Incendiary Lit

The Apples of Recollection
by Morri Creech

Once, stumbling into the twilight kitchen, drowsy, leaning above
the ripe fruit on the countertop, hearing only a moth thump
against the fluorescent light and a slight breeze swell the curtains,
I had a vision. There was a long path to the apple trees
my grandfather grafted when he was young. They shed their leaves
in the cold light. I walked there and found my father, twenty-six,
bent on a ladder, hoisting a half-full bucket toward the boughs.
The sunlight fell in columns through the biggest branches.
I knew somehow that my mother had been gone five months,
and still he picked apples for the pies she would never make.
One fell groundward and rolled toward my feet. I was sure
that if I picked it up, if I lifted it to my mouth and took a bite,
I would remember nothing of what I saw. And for a time,
there was nothing else, just that moment, a father busy at work
among the trees, picking the swollen apples no one would eat,
and his child beneath him, holding the one piece of fruit
he was strictly forbidden, for memory’s sake, to taste. All of this,
I knew, might pass through the gates of ivory in an instant.
And then I woke. I stood there alone in the fluorescent light
of the present, in the kitchen, holding the unbitten apple in my palm.

—

Indiana Review rocks. They’re one of the few magazines that actively keep an eye on their subscription list, and updated my address! What a wonderful surprise to get the newest IR in my mailbox. I’d been wrapped up in the Ultra-Talk issue of TriQuarterly, so definitely a slight change of pace, and perhaps it has something to do with the juxtaposition of the two journals over the holiday break, or maybe because I have a soft spot in my heart for a poem of my own, about a vision of my father and a piece of fruit. So, universality or coincidence? The Indiana Review liked it enough to print it, I was drawn back to this poem a number of poems while flipping haphazardly through the journal, so, anyone? What do ya think? You can’t deny that “Twilight Kitchen” and “in the fluorescent light of the present” sound sweet. Yes, they produce saccharin synesthesia. Anyway, subscribe to the Indiana Review. This issue’s cover looks very nice too, and they don’t have it online yet, so tah-dah. Here we go.

The Sour Aftertaste of Dinner

by Richard Fein

The couple that was at the next table wore wedding rings, surely they were once in love.
But were they still soul mates or just two souls sitting side by side.
Menus covered their faces, avoiding the eye-to-eye.
The waiter took their orders and while they waited each kept behind a paperback novel.
From soup to salad to entree there was silence and neither shared from the other’s plate.
They both skipped desert so nothing sweet was on their table.
Only when their bill was being paid did their hands touch, accidently
They apologized, actually apologized to each other.
And as we watched, our own romance cooled to lukewarm.
But somewhere, sometime, on our way home,
we looked at each other and our eyes screamed not us, not us,
as we kissed deeply to wash away the sour aftertaste of dinner.
–

322 Review is the literary journal published by Rowan University’s MFA program. They publish 4 online issues, and 2 print issues (though the first print issue is the only one out yet. The next print issue deadline is August 15th, and electonic submissions are preferred at submissions@322review.org (up to 3 poems, each not to exceed 36 lines / Fiction up to 6k words, or 3-750 word stories, or you can tack a short-short onto a regular story in a submission). They also sound very open to mixed media work and hypertextual documents. Check out the website and see if its your cup of tea. I also really liked the poem Misplaced by Jill Jones. I had to read the line “placed after before / in the evening” a few times to get it, but I liked that. The method mirrored in the content of the poem. Or the other way around, whichever it is, it made me think a bit. A great indication of their ecclectic tastes when compared to the more straightforward Fein poem.

Willow Springs is a sweet literary journal from Eastern Washington University that publishes accessible and excellent poetry and prose. They’ve recently started a feature on their website that has the poet writing (at decent length) about their poem. Dorianne Laux is one of the best contemporary poets, and you should all be more familiar with her work. Dagnabbit. Here’s her feature at Willow Springs for her poem “S. Sgt Metz.”

ENJOY

Southeast Review is a sweet magazine out of FSU that publishes lots of great, accessible poetry and prose. They run three contest (with one of the best contest names) The World’s Best Short Short Story Contest for stories under 500 words (as well as a poetry and narrative nonfiction contest). I entered last year, and like any rejected  writer, I found fault in a few of the finalists published from last year’s issue, but the winner, and a number of the finalists were not only well written (all the stories, I can’t argue, were very well written) but also quirky and kinda up my alley so I can’t hold a grudge against them. One particular story made me question if Russell Edson had taken up a pseudonym. In other words, this is a safe journal to submit your work to. It’s not stuffily academic nor a breeding pool of nepotism. It’s a little Different. Here’s the info: First, don’t include your information on any of the pieces of writing. This is important. While ostensibly it shouldn’t matter much because all they have to do is white out the name, or sharpie it out or whatever, in the 1 in 300 chance that the contributor is local or friendly with a judge. But, as someone who’s dealt with (albeit only hundreds compared to the thousands of submissions the bigger journals get each year) reading submissions to a literary journal knows, it starts to get slightly offensive when people don’t read the 2 sentences of guidelines you make plainly available. Just a little. So, just be sure to include a cover letter that says “Hi, this is my name, this is what I’m submitting to your contest- ‘___’” and you’ll improve your standings just the teensiest bit (over f-ing up the rules, which may get you attention in high school, but later on people just start trashing submissions that LOOK like they’re a waste of time.

Deadline: March 20th
Fee: $15 ($10 for one narrative nonfiction essay)
Prize: $500 ($250 for nonfiction, so cry about it memoirists. :P)
Lengths:

WBSSSC: up to 3 stories per submission, each must be under 500 words
Poetry Contest: up to 5 poems or 10 pages.
(2nd ever) Narrative Nonfiction Contest: Up to 5,000 words.

Submit your shizz guys. You get a copy of the winning issue, and really, submitting to contests are the easiest way to justify buying an extraneous book in these tough times. Because, it’s not like buying a lottery ticket. It’s like buying a book and a raffle ticket. So get to it.

Make is another sweet Chicago magazine that publishes a reader (ie- I friggan like it) friendly aesthetic of poetry and prose. They’re publishing an issue soon with the theme of “This Everyday” which is something that I see a lot of in student writing especially. Kind of an Urban Ted Kooser vibe. The bourbon’s gone, but there’s still plenty of sweet Vermouth’s and cherries. A new bohemian that’s less Rent and more OpIvy. But also the normal, waiting in the dark-morning before work in the car with the cigarette lighter pushed in moments. The sharp edge of knive sliding into the thin-tough skin of carrot peeling feeling that presents itself to so many. This issue is for you. Submit. Help a literary journal. Word.

Or, $4,000 I guess. New Ohio Review (/nor) is running poetry and fiction contests with the deadline 3/10/09. Entry fee is $20 which includes a year’s subscription. Submission Length limits are up to ten pages of poetry or up to 4,000 words of prose. NOR is one of the few journals who pays in cashy-money for poems, so yet another reason to double check this quality journal with your hard earned money in hand and an urge to enter a contest. They require 2 cover letters for the contest, so be sure to read through their submission guidelines here.

Their new issue, 30.2 is out now with a slick cover of penguins wearing ties (but graphically slick, I like the black background, really makes the light blue letters pop, you know?). There’s a ton of great stuff in it, I’ll write more when I’ve read it through twice (instead of 1/3), but I’ve just been so into all the pieces so far from familiar new voices like Kevin Prufer, Emma Bolden, Matthew Dickman, Kim Addonizio, Bob Hicok, Nin Andrews and more. Friggan sweet I tell you. I’m especially taken with Matthew Dickman’s “Architecture poem,” (when green / apples pulled the sorrow from my chest after school /) and the surreal images in Kevin Prufer’s “Transparent Cities” but I haven’t even read the whole thing yet. I just wanted anyone who likes good reading to know ASAP that they should order this journal so they can have a bunch of great reading available as an alternative to the Dr. Phil book some relative with good intentions bought them for Christmas and keeps asking about. Go here and order the Indiana Review. It’s for your own good.

As a senior project three students (Chrystal Hartberg, Jessica Tyson and Zebulon Huset) at California State University- Long Beach produced the following collection of poems and essays.

Though originally meant to be an alternative to the Best American Series, it changed slightly as the process of reading over a hundred literary magazines polished the shrine of subjectivity that is reading poetry. Instead the collection took on the theme of excellent entertainment and was printed for adviser William Mohr.

Digital images of the project are now online here, under the title Better than the Movies 2008.

Yes, Lavanderia: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Word seeks submissions of Fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction
and other dirty deeds signifying sorting, washing, ironing, folding laundry and life. their restrictions are a max of 5000 words or 5 poems. Submission deadline is December 15th. Here is their link. I believe they are a part of City Works Press out of San Diego City College, at least that’s where the announcement came from.

The word restriction? 500. The grand prize? $500. The reading fee? $15 for 3 stories, which is 500 pennies for each story. A penny a word. Maybe that’s a little incentive to spend your words wisely. The Best Part? You get a year’s subscription to Gulf Coast for entering. That’s just two issues, but Gulf Coast is a tome of a journal. And a very entertaining read. So check out the website even though they don’t seem to mention this contest which was sent out to their mailing list. Here’s the entire message, with all the actually important info.

Gulf Coast is happy to announce our inaugural Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose!

Prize DetailsNamed in honor of Gulf Coast’s founder, the Donald Barthelme Prize will award $500 and publication in the upcoming issue of Gulf Coast for a prose poem or piece of flash fiction. The 2008 prize-winning entry will be selected by Beckian Fritz Goldberg. Guidelines: Submit up to 3 previously unpublished prose poems or short stories, each no more than 500 words in length. Your name and address should appear on the cover letter only. All entries will be eligible for publication, though only one will receive our $500 prize. Your $15 reading fee, payable to “Gulf Coast,” will include a one-year subscription. Manuscripts will not be returned. Include an SASE for results. Postmark Deadline: December 20, 2008 Send Entries to: Barthelme Prize, Gulf Coast English Dept, University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3013 Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts

We look forward to reading your entries!

All the best,
Laurie Ann Cedilnik
Managing Editor

For those who are still relying on an older copy of Poet’s Market, or just haven’t gotten too into this interwebby-train thingy that’s going through the tubes these days, it might be a good idea to start checking websites for updated submission policies and writing samples if you haven’t seen the journal in a couple years. Most magazines/journals/reviews/whatever have websites these days, and with the Firefox web browser revolution (ie, if you’re using internet explorer, download Firefox and try it and be won over) but if you’re looking for something specific, like a literary magazine, you no longer need the web address to travel their quickly. You can type in Florida Review in the web address bar and lo and behold, you wind up immediately at flreview.com thanks to Firefox and its partnership with Google. If the name is more commonly used, like Faultline, usually you can search with either the word fiction, poetry, or even better, if the journal is produced by a university, include that university’s name. For instance, I found Crate by searching for both “crate magazine” and “crate UCR”. If you’re looking for Zyzzyva, it’s pretty safe to just type it in the address bar (for zyzzyva.org haha)

Why check a journal’s website? Well, recently I went through an in-depth process of submission. I luckily live right next to a library, and a block from a community college, despite my current (hopefully only one year) lapse in schooling, so I took advantage of my surroundings and read through as many literary journals as I could get my hands on and really got a feel for them, and if my work would fit in there. I ended up with a narrowed down list of about 30 journals (which explains the lapse in posts here in September, my humble apologies). Then I busted out the Poet’s Market and envelopes and got to work. I had received an email from the New England Review last fall about their change in submission policy to no longer accept Simultaneous Submissions (your best friend in a land of 2-10% acceptance rates, it means submitting your work to more than one journal at a time), unfortunately in my response to an email informing them that a poem that I had also submitted to them had just been accepted at another journal (it is downside of SS’s, but happens pretty rarely, and as long as you keep track of what pieces you have where and when you sent it, you shouldn’t run into any problems). But, since my submission was sent in while they were still under their old policy they said it was ok (just don’t do it again). So I checked their website and discovered that they indeed no longer accept simultaneous submissions for poetry (for prose, however, they’re still ok if you aren’t a jerk and follow proper SS procedures ie- tell them immediately if smething they’re considering is accepted elsewhere). On the flipside, Fugue, Idaho State’s journal is listed as not accepting simultaneous submissions, but their website indicates that they DO accept them now. Both are fine, fine journals, and their willingness to accept simultaneous submissions bears no weight on that, however for you, the writer/submitter, it is important to know the current submission policies.

And that’s why you always check the website.

This is an interesting list of submission turn offs from the editor of The North American Review Vince Gotera. Those who are thinking about starting to submit their work for publication should check over this list, maybe even print it out. Those who already are submitting, look it over to make sure you’re not accidentally breaking submission etiquette. Everyone that has a Facebook profile should go here and friend “Friends of the North American Review”

Okay … for me, the “turn-off” is different for each poem I ultimately reject. Here are a few immediate turn-offs, in no particular order:

• Botched ending … forced, too explanatory, too “universalized”
• Clumsy use of form … for example, if sonnet or sestina, etc.
• Slow getting going … should rock from first line down
• Too much full rhyme … I prefer slant rhyme
• Uninformed line breaks … be aware of lineation effects
• Abstract or image-less … unless experimental
• Superficial topic or handling
• Obviously unaware of poetic tradition(s)
• Cover letter explains poem … inexperienced submitter
• Poem sent with vita or résumé … very inexperienced submitter
• Says “copyright …” … does writer think I’ll steal the poem?
• Centered lines … unless important for theme
• Badly edited … errors, typos, grammar, etc.
• Font too small … many editors are older and have old eyes
• Monotype font or font too fancy … hard to read quickly
• Pseudonyms … let’s back up our writing with our names, ppl
• Handwritten … usually from prisoners, though I’ve accepted
poems by prisoners.

There are other turn-offs but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

I do want to say that I don’t just drop the poem. My eyes touch every word. I read very quickly and wait for the poem to say, “whoa, you’re reading too fast.”

I love Duotrope. Don’t get me twisted, but sometimes I get a hankering for something to hold in my hands and look at while I’m watching Top Chef or The Office or MST3K or whatever. That’s when I bust out the good old Poet’s Market (used 2007’s at amazon for under $3!) and start flipping through it. I have the last 5. It’s definitely a nice tool to have, Writer’s Digest does a good job on them. I’ve read almost all of the articles in each one, and it’s definitely helped me find journals that seem likely to be more sympathetic to my type of poetry. Of course, there are other all prose journals, and probably at least another dozen or two magazines that accept submissions over the summer, but many don’t. So here’s a bunch of good ones (and some links to help you along), (e)= accepts email submissions and NoSS= doesn’t accept simultaneous submissions.

A-C

ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Apalachee Review, Arable (e), Artful Dodge, Asheville Poetry Review, Backwards City Review (e), Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal NoSS, Bitter Oleander NoSS(not in July), Black Warrior Review, Burnside Review (e), California Quarterly (CA residents only), Carolina Quarterly NoSS, Chaffin Journal (Only accepts during summer), Chattahoochee Review NoSS, Chautauqua Literary Review, Christian Science Monitor (keep in mind their positive sensibilities), Cimarron Review, Coal City Review NoSS, Common Ground Review NoSS, Connecticut Review, Cottonwood Review NoSS, Crab Creek Review, Cranky (e), Crazyhorse

D-L

Diner, Edgz, Epicenter, 5AM NoSS, Gargoyle Magazine (e), Good Foot, Hanging Loose NoSS, Harpur Palate, Hazmat Review NoSS, Hiram Poetry Review, Hudson Review NoSS, Indiana Review, The Journal, Lake Effect, The Ledge, Louisville Review, Lungfull! Magazine

M-P

Main St. Rag, Manoa, Margie, Massachusetts Review NoSS, Michigan Quarterly Review NoSS, Midwest Quarterly, Miller’s Pond, Mudfish, Nerve Cowboy, The New Criterion, New Letters NoSS, New Zoo Poetry Review, Nexus, Nimrod, North American Review NoSS, North Dakota Quarterly NoSS, Northwest Review NoSS, One Trick Pony NoSS, Pacific Coast Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Pennsylvania English, Pikeville Review NoSS, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry NoSS, Portland Review

Q-Z

Quercus Review NoSS, Rainbow Curve, Raintown Review, Redgreene Review, Redivider, River Styx, Roanoke Review, Sewanee Review NoSS, Slipstream, Smartish Pace, Southeast Review, Southern Humanities Review NoSS, Southern Poetry Review, Southwest Review NoSS, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Spillway, Spinning Jenny (e) NoSS, The Sun NoSS, Texas Poetry Journal (e), Third Coast, Threepenny Review NoSS, Timber Creek Review (short poems only), Verse, Virginia Quarterly Review NoSS, Westview, Whiskey Island.

In the great tome that is the new Gulf Coast, which I sadly haven’t been able to delve terribly deep into yet, I did, however, find a classic Lawrence Raab poem playing out scenarios stemming from movies, literature and nuclear fission. I love that guy. So here’s the poem.

Mad Doctors
by Lawrence Raab

Even as children they always went too far.
What will happen, they keep thinking,
if I pull that switch, strike this match?
Maybe no one told them not to,
or explained, logically, what could go wrong.
Then they were playing with lightning,

wondering what they would do if they didn’t
have to die. Consider Doctor Cyclops,
stuck in the middle of the jungle
with his radium, making things small.

It’s 1940, five years before Hiroshima.
Even then science wasn’t on our side.
In the movies, Albert Decker’s
shaved head makes him monstrous
and impressive, and a little like a child.
Yet he seems to have no past–

no wife to bring back from the dead,
no motive for evil, nothing but research.
His eyes are bad and he hardly sleeps.
We should remember Doctor Cyclops

from time to time, and Doctor Frankenstein,
Doctor Jekyll, and Doctor X.
They were all deceived by ambition,
although they behaved themselves
betrayed by the world.

Maybe no one ever told them
we don’t need to live forever.
Maybe no one explained, exactly,
the logic of it.

After reading a great deal of literary magazines I’ve come to hope that if I enter enough of the Indiana Review contests that I’ll eventually accrue a lifetime subscription. Every issue there are amazing poems, fiction, and even art. Also, ever since Sydney Brown’s creative nonfiction workshop I’ve had a soft-spot for the flash-fiction. The short short. Not sure who to blame for my prose poem affinity. Maybe Campbell McGrath. Yeah, I could probably safely blame my love for prose poems on his first book Capitalism.
The bastard.
Anyway, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize is another one of those self-explanatory contest title names like “First Book of Poetry” or “Who can fart the bonfire started with a lighter?” though I’ve been told first prize for that last one isn’t quite as much as the hospital bills the second place winner receives, so it’s a gamble. The prize is for prose poems or short-shorts that are 500 words or less. 1/2 of 1K, 1,000. Yeah. 1000×0.5, even.
Entry Fee: $15 ($27 overseas)- which includes a year’s subscription to IR. Definitely well worth it. Consider it a bonus gift for subscribing, you’re entered into a sweepstakes where you could win $1000 and critical acclaim! HOORRAYYYY! But really, you never know who’s going to like your style, your flair for story structure, your unique image sets, so why not spend the $15 and ensure yourself two 200 page collections of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and reviews that I personally guarantee you’ll enjoy at least 1/3 of. If you don’t I’ll personally apologize in a form-email that I’ve already composed.
Deadline: June 9th! That’s right, very soon. That’s the postmark deadline. You can also submit online for the Indiana Review 1/2k Prize here.
Final Judge: You know the deal, the regular readers for the Indiana Review sort through the hundreds or thousands of pieces submitted, and narrow them down substantially. Then they move onto the senior editors who narrow it down to a reasonable number for the guest judge. Or it goes from readers to judge, depends on the contest, but if you make it past the early screening your prose poem/short short will be judged by none other than Russell Edson. I think Webdelsol summed up his biography best so I’ll shamelessly copy-paste that here for convenience: Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself “Little Mr. Prose Poem,” is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson’s typical “recipes” for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed–both figuratively and literally–by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .
I mean, it’s not a biography, but the pertinent information for someone who’s judging a writing contest. I first read Edson in Stand Up Poetry, Charles Harper Webb’s kick ass anthology. So send in to the 1/2k prize. What were you going to do with that $15 anyway? Buy two drinks at dinner? A frappuccino for yourself and two friends? 1/2 of a shirt? Get some good literature and an extra reason to be excited to see the mailman.

Jessica and I are working on an independent study class right now that involves reading as many 2007 journals that we can find, and pick the ones we like the most. The project still has a ways, but I’ve really started noticing some of the same names, especially in the smaller journals like Cairn and the Pacific Review the Willow Review and the like. Patrick Carrington, Sean Kilpatrick, Jonathon Wells, Emma Bolden, Geof Hewitt, Gary Nowacki, and Marilyn Ringer. This, of course, is merely coming from some guy who thinks he’s learning to become a poet, so take it with a grain of salt. The names may be terribly familiar, or new, but check out their poems when you come across them, at very worst they’ll be decent poems. I guarantee it.

Though more journals end their submission periods after next month, this month has quite a few, including:

Buffalo Carp, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Crucible (4/15), Epoch (4/15), Grasslands Review, Lips, Notre Dame Review, Paterson Literary Review, Saranac Review

They’re just awesome, and I heart them. Just wanted to say that. They keep in touch with you throughout the whole process of publishing your work, they offer helpful editorial suggestions, but work with you on them. They understand when you can’t get back to them right away, and they just have a great eye for writing. Well, I exclude my own writing from that, of course, because I don’t want to sound cocky, I mean all the poetry they choose is excellent, and all of the poems give you more than one rewarding reading.

Bret Lott has sadly left TSR to return to teaching, but that should be nice for him. Also, he has a son named Zeb, so he’s automatically cool. But the whole TSR staff are wonderful, and I would highly recommend sending them your very best work. But the new editor is also a very capable writer: Jeanne Leiby (you may have read her award winning collection Downriver, released just last November).

OK, I’ll stop gushing now. But, be sure to check out the Spring 2008 issue which will include my poem “When someone suggested mushrooms on the pizza” and tell me how cool I am, or how much I suck. I’m open to varying opinions.

CSU- Fullerton’s finally got a literary magazine! Dash Literary Journal is seeking submissions of short works for their magazine which is keying in on brevity. Prose pieces (fiction or micro literary criticism) are limited to 1500 words, and poems to just 16 lines (Yeah, just 4 quatrains!) But, you know, brevity’s fun sometimes. The deadline for submissions is March 31st, and you can submit via email. Here’s a link to their submission guidelines, and I hope a bunch of you help them produce their first issue with some awesome work.

CSU Long Beach’s journal RipRap surprised me. The whole program has. Their poetry department has some of the finest poet-teachers in California. But I digress. RipRap 29 is the most recent edition, with a cool selective focus, hand toned cover, the content was definitely a pleasant surprise. Jessica and I had helped out in the selection process for the poetry side, so we’d read almost all of that, and knew what to expect, but the prose kept up the same standard. “At the Panaderia” by Raul Martinez and “A Hard Way Upwards” by Matthew Nakamura were some of my favorites, but I took a wandering approach to it, so there are probably some hidden gems in there still waiting for me, as I’ve liked most of what I’ve read, which is kind of hard to find in most student run journals these days. They are also accepting submissions,  between October and December, here’s a link to their submission guideline page, check it out. It’s worth it.