Incendiary Lit

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.

Did that title make sense? If not, let me break it down. Prepare your Amazon cart to spend $25, which means you could add the following to your order of

Reviewers have said it’s a “masterpiece” with touches deeper than a typical genre novel and “explores characters in a way that is true, whole, and touches deep down into the reality of a person.”

What’s it about?

(from publisher) Awake in the darkness, long after midnight, Long Beach Homicide Detective Danny Beckett is trying to keep his past at bay. Haunted by all the things he’s lost–his wife, his family, his hope–he begins to investigate the brutal murder of Elizabeth Williams, a popular High School English teacher. Soon Danny begins to understand that apprehending the murderer is not just a case to solved, but an act of personal redemption.

 What’s the Buying Event?

It is a effort to spike Amazon numbers with purchases so that it manages to match “you might like” or “other popular purchases” type lists that are programmed into Amazon to help suggestively sell more books.So, if you like detective or mystery novels, or just like reading period, on July 1st go buy Tyler Dilts’ A King of Infinite Space. Word.

Thank you Glimmer Train, for providing the world with so much information and literature for writers and readers around the world. Someday I’ll be able to afford a GT subscription, and won’t have to slip inconsicuously into SDSU’s Library and hide in their massive dominoes of magazine racks. Anyway, they provide a service called “Writers Ask” which featured this short essay by Lee Martin about trying to emerge in the publishing business as a writer, but ultimately about balancing character and plot in the arena of memorability. It’s a good read. Check it out.

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.

Contest deadlines:

Poets and Writers
New Pages

Literary Magazines to browse for submissions:

Duotrope
New Pages

MFA research:

The Speakeasy forum (Poets and Writers’ website)
The MFA Blog (Tom Kealy’s)
Suburban Ecstacies (Seth Abramson’s)

Audio poetry:

Poets.org

There are tons, and tons of great online resources for writers of all kinds. You just gotta sift through a lot of “writing is emotion and therefore perfect just as it is” types of people, but there are definitely a lot of great sites out there. This post was mostly for the publishing minded, but tons of poets now have blogs, some poetic, others more like a public diary.

Fine, they actually call it Editors on Poetry, because they’re not all poetry editors, also some are managing editors and at least one is a slush pile reader, but that makes this article by the Poetry Society of America all the more well rounded. Three questions are put before a slew of editors from a wide variety of journals that publish poetry, regarding submission reading process, cover letter necessity, and handwritten rejection notes. The editors really just say the same things that you always hear, but hearing it from such a wide array of sources seems somewhat more significant. Not sure why. Here’s a sample answer regarding the importance of cover letters:

The Sewanee Review: George Core

Covering letters are not crucial. Just as nothing depends upon a red wheelbarrow, little depends upon the covering letter. I prefer to have one but assume that most of them will not be of much help and that some will contain inflated or dishonest information about the writers in question.

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.

OK, so there are 2 flash fiction/prose poetry prizes with deadlines soon:

Gulf Coast offers the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose with a postmark deadline of December 20th, 2008. $15 entry (includes subscription) $500 prize, 3 pieces under 500 words.

and

River Styx offers the Schlafly Beer Micro-Fiction Contest, A prize of $1500, two cases of Schlafly beer, and publication in River Styx is given for the best micro-fiction story. The editors of River Styx will judge. 500 words maximum per story, up to three stories per entry. $20 entry fee. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to River Styx, postmarked by December 31st, 2008.

Beer for poets? How’d they know?

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.

Oh the rejection slip, but is it vain to keep it? When does the collection become a horde? I think the surface reason that I was able to come up with was that I want to keep up to date records, but I hate throwing away that little reminder that _______. <—- but what is that blank? I’m not sure. Is it that “there’s a lot to learn” that “hey, at least I’m trying” or is it something more Shakespearean about my words being immortal and when they’re revered I’ll be able to look back at the notes and marvel at how I persevered… do I need a safe deposit box where these rejection notes will be safe for my fantasy future self? I’m hoping that once I got past the initial, “hey, I sent out some work to be published, and even though it wasn’t I tried” (phase one of “hey, at least I’m trying”) phase, that I kept them filed and alphabetical (for the most part) out of some inner desire to be tidy that I’ve cocooned well, well away from my everyday messy habits. But I am a writer, and therefore inherently neurotic and a little vein, so I’m not entirely sure how pure my intentions are, and that’s a little scary, that tiptoeing around the phrase “narcissism” with the word “writer” as a buffer. I don’t know, I guess my mom used to keep the little “contestant” consolatory ribbon that they gave out in track and field every year. Right alongside the second and first place ribbons. In a box. Where my rejections are. That’s sane. Yes.

Anyway, anyone else keep their rejections? Or have a picture of the on the wall or refrigerator? Of the foot locker completely filled with rejections, or for the secret poet Al Bundys, a Foot Locker completely filled with rejections would be even more impressive. Help prove I’m not crazy…

I don’t normally post about that, but it’s been a little while. Since the Spring when I was in school and busy. Now there’s been a couple months, and granted not during a regular reading period, but it feels good, you know? Makes me want to type a :). Anyway, look for my prose poem “The Fan” in the Georgetown Review (in 2010 or 2011, haha. Dampers the excitement a little, like my first big acceptance, The Southern Review, which was also about 2 years between acceptance and publication).

Here’s a lecture about DIY perfect binding. This is great for class projects like workshop anthologies, theses (doesn’t it seem like the plural of thesis should be thesi? I mean, yeah, the i isn’t a u, but still… theses? Sounds like a Deliverance hillbilly motioning to the captive with a dull, questioning look on his face “We gunn’ get ta taste theses?”– eek!) literary journals, or even just those who want to organize their work for friends and family. The process only involves some small boards, clamps, glue, a paint brush and some waxed paper. Definitely not a commercial process, but definitely passable for small projects. The lecturer is informative and clearly knows a thing or two about the physical crafting of books.

I say again, the literary journal database that revamped this month is awesome.

There’s not an entire mission statement about the journals, and they are self written by the editors themselves. What else proves Pw.org likes us? They include the very pertinent information: what they like which genres they publish, if they accept simultaneous submissions or electronic submissions, and the submission deadlines.

Here’s AGNI’s description of themselves, just to give you a sample:

AGNI

We look for the honest voice, the idiosyncratic signature, experimental where necessary but not willfully so. Writing that grows from a vision, a perspective, and a passion will interest us, regardless of structure or approach.

—

So there you have it. Eat yourself a fudgesicle and save the stick for arts and crafts projects. And while you do that, talented person you are, use the PW.org database to further organize your submission process.

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.

Most of you have seen it, but the submission manager tool that many journals are now utilizing is really sweet. I’d been resistant to online submissions, mostly still clinging to that physical evidence of my efforts in the form rejection letter. But now with my literally hundreds of letters that say “thanks but no thanks” I feel confident enough in my inefficiencies as a writer that I don’t need quite the same concrete reminder quite as often as I used to. Now an email saying no thanks will work. And it means no printer ink, postage, or envelopes. Some journals also do e-mail submission (from the New Yorker to Red Wheelbarrow), but not too many. This new submission manager that places like Quarterly West, West Branch, Columbia, Fence, and tons of more. You sign up for the journal’s submission manager, and can check up on it’s status online, however, you will be notified via email of any updates so you don’t have to be neurotic and check the site every couple days.

Now the fun stuff. THANK YOU DEVIN EMKE! Devin Emke wrote the program One Story that has become this online submission manager which makes submissions so much easier. If you have a journal, check out the benefits of his program here.

So I hope you have your Poet’s Market dog-eared, Duotrope and New Pages bookmarked, and a pantsload of postage ready. To refresh on what you really need to submit: a manilla envelope large enough to not have to fold your submission (it’s a professionalism thing, which I learned from an editor at the Iowa Review, thank you Nic, for helping a yound writer out) a standard business sized envelope (for your Self Addressed and Stamped Envelope. (That’s right, M. Doughty, join the 5% Nation of SASE), a brief cover letter that says the bare essentials of information for your submission (name, address, phone, email, like a 30 word bio, the titles of the piece(s) submitted, and you know, a little schmoozing goes a long ways. Now, don’t go overboard and gush and gush about a journal you’ve never read, but if you have read it before and can remember a piece from it, mention liking it. It’s just a little coutesy to the editors who have no clue if people are liking what they’ve chosen to include. Or, if you are familiar with an editor’s work, let them know what you liked. As a writer myself, I know the very few times I’ve ever heard about my work I’ve glowed about the compliment. It’s a rare thing to get an unsolicited compliment about your writing, and editors are people and writers too. Be kind to them. Great Writing- If you haven’t read much contemporary poetry, or fiction, try to read a copy of the journal you’re submitting to. Now, with the smaller journals especially, it can be hard to get ahold of one, and buying 20 different sample copies may be a little difficult, but at least, at least read a couple sample pieces on the journal’s website. Most have a couple posted to cut down on the inappropriate submissions. I’ve been guilty of submitting inappropriate work to journals, I think it’s part of the trial and error style of submissions that most novice writers go through before they learn the ropes from either an editor, a fellow writer, or another source (I highly recommend Poet’s Market for poets. It’s a tactile, and very helpful source that you can flip through while bored. It even lists a few writers who’ve been published there, so you can have something of a gauge even before you read it what they like, though most journals are ridiculously ecclectic. And finally, stamps. Here’s a simple guide: it is $1.17 for 3 ounces first class postage for your large manilla envelope along with a single page cover letter (for your own bennefit, don’t even come close to hitting a second page), and 6 more pieces of paper. Be it four single page pieces and one 2-pager, one six page piece, or whatever, 7 total pieces of paper. If it’s one more piece of paper you have to add an additional $.17 stamp. If you have 15 pieces, again, add another $.17 stamp, and so forth. Get these stamps from the post office, or wait in line to weight each envelop and mail them like that if you’re unsure about the postage. And never send it certified… journals don’t sign for submissions. It’s just not how they do it. Trust in the USPS, at least a little. And finally, you need some understanding of the journal publishing world. You don’t need experience, but knowledge that most journals can only (and I mean they only have the page space possible, regardless of quality) accept under 10% of the work submitted to them. So there will be a lot of rejection. Even famous writers… David Kirby’s poem “At the Grave of Harold Goldstein” was rejected on 17 separate occasions before it was finally accepted at Parnassus, and then it went on to be selected for that year’s Best American Poetry. So don’t let some rejection bother you. Maybe it had been an especially competitive month, or year even. Journals will get spikes in good submissions some years, and the bar for acceptance will be significantly higher. Sometimes you’ll have an editor in a bad mood, or if you’re lucky, a good mood. Editors are people too, and they are flawed, and subjective. Realize that, and be cool about it. I’ve probably got at least 300 rejections in my files. Maybe more. It happens. But it makes those acceptances all the sweeter. Have at it guys. Get organizing and figure out who you want to send which pieces. Huzzah!

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.

These cover letters are fairly similar to the cover letters in Poet’s Market, which are pretty simple templates but helpful for those just starting to submit to literary magazines.

Click here to see the post at Poetic Asides.

The Writers @ Work (where hip meets lit according to their website) is a conference held in Utah June 23rd-27th. Yes, just days after my birthday and I didn’t win free tuition from a pool of hundreds. So sad. Anyway, here are the winners. Go here to check out more information about the conference. It looks really cool.

(from their website www.writersatwork.org)

Winner: Margot Wizansky, Brookline, MA, for “Cosmography”

About “Cosmography,” Ms. Addonizio had the following comments:

“The author of ‘Cosmography’ has a gift for narrative and for language which creates an experience of lived life for the reader. I admired this writer’s ability to convincingly render the voice of an eighteenth-century midwife in the ambitious opening poem. Like the description of a steak in ‘Breakfast at the Retirement Home,’ the writing here is often ‘luscious, blood-rare.’ ”

1st Honorable Mention: Keegan Goodman, Chicago, IL, for “Four Poems (’Residence’ and others)”

About “Four Poems: (”Residence” and others):

“From an autobiography written by a dead man to a woman attempting to construct human beings out of grease fat and coffee grounds, these prose poems create their own marvelous and off-kilter worlds.”

—

I don’t know about you guys, but that first honorable mention sounds awfully interesting. Russell Edson-esque is what I’m hoping for, but we’ll see. These winners will be published in an upcoming Quarterly West, and will receive free tuition to the Writers at Work conference. The poetry winners were chosen by Kim Addonizio, fiction by Steve Almond, nonfiction by Abigail Thomas. The other winners were (fiction)

Winner: Ben Roberts, Ogden, UT, for “The Three Nephites”

About “The Three Nephites,” Mr. Almond had this to say:

“My God. I was absolutely blown away by this story, which does what every great short story must: it creates its own world and sucks the reader into that world and horrifies us and at the same time (and this is the miracle, I think) makes us never want to leave. The voice is absolutely fearless, ecstatic, and dangerously wise. I could feel my heart thumping as I read the last line, and for a long time after.”

(not exactly a scathing review) and nonfiction:

Winner: Valerie Due, San Diego, CA (Yay San Diego), for “The Skinning Board”

About “The Skinning Board,” Ms. Thomas has the following comments:

“I love the emotional restraint coupled with the ravishing prose of the piece. It serves so perfectly the young narrator whose initiation into the harsh realities of life–and death–on a farm is being presented here.”