ZYZZYVA 93 / San Francisco, CA
New England Review 32.3 / Middlebury, VT
DIAGRAM 11.4 / Tucson, AZ
Camera Obscura 3 / Addison, TX
Fiddleblack 2 / Peninsula, OH
Barrelhouse 9 / Washington, DC
Antioch Review Fall 2011 / Yellow Springs, OH
Birkensnake 4 / Providence, RI
Gigantic Sequins 2.2 / Philadelphia, PA
Paris Review 199 / Manhattan, NY
Bateau 4.2 / Northhampton, MA
6x6 24 / Brooklyn, NY
Below is an excerpt from Dana Gioia’s poem “My Confessional Sestina,” which points light—and exacting—fun at the relationship between writing programs and literary magazines. (The poem was originally published in the October 1983 issue of Poetry—read the entire work there.) Where will it end? This grim cycle of workshops churning out poems for little magazines
How satisfied are people with the Spring 2012 Virginia Quarterly Review symposium on “the state of American poetry”? Anything left out? Screenshot of contents below. (Possibly interesting side note: It seems Marjorie Perloff pulled her essay from inclusion in the VQR symposium because this other essay was included. Or something to that effect.)
First, Marjorie Perloff writes an essay about contemporary and conceptual poetry published in Boston Review (an essay that, Perloff explains, was originally intended for Virginia Quarterly Review)— If “creative writing” has become as formulaic as I have been suggesting, then perhaps it is time to turn to what Kenneth Goldsmith calls “uncreative writing.” Tongue-in-cheek as
The mask? Because we were never ugly enough. Because our ugliness was epic. Because we were given to it, because we were so misgiven. You wear one. I wear one. Yes. Kings, Pharaohs had them fabricated, poured out in gold and beaten. Most wore them to the grave. In Mexico the living wear them, not
You can’t be part of the problem if you don’t see how you’re part of the solution. “For a poem is not the Poetic faculty, but the means of exciting it in mankind.” -Poe, Drake-Hallek Review Information wants to be free—from personification. As if all we are and do revolves around a hollow center. Every
here you are faceless bobs like flotsam in the strait narrow sea scented with iridescent oil radiating in rainbow swirl as fin glistens before tell-tale lollipops are sucked into the cistern
But for the present, it’s beyond my control. When it finally happens after yet another 20 minutes, the helplessness underscores the inexorable reel of martyrdom, twirling madly in and out of love, as if the whole universe will now be birthed into another plastic bag, clean as disinfectant. We – all of us sworn witnesses,
in memory of adult film actress Karen Bach Before the fourth sunrise, the road shoulder has already shrugged off its riffraff, grass grower over night without tea or sympathy. Side alley slippers from the lights,
acrid mango mandibles android! bitter abdomen banana cyborg! sichuan cylons cardio coconuts! gourd doraemon digits acidic! mexican telerobot lemon uterus! fallopian fizzy fembots figs!
The Merlion, after Thumboo, Euripides and Trakr the dog Not quite what was planned, but neither are we entirely (ever) allowed free roaming privileges. My flooey love, How you have arrived (ended up?) at this river, is a question
