Yes, Poetry

Three Photographs by Marcin Majkowski

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:01:59 -0500

Marcin Majkowski is 36 years old and from Poland. He is a performance/spoken word poet/writer. He lives in Krakow in Poland.

Vol. 3, Issue 2: February 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:30:09 -0500

Download the issue here for free!

Contributor’s Notes

L. Ward Abel, poet, composer and performer of music, teacher, lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of time in print and online, and is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), Torn Sky Bleeding Blue (erbacce-Press, 2010), and the forthcoming American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012). He has just completed his latest poetry collection, The Crater.

Ann Cummings has had work published previously in a few select religious magazines, and Yes, Poetry. For about a year, writing has come to her as poetry. Brevity appeals to her now, packing the most into a few words. Briefly, her life experience has included motorcycle riding, mountain climbing, and other sports. Married twice, now widowed,she has one daughter. Confined to her home, she writes what she sees.

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. His poems have appeared in Bryant Literary Review,Camroc Press Review, elimae, The Orange Room Review and Pearl. His website is at: www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

My name is Sophia Le Fraga, I am a New York based poet finishing my studies in Poetry and Linguistics this December at NYU. Thank you so much for your consideration.

Most recently, Kristi Nimmo has been painting with scrub brushes in watercolor. She writes poetry to feel the softness of a bending heart. She also teaches meditation and loves to travel. You can read more about her in DC Books and Authors Blog: http://dcbooksandauthors.com/2011/08/25/kristi-nimmo-elephant-rides-beautiful-bags-and-poetry/

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,

The New Yorker, and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay

“Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please

visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Sophie Playle studied English Literature with Creative Writing at UEA, and has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. She has previously worked in the publishing industry, and continues to freelance. Passionate about writing and publishing, she runs Inkspill Magazine (www.inkspillmagazine.com) and blogs regularly about creative living at: www.sophieplayle.com.

Emmalea Russo is a poet and visual artist who grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania. She holds a BA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared most recently in the Bicycle Review and Blood Lotus.

Carly Susser is a writer and mfa candidate at Sarah Lawrence College. She loves art, animals, and warm climates. Carly has been journaling since 1997 and is working on a memoir (or possibly several all at once) based loosely on the meaning of life. She is also the non-fiction editor of The Boiler Journal: http://theboilerjournal.wordpress.com/.

Christian Ward is a 31 year old UK-based poet who recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Editor Biographies

Joanna C. Valente is a MFA candidate in Poetry Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a part-time mermaid. More can be found at her website: http://joannavalente.com

Stephanie Valente lives and writes in New York. Her work has appeared in Italics Mine and other journals. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and as always, poetry. She enjoys candlelit smiles and diamond cut laughter. One day, she would like to become a silent film star. Her favorite desserts are crème brûlée and strawberry-rhubarb pie. She can be found at: kitschy.tumblr.com.

G. Taylor Davis, Jr is from the Milky Way.

Photographer Biography

Marcin Majkowski is 36 years old and from Poland. He is a performance/spoken word poet/writer. He lives in Krakow in Poland.

Vol. 3, Issue 1: January 2012

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:32:27 -0500

Yes, Poetry is happy to announce its first issue of 2012! We welcome you into the new year with these wonderful poems, which can be downloaded for free here.

Contributor’s Notes

Christian Belz has been a practicing architect in the Metro Detroit area for 27 years. He has been published in Writers’ Journal and The Storyteller and is currently writing an Architectural Murder Mystery.

Tyler Bigney was born in 1984. He lives, and writes in Nova Scotia, Canada. His short stories, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in Pearl, Poetry New Zealand, Third Wednesday, The Meadow, and Neon, among others.

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in a small town in New York where she is a wife and mother of two. She is a graduate of William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ where she earned a B.A. in English. She is passionate about poetry and writing because it speaks to her, influences her daily life, and encourages her to write. She draws much of her energy from her own life experiences. Her poetry was most recently featured in The Homestead Review and Stone Highway Review and will soon be featured in Burnt Bridge, scissors and spackle, Grey Sparrow Press, and Heavy Hands Ink.

Jack Foster is the Editorial Manager of A Few Lines Magazine. He currently attends school at Cal Poly Pomona as an English Literature and Language major. When he is not editing or in class, he can be found at the bars in Claremont, CA.

Margaret Graber grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, a city 45 minutes southeast of Chicago. She is a lifelong friend of Lake Michigan, the avocado, and pop-up books. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Nick Hranilovich is a writer, musician, visual artist, and several other things that leave one poor, lazy, and beautiful. He currently resides in Williamston, Michigan, where he is working on pieces for the Michigan Nature Association, as well as maintaining day-jobs for the sake of humility and seeking transcendence of the physical realm. More of his poetry can be found at: http://clutchingatstraws.wordpress.com/category/nick-hranilovich/

Justin Hyde lives in Iowa.

Mark Jackley is the author of several chapbooks, including Every Green Word, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and a full-length collection, There Will Be Silence While You Wait (Plain View Press). He lives in Sterling, VA.

Austin McCarron is from New Zealand but has lived in London for many years. His work has appeared in various poetry magazines in the United Kingdom, France and America in recent years.

Vincent McGillivray lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. His poetry has appeared in Grain, CV2,Misunderstandings Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Skidrow Penthouse, Juked and All Rights Reserved. Vincent has recently decided to undertake a (self-imposed) project to rediscover his province, via its backroads.

Michael Tugendhat has a memoir due out by Turquoise Morning Press in 2012. He’s been published in Poetry SZ and has poems forthcoming in Blue and Yellow Dog. He’s dedicated to writing about mental illness to educate and inspire.

Matt Prater is a poet from Saltville, VA. His writing has appeared in Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, NANO Fiction Magazine, and Alcalines, among other publications. He is currently studying towards an MA in English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Christine Reilly lives in New York City. She is getting her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College and won full scholarships to the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Seminar and Bucknell University Seminar for Younger Poets. Her poems will be featured in “The Clearing: Forty Years with Toni Morrison”. Her chapbook of poetry, “The Blue Of”, was a finalist in the Pulled Pork Susquehanna University Contest. She has been published in 31 journals. She was named Breadcrumb Scabs’ Editor’s Pick. She has just finished her first novel. She teaches poetry to teenagers on the Lower East Side. Her website is: www.christinejessicamargaretreilly.com

Shriram Sivaramakrishnan likes to call himself as a budding poet who is trying to learn the art called Poetry. A fan of John Keats, he is a true slave to poetry and boast himself for that. His works have appeared in journals such as Short Fast and Deadly, Right Hand Pointing, Dirt Cakes, Wingposse, and so on. He writes a blog called “Thought Pebbles” and publishes poems on other poetry communities. His blog link is: http://thoughtpebble.blogspot.com/

Parker Tettleton’s work is featured in &/or forthcoming from Gargoyle, elimae, > kill author, Mud Luscious, & PANK, among others. His chapbook SAME OPPOSITE is available from Thunderclap! Press. More or less is here.

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry is published in over 150 literary journals such as Elimae, Metazen and BlazeVOX. He has short stories anthologized in Nouns of Assemblage from Housefire, and Stripped from P.S. Books. He is a fiction editor at JMWW magazine, and Thunderclap! Press. He co-hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.

Michael Uhall, Jr., lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Editor Biographies

Joanna C. Valente is a MFA candidate in Poetry Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a part-time mermaid. More can be found at her website: http://joannavalente.com

G. Taylor Davis, Jr is from the Milky Way.

Photographer Biography

Brett Stout is a 32 year old punk rock artist and writer living in Myrtle Beach, SC. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC. He is the owner and operator of the Anti Condo Art group and puts on controversial art projects throughout the Southern U.S.

Vol. 2, Issue 12: December 2011

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:51:00 -0500

The December issue is now online for a free download here!

Contributor’s Notes

Charles Bassey lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where he works full-time with a financial services regulatory agency and writes part-time. As a creative writer with the sociological imagination, he stares at life actively and reflects on human existence and emotions through poetry, essay and creative fiction. His poetry has appeared in an anthology and on the internet. As a life traveller as well as a path follower who believes in parenting as a child, he envisions a world of radiant people living their best. He is a member of Abuja Literary Society.

Kory Beach is an undergraduate student at Colgate University; he is 18 years old and previously unpublished. He writes and reads frequently and hopes to one day be a well-known poet.

Les Bernstein has been published in the California Poetry Society Quarterlies, The Marin Poetry Center Anthologies, and other small presses. His chapbook, Borderland, was published by Finishing Line Press. He lives in Mill Valley, California with his very large and boisterous family

Ann Cummings, who lives in Florida, has had work published previously in a few select religious magazines. This is her first attempt at submitting to a secular magazine.

For about a year, writing has come to her as poetry. Brevity appeals to her now, packing the most into a few words. Briefly, her life experience has included motorcycle riding, mountain climbing, and other sports. Married twice, now widowed, she has one daughter.

Andrew P. Dillon received his bachelor’s of arts in English from the University of Tennessee. He has been published in Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine of the University of Tennessee, and Siren and Tourist, both of Knoxville, Tennessee. He writes poetry and short fiction, but not as often as he discusses music with his father, attempts to become fluent in Korean, and plays soccer. He strongly supports the use of semi-colons, dashes, and the serial comma. He can be reached at andrewpdillon@gmail.com

Casey Francis is currently pursuing a graduate degree in English at New Mexico Highlands University, but he’s desperate to get back to the humid summers and frigid winters of the Midwest. He has published or has work forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine, Red River Review, Verse Wisconsin, and the Blog for Rural America (www.cfra.org/blog).

Will Greenway’s tenth collection, Everywhere at Once, won the Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Ohio Library Association, as did his eighth collection Ascending Order. Both are from the University of Akron Press Poetry Series. His publications include Poetry, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University.

John Grey is an Australian born poet, US resident since late seventies. Works as

financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem. Kestrel and Writer’s Bloc with work upcoming in Caveat Lector, Prism International, and the Cider Press Review.

John Grochalski’s poems and stories have appeared in several journals including The Lilliput Review, Underground Voices, Zygote In My Coffee, The Big Stupid Review, and Bartleby Snopes. Grochalski is the author of two books of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.

Born in Windsor, Ontario in 1960,Gregory Gunn grew up in small towns before settling in London in 1970. A graduate of Fanshawe College in 1982 as an electronics technician, he has worked in that field ever since. Mr. Gunn began writing during his tenure at Fanshawe and has done so for over thirty years. He is most passionate about poetry.

Some of his credits include: Cyclamens & Swords, The Toronto Quarterly, Glimpse Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Butterflies Are Free To Fly, Carcinogenic, Psychopoetica, Afterthoughts, Ditch Magazine, One Earth, and myriad others. His other interests comprise music, astronomy, foreign languages, psychology, gardening, photography, and philosophy.

Joe Massingham was born in the UK but has lived the second half of his life in Australia. Major employment has been as a Navy officer, university student from first degree to PhD, tutor, lecturer and Master of Wright College, University of New England, NSW. Has run his own writing and editing business but retired early because of cancer and heart problems and now spends time waiting to see medical practitioners, writing poetry and prose and smelling the roses.He has had work published in Australia, UK, Eire, USA ,NZ and India.

Jeffrey Park is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He has been a movie theater manager, an IT specialist and a middle school English teacher. He currently lives in Munich, Germany where he works as an educator in a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults.

Vincent Renstrom lives with his wife and daughter in Middletown, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from Indiana University in 1996 and spent a decade chasing that elusive tenure-track position before packing it in in 2006 to become a full-time househusband and stay-at-home Dad. He is one lucky son-of-a-gun. Since 2008 his poems have appeared in MARGIE/The American Journal of Poetry, Vol. 7, as well as in the online journals Alba, The Centrifugal Eye, Silenced Press, Slow Trains, and Tertulia.

Doris Shores, a New Yorker, has been a college-level English teacher, a pharmaceutical-advertising copywriter, and a freelance editor. Her earlier publications were feature articles, mostly in newspapers. More recently, a poem and an essay of hers appeared in 14th Street Gold.

Alyssa Grace Sorresso is a post grad student in London, studying for an MA in Applied Theatre. She ran away from her home in Chicago only to discover that she likes writing and making videos much more, and laughs about it sometimes. You can find more of her writing and videos at www.tactlessgrace.com, and follow her on twitter at tactless_grace.

M. G. Stephens has published eighteen books, including the novel The Brooklyn Book of the Dead (“a great, great book,” says Roddy Doyle) and the essay collection Green Dreams, which Joyce Carol Oates picked as one of the notable nonfiction books of the 20th century in Best American Essays of the Century.

Patrice M. Wilson’s poetry has been published by the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Nimrod, Barbaric Yawp , Hawai‘i Review, Hawai‘i Pacific Review, Byline, and Common Ground among others, and is forthcoming in Eclipse. She has three chapbooks by Finishing Line Press, On Neither Side (2009), When All Else Falters (2003) and A Different Current (2011). Her ancestors are African-American, Tsalagi (Cherokee), and Irish. She is an assistant professor of English at Hawai‘i Pacific University.

Amos Jasper Wright is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. After two years drifting hand-to-mouth in Boston, he returned to Birmingham and recently completed a master’s in English at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Upon realization that he must work for a living, and after acquiring experience in architecture and planning, he applied and was accepted to Tufts University, where he will enroll in the fall of 2011 to begin a master’s degree in urban planning. He has high hopes that two master’s degrees will equal a PhD.

Editor Biographies

Joanna C. Valente is a MFA candidate in Poetry Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a part-time mermaid. More can be found at her website: http://joannavalente.com

G. Taylor Davis, Jr is from the Milky Way.

Vol. 2, Issue 11: November 2011

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:42:29 -0500

You can download the free ebook on Lulu here!

Vol. 2, Issue 10: October 2011

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:56:00 -0400

The October issue can be downloaded for free here!

Contributor’s Notes

Matthew James Babcock teaches at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg. He has a PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His book, Private Fire: The Ecopoetry and Prose of Robert Francis, is available from the University of Delaware Press.

Martin Burke is an Irish poet/playwright living in Belgium (with 12 books of verse published in the USA, UK, Ireland & Belgium.)

George Coombs is sixty four years of age and is from Hove on the south coast of England. Nowadays he is a semi retired university lecturer whose main subject areas are social sciences and philosophy. George has been writing and painting for much of his life and has had a few stories, articles and poetry published. George also does a lot in England and America to help people in prison and he is presently writing a book about this George is a long standing admirer of the work of Sylvia Plath and is pleased that this piece written in her memory is going to be published.

Brian Fanelli is the author of the chapbook Front Man, published in late 2010 by Big Table Publishing. His work has also appeared in a number of journals and websites, including Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Chiron Review, Blood Lotus, Word Riot, Indigo Rising Magazine, San Pedro River Review, and other publications. He has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Wilkes University and currently resides in Pennsylvania. Visit him at www.brianfanelli.com.

Born in Windsor, Ontario in 1960, Gregory Gunn grew up in small towns before settling in London in 1970. A graduate of Fanshawe College in 1982 as an electronics technician, he has worked in that field ever since. Mr. Gunn began writing during his tenure at Fanshawe and has done so for over thirty years. He is most passionate about poetry. Some of his credits include: Cyclamens & Swords, The Toronto Quarterly, Glimpse Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Butterflies Are Free To Fly, Carcinogenic, Psychopoetica, Afterthoughts, Ditch Magazine, One Earth, and myriad of others. His other interests comprise music, astronomy, foreign languages, psychology, gardening, photography, and philosophy.

R. W. Haynes leads an academic life in South Texas. His book The Major Plays of Horton Foote appeared in 2010 from the Mellen Press. Texas had its hottest June in history in 2011, but it was not his fault. A fair amount of his poetry can be be googled.

David Levine grew up in the poorly named town of New City, NY. After bouncing between Salt Lake City and Seattle for a year, he settled into the role of a graduate student in Boulder, Colorado. He hopes to do more in the future.

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published four novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010) and Following Richard Brautigan (2010), 2 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011), and 2 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009) and Notes toward the Story and Other Stories (2011) . He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also claims to have written, “Countin’ Flowers on the Wall.” With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.

Rich Murphy was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. He raised four children and taught writing and literature for 22 years at Bradford College and Emmanuel College before coming to Richmond. He lives in Marblehead Massachusetts and (for the last four years) Richmond where he teaches at VCU. His credits include two books of poems Voyeur (2008 Gival Press Poetry Prize winner) and The Apple in the Monkey Tree; chapbooks Great Grandfather, Family Secret, Rescue Lines, and Hunting and Pecking; poems in hundreds of journals, including Rolling Stone, Poetry, Grand Street, Trespass, New Letters, Negative Capability, Segue, Big Bridge, Trespass, foam:e, and Confrontation; and essays on poetics in Folly Magazine, Fulcrum, The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and Culture, Fringe, Big Toe Review, and Journal of Ecocriticism. Currently, his chapbook manuscript “Crib Sheets” is a 2011 finalist Teacher’s Voice Poetry Chapbook Prize and his chapbook manuscript “Body of Evidence” is a 2011finalist Eudaimonia Poetry Review Chapbook Prize.

Carl Palmer lives in University Place WA., without wristwatch, cell phone or alarm clock. Long Weekends Forever.

Anil CS Rao is a graduate of Pratt Institute. Currently, he is a distance student of Architecture through the San Francisco Institute of Architecture & Ayurveda (C.A.S.) student at the California College of Ayurveda, and has worked in the Untied States from 1988 to 2003 in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC in the capacity of an engineer. He is presently residing in Bethesda, Maryland (United States) with his family.

Zachary Straub is a visual artist, writer, and human rights activist based out of Upstate New York, where he received his BA from Ithaca College. His work has been showcased at the Handwerker Gallery in Ithaca NY, the Partners in Art Gallery in Western New York, and published in StillWater Magazine, the Niagara Gazette, and in press releases issued by Niagara University.

Pia Taavila teaches in the English Department at Gallaudet University and live in Virginia. Recent work has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Southern Women Review, The Potomac Review, storySouth, and The Bear River Review, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, 32 Poems and Measure, among others.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his recent novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction.

Two Photographs by Viktorsha Uliyanova

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:10:06 -0400

Viktorsha Uliyanova is an import from the old Soviet Union and is currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry and fiction works focus on hidden politics, city panhandlers, and occasionally getting stuck in the black solar system. In addition to her writing, Uliyanova is an experimental, 35mm film photographer.

She can be found at her website: www.viktorsha.tumblr.com

Kristi Nimmo-Between the Moon with the Birds Kristi Nimmo lives...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:01:00 -0400

Kristi Nimmo-Between the Moon with the Birds

Kristi Nimmo lives in Virginia. She paints, teaches meditation, travels, and writes. She has poetry published in Psychic Meatloaf: Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Mouse Tales Press, and Numinous: Spiritual Poetry. She is drawn to the wind and the sound of birds.

Vol. 2, Issue 9: September 2011

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:31:13 -0400

Our September issue can be downloaded for free here!

Contributor’s Notes

Megan Coxe, an amateur poet in the truest sense, has just returned from a sabbatical year in Almería, Spain as an assistant English teacher, to be plunged back into American life. Now she splits her time preparing to pursue a MA in Hispanic Literature at the University of Texas, coping with the return to her birthplace, and plotting her next international escape.

Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His books and chapbooks include Suckers, For the Birds, and Longing for the Mother Tongue (March Street Press). His novel, Labor Day, about a dismal future world without unions, is currently seeking a publisher.

Carol Lynn Grellas is a six-time Pushcart nominee and a 2010 Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of seven chapbooks with her latest collection of poems: Epistemology of an Odd Girl, forthcoming from March Street Press. She lives El Dorado Hills, California.

Robin Kalinich currently lives in Albuquerque, and has enjoyed a myriad of careers including clown, roofer, waitress, retail manager, and many others too numerous (or embarrassing) to mention. She fled a staid existence as a homemaker and religious zealot to begin an arduous process of self-actualization. Along the way, she found true love, and a penchant for expensive cheese. She currently works as a chemist and is pursuing a degree in Nanoscience, but her true passions lie in the creative realm. After completing her master’s degree, she plans on switching gears to pursue an MFA. Her blog can be found at: http://sparklysugardragon.blogspot.com/

Peycho Kanev is the Editor In Chief of Kanev Books. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, The Monongahela Review, Steam Ticket, Ann Arbor Review, Midwest Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Burnt Bridge, Istanbul Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, In Posse Review, The Penwood Review, Mascara Literary Review, The Mayo Review and many others. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. In 2009 his short story collection “Walking Through Walls” (Ciela), and in April 2010 his poetry collection “American Notebooks” (Ciela) both were published in Bulgaria. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY. http://www.kanevbooks.com

Tracy Leddy is a poet and writer who has published Alison’s Shadow and The Song of Everything. She has lived on Nantucket Island for 30 years.

John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska – is now a retired comma herder after teaching a long time at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere.

Joseph Pentangelo majors in Linguistics at the Macaulay Honors College at the College of Staten Island, Class of 2012. He is a cofounder of Wigwam Press, a very tiny publishing house. His writing has previously been published in Weird N.J. and Operation: Three-Legged Dolphin (for which he, under an alias, wrote an ornithological linguistics joke). Other works of his are slated to appear in the Fall, 2011 issue of Caesura. In addition to writing poetry and short fiction, he spends his time traveling, studying, and playing music. You can find him here: truthofmasks.tumblr.com, wigwampress.webs.com

Carson Pierpont is a writer writing in the Pacific Northwest. He enjoys coffee, re-reading his favorite authors, going to the theatre alone, and, especially, as he is a Pisces, the ocean. When he’s not writing he’s worrying about not writing.

Phillip R. Polefrone is a young poet and essayist living in Brooklyn, near the river, trying to figure out how to get out of school immediately and stay in it indefinitely. This has so far landed him on the verge of a B.A. His poems have been published in The Broome Street Review, his essays in Mercer Street. He also edits West 10th, and undergraduate literary magazine, and is on the editorial team of Mercer Street, an annual collection of student essays. He hopes that his status as an undergraduate will not be leveled against him; as Marianne Moore put it (taken gleefully out of context), “I, too, dislike it.”

Melissa Sewell lives in Topeka, Kansas, where she makes a living slinging coffee and spends her free time constructing cardboard cities with her four year-old. Her work has appeared in seveneightfive magazine, Inscape, Susquehanna Review and others.

Craig Shay has had poems published or forthcoming in The Camel Saloon,

Clockwise Cat, PigeonBike, Catapult to Mars, Calliope Nerve, and Skidrow Penthouse. Samples of his work can be found on his webpage: www.craigshay.wordpress.com

Stacy Skolnik’s poems are never slight. Playful and deceptively simple, they nonetheless take on the big questions of human existence—life, love, time, God. Even when their subject is the self, her poems fulfill what Rilke names as the task of the poet: they “maintain contact with the farthest distance,” and thereby “link us with it.”

Sasha Van Hoven originally hales from Syracuse, New York, and is now located in Denver, Colorado. She graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BA in Lit, and would probably even leave her lovely, bearded boyfriend for Mr. William Faulkner if he was still alive today. She pays her bills by writing copy for a furniture company based out of Denver. In her non-triangle hours, she is a published poet and cereal connoisseur. She is also the co-founder of The Golden Triangle, which can be found here: http://www.thegoldentriangle.org/

Clinton Van Inman is a high school teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, am 65 and a graduate of San Diego StateUniversity. I was born in Walton on Thames, England. My recent publications include: Warwick Unbound, Down in the Dirt, May, June, July, The Inquisition, The Journal, the New Writing, The Hudson Review, Essence, Forge, Houston Literary Review, Greensilk Journal Northwest Spirits Magazine, to name a few.

Timothy Volpert is a poet and musician from Topeka, KS, where he also co-manages a fledgling vegan-friendly cafe. His poems have appeared in Coal City Review, Inscape, Blue Island Review, andseveneightfive magazine. He loves you and wants the best for you.

Editor’s Biography

Joanna C. Valente is a native New Yorker. She has been featured in various publications, such as You Say. Say. (Uphook Press), The Westchester Review, The Houston Literary Review, Side B Magazine, among others. She is currently attending Sarah Lawrence College as an MFA candidate in poetry. In the future, she would like to live by the ocean.

Poetry & Talk with Peter Marra

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:46:08 -0400

Download the interview for free here!

Peter Marra lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Among his influences are Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Edgar Allan Poe, Russ Meyer, and Roger Corman. He has been published in amphibi.us, Yes Poetry, Maintenant 4, Beatnik, Crash, Danse Macabre,Caper Literary Journal, Clutching At Straws, and O Sweet Flowery Roses. He is currently constructing his first collection of poems.

Five Photographs by Keith Moul

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:28:37 -0400

Keith Moul’s work has been appearing frequently for about 15 months, but he’s published poems widely for more than 40 years. His chapbook, The Grammar of Mind, was released last November by Blue & Yellow Dog Press. He’s now retired, living in the Pacific NW, writing and taking pictures.

Volume 2, Issue 8: August 2011

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:53:11 -0400

Our August issue can be downloaded for free here!

Contributor’s Notes

Andrea Beltran lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. She studied poetry under Jack Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and has recently had poems appear in The Café Review and Flashquake. Her ramblings about poetry, food, and her journey as she learns to operate and bond with her Diana Mini camera can be found at http://andreakristen.blogspot.com.

Jim Davis is a graduate of Knox College and now lives, writes and paints in Chicago. Jim edits the North Chicago Review, and will be appearing as the feature artist for the upcoming issue of Palooka Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in After Hours, Blue Mesa Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Ante Review, Chiron Review, and Contemporary American Voices, among others. www.jimdavispoetry.com

Justin Henry Fallon is from Western Mass. Now he is an English teacher in Uganda. He is also a contributor to The Free George.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry published in numerous small magazines and journals in several countries for the past twenty-one years. He edited his own poetry magazine, Fearless, which featured the work of both established and up and coming writers for sixteen years. In addition, he is author or co-author of fourteen chapbooks of poetry. He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Union Institute and University/Vermont College in 2010.

N.W. Hicks is a mild-mannered dirt sniffer by day & a crime fighting poet by night. For 2011, he served as Poetry Editor for Manhattanville’s literary journal, INKWELL, and has since then begun a quest for money. If any have discovered the secret location of said money, he urges you to help a brother out.

Nathan Hunt grew up on a farm near Eugene, Oregon. I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Writing and Literature (with a minor in Spanish language) from George Fox University in the fall of 2009. I work at a winery in Newberg, Oregon. My poems have been published in The Iconoclast, Mudfish, Perceptions, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review.

Tyrel Kessinger lives in Louisville, Kentucky where he toils away the barbarous hours of the day as a Braille Transcriber. There’s the soon-to-be wife, the two dogs, the cat and all the other ingredients of a fairly normal life. He is the recipient of the 2011 Literary LEO Short Fiction award and his work has been published in LEO Magazine. Several of his poems are forthcoming in Grey Sparrow, MILK SUGAR and Flywheel Magazine.

Sonnet Mondal is the author of six books of poetry including a poetry bestseller and is the pioneer of the 21 line fusion sonnet form of poetry. His works have been published in several International literary magazines and have been translated into Macedonian, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Telugu and Bengali. He was awarded Poet Laureate from Bombadil Publishing in 2009, Doctor of Literature from United Writers’ Association in 2010, Azsacra International Poetry award in 2011 and was inducted in the prestigious Significant Achievements Plaque in the museum of Bengal Engineering an Science University, Shibpur. He has also been a featured poet at World Poetry Reading Series, Canada and Asian American Poetry project, U.S.A. At present he is the managing editor of the Enchanting Verses Journal of Poetry. Website: www.sonnetmondal.co.cc

Donia Mounsef grew up in Lebanon, lived in Connecticut and in every major city in Canada. She is a bilingual poet (French, English), dramaturge and performance theorist. Her work has been published in The Toronto Quarterly, The Labor of Love, Spitting Image; her performance poetry has been performed on stages in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Paris, and New Haven. She lives in Edmonton, and teaches poetry, drama and performance studies at the University of Alberta.

Michael O’Connor was born in Hartford, CT and graduated from the University of Connecticut. After spending some time in Ireland and Prince Edward Island, he returned to New York City to pursue screenwriting. After several successes in the film industry as a writer and independent film producer, Michael turned his writing to non-fiction historical works on the Second World War, publishing articles for the Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes. He has maintained deep interest for poetry, being influenced by Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce. Michael was most recently published in the Birmingham Arts Journal. He currently resides in the Boston area.

Ivy Page’s love of poetry stemmed from listening to her Grandmother reading poetry aloud to her as a child. It took shape as lyrics in the music she wrote during her late teens and early twenties, and turned to poems on the page and experimentation with performance poetry over the years. Ivy’s work has appeared in journals nationally such as, Poetry Quarterly, Grey Sparrow Press, andNight Train, and anthologized in Knocking at the Door Poems About Approaching the Other. Her first book, Any Other Branch, will be available through Salmon Poetry of Ireland in March 2012. Her second book, Elemental, will be out with Salmon Poetry in 2014. She is the editor and founder of Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine. For more about Ivy visit,www.poeticentanglement.com

Sebastian Paramo is a native Texan and has taught essay writing and creative writing to high school students in Yonkers, New York and is the current Managing Director of the annual Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival. His translations and poetry have been featured in Babel: a student translation magazine, The Nashville Review and forthcoming in The Houston Literary Review.

Justin Robinson has recently been awarded 1st place in a Robert Emmons poetry competition. He currently lives with his girlfriend in Santa Barbara, CA, where he studies creative writing at California State University Channel Islands.

Diana Salier is the author of Wikipedia Says It Will Pass (Red Ceilings Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared in Every Day Genius, Robot Melon, 3:AM Magazine, and Red Lightbulbs, among other places. She thinks a lot about space travel but has never been to outerspace. She lives and writes in San Francisco.

Hallie Steiner is a Senior studying creative writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. She was born in New York and moved to California when she was nine; she considers herself bicoastal. Her work has been featured in her campus literary magazine, The Driftwood. She enjoys poetry slams, crossword puzzles, and arranging word magnets on refrigerators.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein “rose” prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Editor’s Biography

Joanna C. Valente is a native New Yorker. She has been featured in various publications, such as You Say. Say. (Uphook Press), The Westchester Review, The Houston Literary Review, Side B Magazine, among others. She is also the founder and editor of the online literary publication, Yes, Poetry. In the fall of 2011, she will begin attending Sarah Lawrence College as an MFA candidate in poetry. In the future, she would like to live by the ocean.

Volume 2, Issue 7: July 2011

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:51:00 -0400

Our July issue can be downloaded for free at Lulu here!

Contributor’s Notes

John Grochalski is a published writer whose poems have appeared in Avenue, Viral Cat, Lit Up, Rusty Truck, Thieves Jargon, Outsider Writers Collective, among others. His column The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer (www.newyinzer.com), and he can be found at his blog Winedrunk Sidewalk (www.winedrunksidewalk.blogspot.com). His book of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is out via Six Gallery Press, and Glass City is out on Low Ghost Press.

Paul Kloschinsky has previously published 3 collections of poetry and is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. He lives in the Vancouver, BC, Canada area, where he is from, and has always wanted to be a poet, to use words effectively as a means of self expression and exploration. He has been writing regularly since seeing a documentary of his favourite Canadian poet - Al Purdy, in the early 1990s.

Eira Needham began life in Seven Sisters, a small mining village in South Wales, but now lives in Birmingham UK, where she has spent most of her life. She has been a teacher, carer to her autistic son, herpetologist, and crafter. Her poetry is eclectic and recent acceptances for publication include Joyful! Westward Quarterly and Leaf Garden.

Christopher Prewitt resides in Blacksburg, VA, where he teaches Freshman Composition while working towards an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. He currently serves as co-poetry editor of The Minnesota Review—yes, that’s in VA now—and has published poems, stories, interviews, and essays, most recently in Still, Inscape, and Switched-on Gutenberg. He is the most recent recipient of the Virginia Tech Poetry/Poetry Society of Virginia Prize and has received the Billie & Curtis Owens Creative Writing Award on numerous occasions.

Richard Quigley is finishing his Bachelor of Art’s degree in Creative Writing. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In his spare time, his hair and fingernails grow twice as quickly. He once could have been found living across from Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, but he does not do that any longer. A problem child (the quiet kind), he once threw nude drawings into the yards of his neighbors. No one suspects much of him—or so they think. He is a pisces—the real kind—born in 1990. He will be graduating from Purchase College in no time with a B.A. in philosophy and soon after attending a Doctorate program at whichever school funds him. His current academic work fixates on the intersections between Spinoza’s ethical philosophy and contemporary gender studies. Eric Rodriguez is a poet and he did not even know it.

Adina Rosenthal believes she’s been a writer for years, but only decided to put her thoughts on paper recently. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her boyfriend, Dan.

Sarah Anne Stinnett was born into a family of artists. Poet, visual artist, thespian, and musician, she has plunged head-first into a multitude of disciplines of expression. As a senior at Berklee College of Music, Sarah has had her work published by FUSION Magazine. Simultaneously, she has been actively involved with the community of poets at Emerson College. In the spring of 2011 she received the honor of representing Berklee’s student body by reading original works at the college’s convocation ceremony.

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry is published in over 125 literary journals such as Elimae, BlazeVOX, and A-Minor. He is a fiction editor at JMWW magazine, and Thunderclap! Press. Also hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.

Matt Warren was born and raised in New York, where he is currently pursuing his MFA in Film & Animation from Rochester Institute of Technology. He received his BA in Cinema Studies from SUNY Purchase College. As of now, he splits his time between New York City and Rochester, while battling his debilitating chocolate addiction.

Alan Zhukovski’s poetry, art and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in MiPOesias, elimae, Foundling Review, Calliope Nerve, Kerouac’s Dog, Snow Monkey, and around 15 other American/British magazines. He also writes non-fiction (literary and music criticism, journalism).

Poetry & Talk with Eric Rodriguez

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:35:04 -0400

The interview, as well as Eric’s poetry and artwork can be downloaded for free on Lulu here.

In his spare time, his hair and fingernails grow twice as quickly. He once could have been found living across from Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, but he does not do that any longer. A problem child (the quiet kind), he once threw nude drawings into the yards of his neighbors. No one suspects much of him—or so they think. He is a pisces—the real kind—born in 1990. He will be graduating from Purchase College in no time with a B.A. in philosophy and soon after attending a Doctorate program at whichever school funds him. His current academic work fixates on the intersections between Spinoza’s ethical philosophy and contemporary gender studies. Eric Rodriguez is a poet and he did not even know it.

Five Writing Prompts

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:43:00 -0400

Write a poem about the latest vacation (or long weekend somewhere) you were on. Describe it honestly, not retelling how you wanted it to be. What was the atmosphere like? Where did you sleep? Who were you with?
Probably one of the strangest prompts for a writer: get a partner! One of you will write one stanza, and then the other will write the second. Alternate until you both agree it is finished.
Write a poem on a postcard. It cannot exceed one side of a postcard, and it does not matter what direction you write on. Then, take a picture of your finished work! Even better if it’s a shape poem!
Imagine a film is being made, and you were witnessing it, or are somehow involved in the shoot. Describe the process, whether you are simply an outsider or otherwise, only in ten lines.
Think of a pair of twins you know personally (if you do not know any, choose one from art/pop culture/etc.) and write a two-part poem, each part from the perspective of one of the twins. It can be in any tense or point-of-view.

Factum Kang by Candice Breitz

Poetry & Talk with Frank Virgintino

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:13:00 -0400

Frank Virgintino is attending SUNY Purchase College, where he is a Creative Writing and Literature double-major with a minor in French Language and Cultural Studies. Currently, he is working to bend the genres of poetry and memoir, as well as co-running a small literary publication of his own called The Leaf Unturned. He was born and raised in New York, where he still lives.

* * * *

The entire interview and selected poems can be found here on Lulu for a free download.

Volume 2, Issue 6: June 2011

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:17:00 -0400

The June issue is now available as an Ebook for free here.

Contributor’s Notes

Maureen Donatelli lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia where she received her BA in English from The University of the Fraser Valley (Honours) in 2001. Besides all things poetic, Maureen enjoys photography and spending time with her children. Maureen’s poetry has appeared at vox poetica and is forthcoming in Stray Branch.

Joel Ferdon is a coffee slinging, poetry bleeding, chain smoking fiend. His work has been previously published in Indigo Rising Magazine, Gloom Cupboard and Unheard Magazine.

Zachary Fishel is an associate editor at Girls with Insurance magazine and a graduate student at Mississippi State.

Aumaine Gruich is currently studying English and Creative Writing at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She has been writing since she was a young girl, but has only recently decided to pursue it in a professional and scholarly manner. Her discipline is poetry, but she would like to try her hand at prose. She would describe her work as honest, gritty, strange and lyrical. Her favorite poets currently include Jack Gilbert, Anne Sexton, Henri Cole, and Adrienne Rich.

Steven Gulvezan is a disciple, in words, of the great sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. At their best he hopes that his stories and poems are able to cut close enough to the bone of truth to make them worthwhile to read. He’s recently been published in Underground Voices, Gutter Eloquence, and Danse Macabre. Links to some of his writings may be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/user/607

Zuzana Husarova is currently a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Writing and Humanistic Studies, originally from Slovakia in Central Europe. Her work has appeared in a number of European journals and online. In addition to writing, she makes interactive poems, compose sound and audio poetry with musical toys, teach Interactive Narrative at MIT and American Literature and Electronic Poetry at universities in Bratislava and Brno.

Nathan Ingham studies writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His poetry has appeared in The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Right Hand Pointing, and Eighty Percent Magazine. He recently re-discovered the joy of having breakfast for dinner.

Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

Donal Mahoney has had poems published in Yes, Poetry and other publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Adam Moorad can be found at his blog: http://adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com/

Jay Passer a native San Franciscan has had work published in print and online since 1988. He is currently at work on a manuscript tentatively entitled, ‘Last On The Endangered Species List’.

Mike Perkins lives, works, and writes in the college town of Columbia, Missouri. He has published two dozen poems and some flash fiction as well as a good deal of photography.

Five Writing Prompts

Sun, 29 May 2011 22:59:31 -0400

Don’t use a metaphor or simile in the entire poem. How else can you describe and express without relating what you are writing about to something else?
Write as though you are explaining something that is meant to be understood. So often in poetry, we focus on the obscure and work in ambiguities.
If you are learning a language (or if you aren’t, start to) write whatever you can in verse, even if it doesn’t make “sense.”
Write a poem as though it is an instruction manual. It can be for anything. It can even be for something that doesn’t actually exist.
Watch Wild Strawberries (1957) and write a poem through the perspective of Marianne (Isak’s daughter-in-law.)

I want very much to tell, to talk about, the wholeness inside every human being. It’s a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

-Ingmar Bergman

Vol. 2, Issue 5: May 2011

Tue, 03 May 2011 19:26:00 -0400

I’m eager to present the May 2011 issue of Yes, Poetry as an Ebook here for a free download! From now on, all issues of Yes, Poetry will either be avaliable as Ebooks and/or as a paperback book on Lulu. This issue in particular is available only as an Ebook. I hope everyone enjoys it just as much as I did!

I am including the author biographies here to give an idea of the issue:

Contributor’s Notes

Stephen Barry is a dad and fly fisherman living in the Hudson Valley. He subsidizes these vocations by being a trial lawyer. His poetry has been published in The Legendary and The Orange Room Review.

Holly Day is a freelance writer and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her recent books include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Guitar-All-In-One for Dummies, co-authored with Jim Peterik, former guitarist of the band Survivor. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Oxford American, The Midwest Quarterly, and Coal City Review.

Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His books include Suckers, For the Birds, and Longing for the Mother Tongue (March Street Press).

Phil Ginsburg is a writer/actor/performance poet. His work appears on Indiefeed: Performance Poetry, Breadcrumb Scabs, The Legendary, Toucan Literary and a forthcoming issue of Disingenuous Twaddle among other publications. His spoken word CD “Obstructed Views” is available at CD Baby. A new spoken word CD “Scratch” will be available in March 2011. A former New Yorker, he lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Don McIver is a 4 time member of the ABQ slam team, an award winning host/producer of KUNM’s Spoken Word Hour, the author of The Noisy Pen, and editor of A Bigger Poet: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene. He’s performed all over the United States, produced poetry events big and small including being the Media Director for the Bravos Awards winning 2005 National Poetry Slam (the largest poetry slam in history), been published in numerous magazines and anthologies including the Harwood Anthology, Shine On You Crazy Diamond: Poems by Teens and their Mentors, Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Anthology, Poems from the Big Muddy: NPS 2004, Looking Back to Place, and the upcoming anthologies How to….Multiple Perspectives on Creating a Garden, a Life, Relationships and Community and Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology.

Halie Mills lives in Western Massachusetts. In addition to poetry, she writes how-to articles for the internet.

Douglas Polk is a writer of poetry from central Nebraska. Feeling persecuted most of his life he has published three books of poetry; In My Defense, The Defense Rests, and On Appeal. He lives with his wife and two boys and two dogs on the plains of Nebraska.

Rebecca Shumejda is the author of Falling Forward, a full-length collection of poems (sunnyoutside, 2009); The Map of Our Garden (verve bath, 2009); Dream Big Work Harder (sunnyoutside press 2006); The Tear Duct of the Storm (Green Bean Press, 2001); and the poem “Logic” on a postcard (sunnyoutside). She received her MA in Poetics and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and her BA in English and Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and online at www.rebeccaschumejda.com.

D.L. Tricarico’s work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, rumble, Mudfish, Pearl, The Main Street Rag, and The Pikeville Review. He was also a finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers.

Bobbie Troy is a freelance technical editor/writer who maintains her sanity and perspective on life by writing flash fiction, poetry, and original fairy tales with a 21^stcentury twist. Her poetry and fairy tales appear online and in print: Concise Delight Magazine of Short Poetry, Issue 1; Vox Poetica website, Inspirations, Collections 1 and 2, and Love Be Write; SPARK, an art and writing project; Haiku Ramblings, Caper Literary Journal; Leaf Garden Press, Issue 9; and the Journal of Liberal Arts and Education. Her poem, Dear Diane, was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize (http://www.aliceshapiro.com/thechangeinterviews.html). Her fairy-tale play, Sasha and the Tree of Sorrows, was produced in March 2011.

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called “The Poet of Doom,” “A Voice in the Wilderness,” and “A Minstrel for Love.” He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California.

Poetry & Talk with Christina Murphy

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:11:00 -0400

Q & A with poet Christina Murphy, interviewed by Joanna C. Valente

“Some pieces just come to a writer almost whole and are like a gift; other pieces require enormous effort to get sections written at all and then to get those sections into a structure that works cohesively in conveying the experience a writer seeks to create for the reader.”

How long have you been writing for? What was the age you began to write at?

I have been writing for about twenty years, and I started writing with a personal focus and commitment when I was twenty and in my senior year of college.

Do you have a writing process? For instance, some writers only write at a specific time or place. Or can you just write anywhere, anytime?

My writing process is that I write every day. There are rare exceptions in which something comes up in life that demands my attention and time and thus interferes with my writing, but I am quite steadfast in working on my writing on a daily basis. I put a number of hours into my work—usually around 6 – 8 hours each day. I write exclusively on a laptop, which literally is on my lap as I write. I write at home and only occasionally head out to a Starbuck’s or other coffee place to work. When I do that, I usually am not creating a new piece but putting the final touches on a manuscript and getting it ready for submission to a journal.

What are your influences? Are there certain things that facilitate your writing, such as music?

I write both poetry and fiction, and so my influences reflect that structure to my work. I read widely and enjoy a number of writers, and I always find I learn something from each author, not only in terms of the structuring of his or her work, but in terms of tone, style, technique, and the author’s world view. In fiction, I write in both magical realism/surrealism and traditional realism. Among the magical realists, I really admire Donald Barthelme, Lydia Davis, and Carol Emshwiller. Among the realists, probably too many to list, but I do admire Andre Dubus and Alice Munro. In poetry, again way too many to list, but I do find the ones who continue to capture and hold my imagination are Jane Hirshfield and Bruce Beasley. And then, of course, there are the people who seem to do everything in all styles and in all forms, and who also create new forms, too. I would put Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett in that category, who both have been major influences for me.

As for what influences me directly in the process of writing, I really value quiet and solitude. I find it very important for me to be alone so I can be totally focused. Writing requires a great deal of concentration and patience, and so I value being able to isolate myself from as many interruptions as possible.

I have tried to write with music on, and I admire those writers who do this regularly and are successful at it. It does not work for me as I find the music more or less getting into my head and interfering with my thoughts. Pretty soon I am either absorbed in the beauty of the music, or listening to the lyrics, or humming or singing along if I know the piece. I have tried a range of music, thinking perhaps classical music might work because of the absence of lyrics, but it is always the same effect. Essentially, music distracts me from my concentration rather than enhancing my ability to focus. I am probably unusual in this regard among writers, but that is what works for me.

Was there any period of time that you stopped writing? Or had a very long dry spell? If so, how did this make you feel?

I have never had a long period in which I was not writing. I have had periods in which my writing does not go as well as other times, and that can be frustrating in its own way. Some pieces just come to a writer almost whole and are like a gift; other pieces require enormous effort to get sections written at all and then to get those sections into a structure that works cohesively in conveying the experience a writer seeks to create for the reader. I find some measure of frustration in this process if I write and rewrite numerous times and that wonderful piece I am seeking to create continues to elude me. However, I think this is always a measure or test of a writer’s dedication, and so I generally hang in there for as long as it takes until I am satisfied with the piece. This can be hours, but usually it is days or months of rewriting—which is actually a process of re-envisioning the piece. Often it involves putting the piece away for awhile and coming back to it with a fresher perspective. I am very dedicated to my writing, though, so generally however long it takes, I will hang in there and keep working at it until I am pleased with the piece.

Was there a specific experience that made you want to write?

No specific experience. I think it was the overall enjoyment I got from reading wonderful writers, and that made me feel I wanted to write, too.

What is your current profession? How does it affect your work?

I am a college professor by training and experience, and I stepped away from academics almost four years ago so I could write full time. At this point in my life, my profession is not affecting my work.

Other than writing, what are some of your other hobbies and interests?

I love rock hunting and fossiling as my favorite hobby, and I have made several trips to the West, especially to Texas, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming to pursue that interest. The landscapes of those areas have taught me, too, how form influences and expresses beauty. Being in the canyons around Amarillo, Texas can really make you aware of how Georgia O’Keefe recognized those canyons and the broad desert expanses of the Southwest as cognates for her own artistic vision.

If you weren’t a writer, what else would you be pursuing in its place?

I would return to my career in college teaching as I love to teach, and there are so many wonderfully bright and talented students out there to interact with.

You mention you live in a 100 year-old house. Describe it. What is its history?

I live in a 100 year-old Arts and Crafts house along the Ohio River in Huntington, West Virginia. Huntington is the largest inland port in America in terms of the amount of tonnage that comes into and out of Huntington on the Ohio River. Huntington started out as a railroad town and a river barge town in the 1830s, and it has retained that identity ever since. It is an interesting town for its varied architecture that reflects each period of its history. There are many beautiful Victorian homes of the nineteenth century, and there is a range of architectural styles of the early twentieth century, of which my house is one example. When Huntington was founded for rail and river commerce, a number of the people associated with building the Central Pacific Railroad, including Coliss P. Huntington, for whom the town is named, built large Victorian houses along the river in the mid nineteenth century. The next wave of industrialists built houses along the river at the turn of the twentieth century and embraced a number of popular styles in those days.

Interestingly, even though the Arts and Crafts movement was at its strongest from 1880 through 1910 and continued to flourish into the 1930s, there are only two Arts and Crafts houses in Huntington, and mine is the only one along the river. Living in this house has given me a great appreciation of simplicity in its complex artistic forms. The Arts and Crafts style emphasizes clean-cut lines in a non-decorative fashion that is true to the material being used. An artist who was influenced by these same ideas is the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who painted on a white canvas with a grid of horizontal and vertical black lines and using only the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. You can’t get any more elemental than that. Yet his paintings are gorgeously complex and engaging, even in their overt simplicity. I am reminded of Mondrian’s efforts and of the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement as I write in my house each day. I am also captivated by the Ohio River itself as an enormous river that makes its way through much of the American East and heads westward. The River has its own long history, too, and, of course, its day-to-day beauty as it reflects the seasons and also sustains the movement of so many boats and barges along its over 900-mile length. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I was always captivated by the Atlantic Ocean and its beauty. So I am aware that I am influenced by oceans and rivers on many subconscious levels, and that these influences also tend to find their way into my writing as metaphors and images.

Do you enjoy performing your work?

No, unfortunately for me, because I think it would be fun if I could do it. But like many writers, I am rather introverted, and the idea of performing my work for an audience makes me feel uncomfortable. Basically, I am shy, and so I let the work speak for itself.

* * *

JENNET ICE // Christina Murphy

“What’s madness but nobility of soul
at odds with circumstance?”
—Theodore Roethke, “In A Dark Time”

I.

Ah, this paradise business. It is a complicated thing.
Have you been up all night?
Yes, reading. I am in mourning. I have not made my wanderings plain to the sea, nor thanked the rivers that made me wise.
You are too unsettled for your nature. I think your reading disturbs you. What are you reading about?
Paradise. I have given much thought to Paradise.
So have I.
You have!
Yes. In between the daily audits, I wonder if the numbers might mean more somewhere else.
Tell me of your speculations.
I wouldn’t say they were speculations.
What then?
You might call them vain hopes.
I call no hopes vain. Vanity lies only with the perverse, and they do not dream.
Well, I have thought that heaven would be a place of rest.
Good, good.
And my soul would no longer need.
It is so hard for me to imagine that particular state. What is your God, or who?
I don’t know about God but I accept Him as He is.
Do you have a choice? No, let it go. Forgive me. After all, it is your God, and I am sure your God would give you choices.
And I suppose your God would not?
No, only the appearance of choices. Just as a cloud looks like a mound of snow
but is only vapor. Examine the vapor and what have you got?
My God isn’t vapor…or snow.
I know. He is the God of the solid world. I never think in three dimensions. I am afraid to, and
fear feels so much different than doubt.
You are too deep for your own good. Brooding is like a disease, and it can fester.
Fester! Why, it can strangle! It is the boa constrictor of all man’s emotions.
This is no jungle, only a simple little apartment.
Don’t remind me.
You can be cutting.
Forgive me. I forget your shell isn’t harder.
And I forget you are all shell, or at least would like to be.
I would rather be a diamond than a shell. They are both in the jungle, you know.
I must get ready for work. One of us has to work, you know.
I think I shall make myself a pot of tea today. Yes, I shall drink the tea as if it were wine
and needed me to caress it. I shall…
What? I can’t hear you.
Go to work. There is no work for you here. There is only sorrow in the vineyard.
I’d like to ask you not to think today, but it would be like asking the sky not to be blue.
No, don’t ask, for I am blue like the sky today.
Again? Why?
Go to work. The sky will try not to storm.
I am not prepared for a storm.
Too blustery?
Yes. More than you realize.
Go to work. Do your work. But it is not your Father’s business you are about.
I know that better than you do.
Would that we knew why we dance to distant harmonies.
I’m leaving now.
Goodbye. May you know only Paradise and not the serpent. But then, maybe you already do.

II.

Tea is the bastard of indecision, but oh how soothing to the soul. As my divine grandmother said, God bless her soul, “It flows through the veins like honey.” But then, grandmother, will there be enough flowers for the bees? And what do the bees know of honey any way? It is the flower that has been besieged, and all rewards taste sweet only to the taker.

I shall sit here and sip my tea. A cup of tea, yes, shaped like the eye of the beholder. And what is in the eye of the beholder? How many scarecrows must be crucified, oh Lord, before you will tell us if we are real?

It is so difficult to be crucified. To get crucified is easy, but to live with it is a terrible thing, indeed. Even the nails must turn to rust some day. Even the nerves must sit like watchdogs,
fierce only in the night.

Good tea, indeed. Mellow, soft, a good counter to the darkness that even the candlelight cannot bear. Ah yes, the darkness makes timid beings of us all. Where then is our Paradise if even the nails cannot hold us? Are we all in a shooting gallery where only the unmarked can survive?

What makes you think there will be any survivors?

Ah, it is you again, my nemesis, my sorrow. I rather expected you, but I thought at least you would have the courtesy to wait until I finished my tea.

Time and tea wait for no man.

Are you going to be insolent again? I won’t stand for it! I will not!

I don’t think you are in a position to demand anything.

I never get myself into positions. Positions are a false honey, a sweet but temporary illusion. I long ago gave up trying to build anything. I’d rather settle for my own decay than be forced to build against my will.

You fit so many parts, and all so poorly. You are not exactly an easy person to know.

Remember that it was you who chose to know me. I could have lived my life quite well without you, but you insisted, like an oyster. And it has taken me this long to realize that you are not the pearl, but the grain of sand.

Not even a mustard seed?

A mustard seed? Why you don’t even have faith enough to be a Judas. That takes faith, you know. You have to believe that you are right in order to betray.

That’s just fine with me. I hate Last Suppers. I’m much better at beginnings. I have been pondering lately how all beginnings get begun. You for instance…

I am not an instance.

For example?

I am not an example.

Well, what are you then?

Only a knot tied to a mooring. The ship long ago sailed to sea.

What of the captain?

What of the sea?

My, aren’t we glum.

Glum, sir, is not a particularly educated word. I should think a third-degree burn of the mind would better bespeak the cause. I have opened too many closets lately where skeletons laugh or moan. I had forgotten what night-moths could do behind one’s back or…within one’s skull. No, I have known every second of this year’s hour, and I do not expect to hear from them any more.

Who?

The spaces between the seconds where tock is tick and all the world is one. I have been reading of that harmony before the lost days, and I have decided that Paradise is only the gaping wound of eternity.

Do your wounds gape? Is that why you read of others’ wounds because you cannot stand your own?

I read so that I might see beyond the reach of the jaundiced eye. It’s the only decent thing to do, for on the other side of one’s eyeballs might be Paradise. Paradise, indeed. A storied land where God and man communed through angels and had much to say.

I wish I had time to discuss the virtues of Original Sin with you, but fortunately I am not fixated with God and the Devil as you are. I keep my jaundiced eye in my pocket and only take it out when it is time to pay another fare. You’d be doing the same thing if you weren’t always lost at sea.

Newport! The tide rushing in. I remember it so well. The night was frosted with salt air. I was young then and just beginning. I believed I was a child of the sea, suckled by the sunset. I lived for the nights. I believed in the King of Hearts and the Tin Man. Surely, I must have known…

You did, but you wouldn’t listen to reason. You were too in love with your own explanations, so you were always alone.

You were with me then…in those days, too?

In those days, too.

Heart and mind?

Only you know that. Who really knows?

Certainly, not the sea.

What becomes of the sea when its graveyard is full?
It freezes from forgetting how to cry and dreams in iceberg memories.

I wander in a desert where the sun’s heat tastes only of thirst and longing. What strange roots try to bind me to the sea? I must know!

The sea is a wound that never heals.

But my dream is of the sea!

You are disgusting. Your pain is like a foul dust.

But how can I believe what you…what I know isn’t…

Pretenders to the throne always marvel at the king.

What flame ever burned that did not fear the darkness?

What darkness that never feared the flame?

But I must prove to you that this harvest is yours, not mine. I will show you!

You will show me nothing because you are nothing.

I knew the dance once. I knew the tune. If only I could sing the breeze into a shining light. Then I could show you. Then you would know. I would have proof,

Proof is your only hero, but this is a war without victories.

But you see, don’t you? You see.

I see only that you are a fool.

Angels of gold, of broken hearts and disappointed dreams, the threads of my beliefs have fallen away and I have crawled on my heart to you. I bleed only sorrow and cannot believe that it is divine.

Only frozen fire is despair. Hold it too long, and it will try to free itself to destroy itself.

Miles of wounds have lit the way. Darkness can make no other progress. I have never felt the burden of the dagger lift. The sound of suffering is hollow.

There is a legend of the Cross, when all the world is autumn, and life peels away in the colors of death. This was the time of Jennet who lived in silence, fearing his own words. His love he held to his heart like ice, wishing never to lose it, fearing its spell that made man need completion. Tight against all storms, tight against all threats, all needs, until he had carved his own crosses in the ice that melted like acid upon his soul. Too long had he waited for rain.

Am I then but a well, hollow with shadows?

And is your love rain, or Jennet ice?

Is it only a futile hope to believe that… I…?

You are the tree that ice deforms and nothing now touches your roots. Your leaves echo with pain. What shaped you has harmed you. Even the sky becomes a victim of its own reflections.

I have never known the baptism of fire. Emptiness, to me, has been the color of lead.

What you see is through dead eyes, frightened of the sun and the sea.

The sea, the sea. Let us go down to the sea in what…despair, insanity? What thought is the seed time of the harvest? What thought that yields the blessing? I have been thinking about Paradise, and I have struggled to comprehend. But what frightens me about Paradise is the thought of the thinking without end.

Answers are only the solace of sin, and they are such strange currency. Beliefs are so much simpler.

Paradise is not the child or the father of sin. Beauty was graceful once, before it withered on the vine like a scar. I had not thought of Paradise as a flower, the thought of the blossoming and the dying without end.

III.

Home from the hill, home from the hill you come.
Yes, home. And what of your day? I see you’ve finished reading.
The day was wonderful and the rainbow never ends.
Look, I have had your coat mended. I had the hole you wore in the sleeve patched. I don’t want you to be cold and unprepared for the winter.
I need more preparation than a coat for winter, kind sir. Maybe your God will anoint me with oils and my heart will be strong against the cold.
Why must you be like this? I don’t understand it. It’s blasphemy to always rail against the universe so. It’s blasphemy to…
You are so busy defending your God that you can’t even see where the heavens end. I have no business in your world, nor you in mine.
You must let the hatred go. Forgiveness is a balm…
A balm that Solomon would have cleaved in two. You know, Jesus could have been a bomber pilot if he had wanted to. He had the aim. We could have wised him up quickly—you with your love like the tyranny of a gentle rainfall, and I with my distrust of salvation. Between the two of us, he would have known what it was really like for his Father to send Abraham into the mountains with his son. Unlike the Father, we only play real games here.
Stop it! Stop it! Your bitterness is an insult to God.
Effrontery is the sincerest form of gratitude. It is perhaps the most human of emotions, coming as it does with equal sincerity from friend or foe. God should be pleased I know his paths so well.
God must know you because I am sure that I don’t.
Your concern for me has taken a fortuitous turn. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the rest of your days.
What path are we walking now?
This path is the journey of the stars, a constant fading. I have fled from Jerusalem screaming, looking at my palms for any kind of wound, any sign.
Is there to be a new mystery at every turn? Is this what I am to expect now?
I am tired of your questions. They fall on me like tears and make me weary of knowing that my answers will come only as thorns. I do not have the piecemeal patience of Van Gogh, else I would chop my ear off not to listen.
I am going to make you some tea. That will help settle you down. I should have thought of this sooner. Maybe then I could have done better by you. I lose my patience sometimes, that’s all. I forget I have to…
Have to what? Not feel, and see, and hear? There is a destiny beyond the reach of mortal eye that is not glimpsed except by pain. The river that we swim in has us swimming back to our homelands to die. What else springs from the loins of despair but mountains that no simple traveler can climb?
Is that what you think I am, simple?
Only like the rose which was once the morning star. Ah, the sensuous ecstasy of blooming.
I wish you would talk to me so that I would know how you feel.
My words are like pillows to cushion the fall. I wish you could think of them as your lovers that once bathed with you in the sun.
Talk to me, truly talk to me.
I tire of this game. What would you like? That I talk to you of omelets made of daffodils, or of a castle wide as Spain? Would you eat of an apple knowing that it must be reborn?
I can’t go on like this. You have put so much distance between me and your pain that I am nearly lost to you.
I have built my barricade with thorns. You may come to me in pieces, but you will never come to me whole.
I would gladly come if I could feel that even a part of me would soothe you.
Ships are not made to soothe the storm. We all know the way to the bottom.
I have tried so to love you, but you will not let me reach you where I know you must be. You hide from me like a dream that fears the telling.
Or the teller.
How I have ached to understand you and longed that my touch could soothe you. If only I knew what you were afraid of.
I fear most the stench of burning flesh. Mine eyes have not seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, and we have looked in all the wrong places for the Messiah.
Please let me touch you…reach you. I’m afraid. This is the only world we know, and it is cloaked in fear. But somehow I must believe that there is some higher purpose here. To draw each breath is a miracle that a loving God lets us feel. To have loved once but one living thing is to know that God is truly divine…truly merciful.
Enough of this outrage! You speak to me of a loving God? Your God never felt the fire he threw Satan into. He never dreamed that Hell could so easily overflow with human flesh and human bone.
Only love can lead you from the darkness.
This is foolishness. Nothing changes. Do you think wishing makes it so?
Nothing reaches you. God perhaps, but not me.
Leave me alone, both of you—you and your God. I am on a branch of my own making.
Just once I wish you could see with me, not around me or through me. I believe in hope. All regret is futile.
I do not regret so much as mourn the loss in me of what once only you could find. A mirage perhaps, but was it yours or mine?
I do not believe in mirages any more than I believe in devils.
That’s right. Your God is definitely not the God of devils.
I don’t care to be discussing my God any more with you.
No, neither do I. I think I shall read more of Paradise. How simple it seemed to this fellow Milton. If only he had understood that Eve did not hear God talking to her but only took Adam’s word for it. But, it is his story, and I won’t interfere with it.
Very wise of you. One should never meddle with grand designs.
I shall read to you. “Rather than be less, cared not to be at all.”
Ah, arrogance at its finest or worst. What do you think?
What did Christ die for if the crucifiers could only jeer?
The fullness of mercy. Don’t ever forget the power of forgiveness.
Forgiveness forgives evil. One depends upon the other, the bridge and the water, the stars and the night.
Forgiveness is like a seed very carefully planted.
Even the Devil was once only a plant in somebody’s garden, but what of the vine that fears its own flower?
Fear is your burden, not mine. I will make some tea for us both.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall not know why I needed to feel so alone.
You are not alone.
So would your God say, but not mine.
I think it’s going to be a cold winter.
Snow, cold, wind, and pestilence. When will it ever end? My soul aches to be free.
Do you believe in freedom?
No.
But you still desire it?
Of all the great illusions, freedom is the most alluring. Would that freedom were not itself a victim of circumstance.
We are out of honey. Shall it be lemon and sugar with your tea?
Circumstance shall dictate the taste of my tea? Why are we never free of circumstance?
Fate. In your universe, even your tea is destined to suffer.
You are angry again.
There is no again.
You are wrong. Again and again is all there is.
There is no assurance then, no better end to the journey?
There is only what always is, the aloneness, the emptiness, the loss that is no more than an echo in the night.
Are you alone with me?
As I am with myself.
Why is that?
Ask your God. Tell me when you hear.