these may be. Or, to put it another way, I saw that sobriety can be passionate as well and expressed that.

Fast forward a few weeks, and David L O’Nan, editor, creator, and purveyor of Fevers of the Mind, launched a “poems inspired by Baudelaire” topic on his site. I had just the thing, and you can read Sober Up! there and check out some others while you are at it. Thanks, David!

Belatedly Announcing the Arrival of ABZ #66

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Figaro, reading ABZ #66. Taken by me.

Sometime back in September, after I ordered it belatedly, Alien Buddha Zine #66 arrived. I failed to mention this until now, first because I had a concert in which we (the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra) played my father‘s Poem for Orchestra and (at the dress rehearsal) made the recording I have linked to below. This was very important to me, as Dad’s only request regarding his death was to have a memorial concert at Oberlin, but that institution has no “bandwidth” (as a fund raiser put it to me) for such a thing.

Plan B is to involve musicians who do have the bandwidth in making recordings of his music for the American Composers Alliance website. So I was very grateful to Music Director and Conductor Richard Prior and the LSO for having the bandwidth, and of course I wanted to do well when Richard pulled me out of retirement to be acting concertmaster. Luckily, it was a good concert, and I hope you have a chance to listen to the recording of Poem. It’s not on the website yet, but it’s on YouTube 🙂

The second reason I am behind is that it took me a long time to complete the prose poetry workshop at Forever Workshop, though I produced some good work and actually made time to shop it around a bit, so again, thanks, Karan Kapoor, workshop facilitator.

Incidentally, I got to know of The Forever Workshop, where the surrealist prose poetry workshop appears, through Chill Subs, which has many more resources for writers. I became an affiliate of Chill Subs because their services have helped me. If you would like to unlock these for yourself, please click this link: Subscribe to Sub Club!

But back to the ABZ issue: I discussed my contributions here. Beyond that, I like the cover art, especially the flying pacifier. I have not as yet gotten very much further in, but I have been able to appreciate the raw honesty in James Hippie’s poetic record of his struggle with addiction in the issue’s preview of his XX, and the energetic, grungy retro of Michael Brockley’s prose poems, “Insomnia” and “Stolen Car.” #66 promises to deliver the usual lively mix of material I have come to expect from ABZ. So pick your copy up in black and white here or in color here. As always, thanks and kudos to Editor Red Focks.

Figaro contemplates ABZ #66. Taken by me.

And We’re Back

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September issue of ABZ. Promotional photo.

I’m back! I didn’t even realize I had been gone so long. I have been writing, but not sending so much out, so I did not have any news, and I did travel a bit this summer, and then I got COVID, for the first time. (I’m okay; thanks for your concern.)

This news is really from the beginning of the month, when I was having COVID, but there is still time for you to order issue 66 of ABZ, which has two of my poems in it. I wrote about the poems here. You can get the issue in black and white here, or in color here. I only just got around to ordering it myself. I’ll show it to you when it arrives.

Thanks, as always, to Editor Red Focks.

And thanks to Chill Subs, through whom I have been benefiting from a Forever Workshop on surreal prose poetry. If you want access to all Chill Subs has to offer, I, an affiliate, urge you to check out this discount link: https://subclub.substack.com/dfa0fa9d

“MRI” and “The Seer” Accepted for ABZ #66

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Tomáš Vendiš, Čeština: Hybridní přístroj pro diagnostiku PET/MR o síle magnetického pole 3 Tesla. [No translation available, but I take this to be a hybrid PET/MRI scanner.] 31 March 2015. 512 pixel size. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Once again I must thank the superlatively efficient Red Focks, Editor of Alien Buddha Press, for accepting my poetry. Having now been published in various places from Iceland to Australia, I find my enthusiasm for searching up new journals whose staff might or might not care for my poetry has waned.* If Red has a call for submissions out, I send a few his way, and a few days later, at least one is usually accepted.

I not only appreciate receiving acceptances right away, I also appreciate and admire my fellow artists in Alien Buddha Zine. Red nominates for prizes, too, and of course I remain grateful to ABP for publishing my debut collection, The Great Garbage Patch. For all these reasons, you may notice that I am publishing in ABZ more often these days.

“MRI” was a fun poem to write, and I think it is fun to read, too. As I was lying in the machine, I was struck by the regular and irregular sounds it produced, as well as its sleek appearance. How ironic, I thought, to be debilitated and immobilized in an environment that resembled a techno club for one. So I wrote a poem about it. (For concerned readers, I am no longer in pain, though still doing physical therapy in the hope that I may one day stop walking like Frankenstein’s monster.)

NIH Image Gallery, Cataract. National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health. A hypermature age-related cortico-nuclear cataract with a brunescent (brown) nucleus. 25 July 2016. Wikimedia Commons. PD.

My opinion of “The Seer” is not fully formed, since I wrote it just a few days ago. Like “The Test” (which is included in The Great Garbage Patch) and the elevator in Cranes, this poem was inspired by a vision I had. I use this word to describe intense images like dreams that occur as I am waking, so I am drifting in and out of consciousness and somewhat lucid during them. I do not believe any divine forces are communicating with me, but the visions seem to come from outside me because they are randomly synthesized from who knows what non-rational material, they feel profound and frightening, and I relate to them more like an audience than an actor.

As one might expect, six weeks of intense pain, followed by not being able to move normally for a couple of months, have made me think of old age and death in a new, up close and personal way. No doubt that was behind my vision of an older, supposedly wiser self perched on a cliff. This person had filmy blue eyes–like other, famous seers, she was blind–and she spoke cryptically. She resembled a bird of prey, or perhaps a vulture. So I wrote a poem about consulting her. And Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium also got in there somehow.

I look forward to sharing these poems in ABZ in September. There will be updates on ordering or subscribing when they’re out.

*But when I do searches, I find Chill Subs helpful. Subscribe to Sub Club!

ABZ #63 Is Out, with My Poem in it

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Promotional photo.

Just a PSA to let everyone know that this magazine from Alien Buddha Press is out and available in black and white here or in color here. Thanks to Editor Red Focks! It has my poem, “Cranes,” in it, which I wrote about here. If my experience with other ABZ issues is any guide, this one will also be full of exciting, interesting, and fun reading material, so go get yourself a copy.

Also, below is an ad for a Chill Subs Sub Club subscription. I am putting it in my posts because I believe it is a good tool for writers. If you think so too, check it out. They put a lot of hard work into their informative newsletters on submission and development opportunities.

Subscribe to Sub Club!