Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week

You shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but it doesn't mean the cover can't be appealing. Here are a few magazines that came in this week that made me stop to think, say "wow," or simply announce to my coworkers, "Hey, check out this cover!"

Main Street Rag's new cover features a hallway, and at the end, there is an exit sign, pointing left and a sign below indicating poetry is to the right (pointing, of course, to where you must open the journal). Which way will you choose?

Gulf Coast's "Issues" cover features a selection of books of issues: Oversharing, Essay Tests, Abandonment Issues, God Complex, Drug Issues, Control Issues, and, largest and dead center, Mom Issues.

The Southern Review's cover features a library, taken over by disaster, with the dome of the ceiling ripped out to reveal a beautiful skyline.

Steel Toe Review Print Volume

The online magazine Steel Toe Review has just put out volume 2 of their print series. Some of the best work they published online in 2012 is featured in this issue. It also features never-before-published illustrations. "Our mission has evolved over time, and it may seem contradictory to an outsider," writes M. David Hornbuckle in the editor's note. "We call ourselves a journal of contemporary Southern arts and literature, but what we publish often extends well beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Ideally, we think of ourselves as a bridge to connect the established with the new, the traditional with the experimental, and the Southern with (not just the Northern, but) the world without borders. Our home is Birmingham, Alabama, in a sense, but it is also the internet, and in every literal and metaphorical sense, the internet is about making connections. And so that is what we do."

The Body Parts of Sheepshead Review

The current issue of Sheepshead Review features an illustration of a liver on its cover. In the editor's note, Kelsey DuQuaine explains that, "This semester's theme reflects the process the journal goes through in choosing these pieces." The layout editor, Jake Jenkins, brought the idea of body parts to the table. The kidney on the cover represents the way in which the staff filters the writing for selection in the magazine. Then, each section inside features a different body part: lungs for Prose ("that breathe life into the stories we tell"), a beating heart for Poetry ("symbolizes the emotion and passion"), an eye for Visual Arts, and a stomach for the special Eat Up! section.

This issue also features the two winning poems for the Rising Phoenix Award, selected by Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman. In the judges comments, they write, "When you ask two poets to judge a contest, you may well end up with two poems selected. In our case, this is not because we each championed one and refused to compromise, but because we agreed that the two poems featured here represent very different voices and choices. By selecting them both as winners, we can highlight their comparative strengths and more clearly demonstrate through contrast what tools we poets have at our disposal, and what decisions go int o writing a poem." The two winners are Mitchell Sabez with "You See the Hut Yet You Ask 'Where Shall I Go for Shelter?'" and Jake Jenkins for "Kentucky Chase."

RHINO Editors' Prizes 2013

RHINO's 2013 issue features the winners of the Editors' Prizes for 2013:

First Prize: Rodney Gomez – "Drag Racer"

Second Prize: Kristin Robertson – "Hyoid Bone"

Honorable Mention: Claudia Cortese – "Lucy tells the boy to suck"

The issue also features work from Anne Barngrover, Kathleen Boyle, Jeff Burt, Sean Howard, Liz Kay, Sophie Klahr, Gail Martin, Adam McGee, Matthew Murrey, Jeff Oaks, Rikki Santer, Sara Talpos, Sidney Thompson, Bill Yarrow, and many more. To see the full Table of Contents, please visit RHINO's website.

Interview with Jake Adam York

The current issue of Hayden's Ferry Review contains a short interview with Jake Adam York, author of Persons Unknown which contributes "to the dialogue surrounding the development, and launch, of the Civil Rights Movement." Jake Adler had interviewed in in November 2012 as part of a class assignment through email. And in his introduction to the interview, Adler states, "Dr. York commemorates, and pays homage to, the tragic lives which suffered at the hands of ignorance and oppression by highlighting the simple and preposterous cause for all of the hate and violence that has endured: race. It doesn't matter who writes this poetry, I learned, but that they write it in the first place. . . Dr. York was one of those rare, champion poets who knew what his voice was, what it needed to say and how it needed [to] say it. . . He deserves the utmost recognition and marked celebration." In five questions, the interview discusses York's writings, his choices in writing, and his inspirations for beginning work on Persons Unknown.

Fiddlehead Contest Winners

The Fiddlehead's Spring 2013 issue includes the winners and pieces of their 22nd Annual Contest:
 
Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize:
Kim Trainor, Cradle Song: Six Variations

Poetry Honourable Mention: Sue Chenette, Inscription
Poetry Honourable Mention: Samantha Bernstein, Eulogy for Finn

Short Ficiton First Prize:
Rhonda Collis, The Halter

Fiction Honourable Mention: Jennifer Manuel, Seilent E
Fiction Honourable Mention: Vin Fielding, All Bones Recovered

Famous Outlines

Flavorwire shares photos of Famous Authors' Handwritten Oulines for Great Works of Literature: Joseph Heller for Catch-22, JK Rowling for Order of the Phoenix, James Salter for Light Years, Henry Miller for Tropic of Capricorn, William Faulkner for A Fable (written on his office walls), Sylvia Plath for The Bell Jar, Norman Mailer for Harlot’s Ghost, Jennifer Egan for “Black Box,” Gay Talese for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”

Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize Portfolio

In an introduction to a portfolio showcasing the poet Marie Ponsot who won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Poetry Editor Christian Wiman starts, "Marie Ponsot wrote many of the poems for which she will be remembered while raising seven children all by herself." He goes on to say that, "If that sentence alone doesn't cause you to pause in awe for a moment, then I'd wager you haven't experienced the demands and decibels of the little darlings. Ponsot herself knew all to well the cost . . . The wonder is that she knew . . . the wonder."

Here is a sampling, the first stanza of Ponsot's "A Visit":

Come for duty's sake (as girls do) we watch
The sly very old woman wile away from her pious
And stagger-blind friend, their daily split of gin.
She pours big drinks. We think of what
Has crumpled, folded, slumped her flesh in
And muddied her once tumbling blood that, young,
Sped her, threaded with brave power: a Tower,
Now Babel, then of ivory, of the Shulamite,
Collapsed to this keen dame moving among
Herself. She hums, she plays with used bright
Ghosts, makes real dolls, and drinking sings Come here
My child, and feel it, dear. A crooking finger
Shows how hot the oven is.

Read the full poem and portfolio in Poetry's May 2013 issue.

Life in Prison

A recent BBC article, "Five Things Prisoners' Books Show About Life in Prison" by Ed Lowther examines works by Miguel de Cervantes, Roman philosopher Boethius, Oscar Wilde, Martin Luther King, and several others.

The Vacation by Wendell Berry

American Life in Poetry: Column 425
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

If we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve known people who have, it seems: taken a vacation mostly to photograph a vacation, not really looking at what’s there, but seeing everything through the viewfinder with the idea of looking at it when they get home. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, one of our most distinguished poets, captures this perfectly.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Wendell Berry, whose most recent book of poems is New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012. Poem reprinted from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012, and used with permission of Wendell Berry and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Interview: Dr. Vosk, Asylum Seekers Medical Examiner

From the Sampsonia Way online:

A volunteer for the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network, Dr. Vosk assists asylum seekers through medical evaluation. He remembers first getting involved with the program in 2009 when he saw a notice for an asylum examiners’ training course in Washington D.C. and decided to attend. Since then, he has been a volunteer for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Before seeing the notice, however, Dr. Vosk had been involved with political causes since the 1950s and practiced medicine since the 1970s—Physicians for Human Rights seemed like a great way to combine both of his passions. 

In this interview Dr. Vosk discusses the role coincidence plays in keeping asylum seekers alive, his method of assessing trauma via an individual’s scars, and the difficulties people face when seeking refuge in the United States, where “fearfulness and rejection of immigrants have become an accepted part of national policy.”

Read the full interview here.

Jamaica Kincaid Interview

From Alyssa Loh's interview on Salon.com:

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman. But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do. But if they’re white, they won’t say it. I used to just pretend I didn’t notice it, and now I just think I don’t care. 

There are all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not a criticism. It’s not valid. It’s not a valid observation in terms of criticism. You can list it as something that’s true. But it’s not critical. 

You may not like it because it makes you uneasy—and you can say that. But to damn it because it’s angry…. They always say that about black people: “those angry black people.” 

And why? You’re afraid that there might be some truth to their anger. It might be justified. 

I promise you, if I had blonde hair and blue eyes this wouldn’t be an issue. No one ever says, “That angry Judith Krantz…” or whatever.

CFP: Basic Writing and Community Engagement

For the Fall 2014 issue of Basic Writing, Community Engagement, and Interdisciplinarity (BWe), the editors seek articles that investigate the uses and effects of community engagement in basic writing coursework. Their concept of “community engagement” is conceived very broadly, and includes concepts covered by umbrella terms such as service-learning, community based learning, and community literacy. In addition, BWe is interested in interdisciplinary collaborations from any perspective. How has your basic writing course worked with the library, the writing center, or other disciplines? BWe welcomes submissions not only from basic writing faculty, but also faculty from other disciplines or from community partners who have collaborated with basic writing classes.

Article submissions will be accepted through December 28, 2013. BWe submissions will be responded to by March 1, 2014. If revision is requested, a final revision from a BWe author must be submitted by May 31, 2014.

BWe is a peer-reviewed online journal that welcomes both traditional and multi-modal texts. Submission guidelines for formatting print essays and webtexts appear on the BWe Web site.