PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS

"The Difficulty of Holding Time"--Michael Bazzett
"Faith"--Carol Louise Munn
"The Language of Storms"--Victoria Anderson
"Men in the Mine"--Grace Cavalieri
"The Seer"--Brandon Whiting
"What Came Back"--Suzanne Frank

Michael Bazzett and Grace Cavalieri are repeat contributors to 10x3 plus.  This is the second time I have nominated Michael Bazzett for the Pushcart Prize.

Good luck to all of the above poets.  You can check out their poetry in the #7 issue of 10x3 plus.

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS

"Taming Texas"--Jefferson Carter
"American Ingenuity"--Jefferson Carter
"Other"--Mary Crow
"My Son, My Undertaker"--John Kay
"Confetti"--Robert King
"Dear Key Largo:"--Alexandra van de Kamp

Good luck to the above contenders.  You can read more of their poetry in the December issue of 10x3 plus.

JOHN KAY -----------> continued success

I wish I had the budget that Bellevue Literary Review must have. Enough dollars to pay for staff to edit and publish a 250 page 10th Anniversary issue. Quality poetry abounds: some favorites of mine are poems by Rafael Campo, David Wagoner, Cornelius Eady, and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan. The review also includes fiction and non-fiction.

John Kay has two poems in the current issue: "Almost Dark" and "Echo's End." John continues down his brave and uneasy path--both esoteric and universal. I'm tempted to copy "Almost Dark" completely here, but that wouldn't be fair to BLR--maybe John will let me share it on this blog a few months from now.

In the meantime, you can read John's poems in BLR and also in the #6 issue of 10x3 plus.

Check out information below on ordering John Kay's full-length poetry collection, PHANTOM OF THE APPLE.

from "Paradise Lightning Dazzle" - Gregory Orr

One step beyond
intensity--
what world is that?

Ferns: A Study - Michael Gessner

From his pose in the garden
Just as his voice became
My own, Froebel stepped into the evening

Of my dream for his uncommon love
Of the young and with his notes
At the close of another century
Collected from an elemental source
Of children, my children of the forest
And the perpetual lily pond mad for the end,
Playing and sometimes translucent
Against the sun endowed with beauty
Which has become commonplace
And for beauty's tension they never cease
From the pursuit of themselves
As though they inhabit this place
Only to breed themselves to death by error.

As forests were once ferns
And ferns infant in the dumb morning
Existing of notions
Which were also geometries
Copious among us

As they were always among us
Even in the dreams of the twelfth-century girls
Dreaming at the edge of the forest
In anticipation of the unimagined season,

The caress and the still life
Of ferns
On seacoasts and on the white porches
Of summer homes
Or hung from the platforms of wooden depots,
How they bowed along the boulevards
Welcoming victors to the city,
And atop cool Corinthian planters
In the lobbies of grand hotels
There were ferns
In the background of photographs,
Pharmacies and funeral parlors,
And in the corridors of museums
Positioned carefully below milky skylights
That are sealed and permit no entry,

But most in a memory of children
There were ferns
Copious, still and sometimes swaying
In the settings of their stories,
In the stories of their sleep.


First published in Pacific Review
Collected in SURFACES (March Street Press)

Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Beginner's Mind Publishing has made its first nomination for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. The Academy of American Poets oversees the award annually for a poetry collection by a living U.S. poet.

It was a pleasure to nominate PHANTOM OF THE APPLE by John Kay, Beginner's Mind Publishing, 2010.

The following poem from PHANTOM OF THE APPLE first appeared in 5 AM:

Who's Who of the Dead

I see that I made it into the
Who's Who of the Dead

and there's a picture of me,
wide-eyed, looking stern, as if

I have a serious beef with life,
on page 727 of the fifth volume.

I'm the first of my family, and
I didn't get in because I knew

somebody. I jumped the fence
and ran like hell from one yard

to another, and the doctors
could never catch me.


Good luck to John Kay and Beginner's Mind Publishing.

Easter Sunday, 2011

Reading the "Daily Prayer of Father Parfeny of Kiev" on Martin Turner's Weblog, I realized I don't think of prayer as between self and God. I found myself editing "Grant me that purity of spirit...which makes us worthy of Thy Love" to Grant me that purity of spirit...which makes us worthy of Love." Without the Thees and Thous, the prayer seemed to evolve into a generalized prayer of being, focused on Good.

THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY

* Laura Treacy Bentley
* Maggie Anderson

Laura Treacy Bentley has two poems in THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia. "Closet Appalachians" appeared originally in the #2 issue of 10x3 plus. "Gas Stations" was first published in Pudding Magazine.

Years ago, I wrote a grant for the Pennsylvania Council of the Humanities to cover a community program featuring Maggie Anderson. Maggie's presentation culminated with an evening poetry reading in a local church in southwestern Pennsylvania, and poems such as "House and Graveyard, Rowlesburg, West Virginia, 1935" really resonated with the residents. At the time, the community newspaper reprinted "Spitting in the Leaves" and I was glad to see it published again in this anthology.

Other writers with West Virginia connections included in THE SOUTHERN POETRY ANTHOLOGY are Casie Fedukovich, Harry Gieg, Chris Green, Larry Grimes, Ron Houchin, Donna J. Long, Jeff Mann, and Elizabeth Savage.

This is a really rich and wide ranging anthology and I hope it will find a readership that extends well beyond the Appalachian region.

Tomas de Faoite to Sue Ann Simar, Correspondence

sue all time is limited, compressed,
when I look on my life there is none of it left,
it is all just another day, another again,
i seek no solace and nothing can shed
its essence, or justify its value,
i have no interest in truth or credo,
i can't lean my arms on a pew anymore
and look to the ceiling and see the hand
of michelangelo in the stretching out
of fresco, cracking, peeling off
the world that is turning out of tune and time

and all your artworks, the house top heavy,
and all those pictures probably still in wraps,
looking towards each other, and your husband
the fisherman, knowing where the river opens,
casting from the shade into sunlight; his feet
in the undergrowth, up to his waist in reeds
and salamanders. let him cast and cast again,
and do not be downcast about it
if nothing bites on the dullest of days

Saturday, May 23, 2009

BEAST BOOK - Michael Gessner

I had the privilege of writing one of the back cover liner notes for this book of poems, and of course, I read the book in its entirety before doing so. It's now several months later and I keep returning to this book again and again. This book is so multi-layered that I've been savoring one poem at a time, line by line, word by word.

Today it's the short poem "Matching." Snow is falling throughout West Virginia and the poem matches my mood perfectly:

"...a world
brighter than my own
floats to mind,

and I have stepped outside
the self & into another
zone occupied
with foreign sensations only"

There's plenty of grit in this book--gristle and grind and "fat in a pot." But it's needful to find the little poem, the small that makes you larger.

The book design by Geoffrey Gatza and publishing details by BlazeVOX contribute to the cohesive effect of the book. I really hope this book finds the readers that it deserves.

Mindfulness - a statement from artist Cristine Cambrea

As a visionary artist, I use my inner emotion and intuition to guide me. I do not work in the traditional process that incorporates sketching and planning. After that first line, shape, or color makes its way to the canvas, I get lost in non-thought. It is my time to meditate--and when my time with the canvas is complete, I have a creation that in some way represents my dreams and life experience. This may not be understood for quite some time, but from experience, I now trust in my process and can dissect it when I am ready.

My painting process is very expedient. I quickly make a decision as to what colors I am going to use. Ultimately when I paint, I am preparing the canvas for my drawing. When I feel like there are enough options to work with, I am done painting. At times, the painting can take as little as ten minutes to complete. After the canvas is prepared, I study it in the four directions, deciding which direction it will go. I would say that this is when I am most attentive in my creative process and snap out of dream world to make a decision--which way is up? Sometimes I see it in multiple directions and this has lead to the "Flipped" series. Once the direction has been determined, I then bring the piece to life with my ink drawing. The shapes formed by the paints dictate what I draw as do the negative spaces. I often see faces throughout the piece--but this "seeing" is not limited to art, it includes my every day seeing as well.

My hope is that my work will be a tool of this special kind of seeing for people. Not taking an object simply at face value. Everything we see is more interesting and complicated than the title we attach to it. You can look at a tree OR you can SEE the tree in its individuality. Trees are very much like people in the way that their environment and experiences with it make up the tree. A harsh winter, a bird pecking at the surface, or an animal digging a hole inside to live in, a kid climbing it--all of the experiences the tree has had have changed that tree just like what we have gone through in our lives has altered and changed us and not just physically but emotionally and energetically as well.

Statement from Cristine Cambrea, cover artist #5 issue of 10x3 plus poetry journal, "Mindfulness"

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS - XXXVI

The following poets and poems have been nominated by 10x3 plus for 2010:

Michael Gessner, "HOODOOS"

Michael Gessner, "PARTHENOGENESIS"

Mary Christine Delea, "Occupants"

Lamont Palmer, "Politician in a Boat"

Michael Bazzett, "Rooms and Days"

Sonja James, "Passing Storm at Woods Hole"


PUSHCART PRIZE selections for edition XXXVI will be announced in April, 2011.
Good luck to these poets and poems.

Primrose - Tomas de Faoite

Delicate childhood flowers
flourishing in shady places.
Raindrops with second thoughts
trying to get back to the sun,
or the sun with second thoughts
wanting back what it didn't need
billions of years before.
No wonder they smell so fragile,
an almost indecisive smell,
not knowing where to belong,
here, in shady places
or back at center, the sun.

Tomas DE FAOITE
First published in DUST,
Reinart Edities

from THIS GREAT UNKNOWING - Denise Levertov

from "Celebration"

"Brilliant, this day--a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green--
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes--
greener than ever before."


from This Great Unknowing, LAST POEMS
Denise LEVERTOV

Appalachian Night - Mark Jackley

Enfolded by pure darkness
a train slips through the hills,
past the occasional litter of homes
leaking yellow light.

In a kitchen window
the silhouette of an enormous man who thinks,
gazing at the train,
he could love anyone on board.


Mark JACKLEY
Collected in THERE WILL BE SILENCE WHILE YOU WAIT
Plain View Press

September 11, 2001 - Mark Jackley

Returning in darkness
to her mother's, my two-year-old glanced
at our neighborhood woods
and whispered, Listen, monsters.

Before I could reason with her
she climbed into my arms,
placed a tiny hand on my mouth
and commanded, Shhh.


Mark JACKLEY
Collected in THERE WILL BE SILENCE WHILE YOU WAIT, Plain View Press

Lines for Salinger at Ninety - Lamont Palmer

Tables are often "lousy with glasses",
a messy significance on Broadway.
Will we see the world as it is or as
it was, when it was only a globe in class?
Often lives soar wildly like the Lunts
over the East River. This is theatre,
the cynical lessons taught and told,
the old man, Jerome, and the young neck-tied boy
of wisdom, in one pimply universe.
We wonder about the absent ducks
(perhaps our own imminent absence)
and the "secret slobs", untested for the better.
The pianos are playing and the big men
are playing them. The noise is closing in,
trains are barreling to nowhere quickly,
holidays no longer support the tinsel
they cling to. It smacks of grim martinis,
the misanthropy of the dazed dim bubbles
springing up in the glass of a long life.
I need rest, like the boy: time away
from situations, contrivances and
f-words (cold implications) in rude stairwells.


Lamont PALMER
Used by permission of Lamont Palmer.

10x3 plus PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS 2009

Congratulations to the following nominees:

"Forever" -- John Kay
"Elegy for No One" -- Ron Padgett
"Primavera" -- George Szirtes
"Winter Walk" -- Llewellyn McKernan
"The Long Goodbye" -- Llewellyn McKernan
"Still As I Was" -- Dzvinia Orlowsky

Thank you to all the 10x3 poets who appeared in the #4 issue. I was only able to publish one journal this year, but it was still a difficult decision selecting six poems for the Pushcart.

Good luck to these poets and I hope to see their work presented in the 2009 Pushcart Prize edition.

In a Twilight Town - Caleb Barber

At these hours a girl shows me the scar
she earned after her father's chainsaw
bucked against her calf while he evened
the backyard stumps. "It cut clear to my meat,"
she says. "They had to fly me to the city."
The rough, shiny lump is not grotesque.
Her leg has grown around the wound
same as how trees will hatchet swings.

She still wears skirts, for now, because
her body won't be a woman's for a few
more years, and free magazine offers
don't come this far out in the country.
The bald slice through one eyebrow is either
from barbed wire or dog. Could have
been her brother, before they sent him
to that school for boys just like him.

I'd like to hear about all those goldfish
that never survived through winter
on her parents' porch. I'd like to know how
the couch felt when it froze through.
But the plane for the mail route is spinning on
and this place will always be her stop.
The night makes us all older, and just walking
toward it, she covers her thighs with the dark.


Caleb BARBER
First published in The New Orleans Review

A Go at the Lifting Stone - Ralph Culver

"For many years a nearly round granite stone
about two feet in diameter sat at the easterly
corner of the front steps of the store now
owned by Frank E. Brown. Few men in the town
could lift it off the ground."
--Fred Pitkin's HISTORY OF MARSHFIELD, VERMONT, 1947

The hands, arms, shoulders and back
consult briefly. A new challenge
of some dimension, of serious intent.
Promise heaves in the brain. This
is our provincial glory!
The bet down--budge it, and you won't
have to buy your own beer for a week--
you think in a sense your future
lies bearing its secret under the stone,
the days breaking in your favor
or not an equation of space--
its possibilities--
conjuncting with the flesh
and its limitations;
all borne up forever on the skin
of the earth, a place that seems
suddenly new and somehow
getting younger by the minute
until you have the confirmation
you seek. By God,
you are about to learn something
(this being your sole duty);

and you learn something sure enough.
Next day, when the usual warriors
clap you on the armored brace,
your lips roll back like a dog's --
the bloody thing having not given
an inch. The sudden multitude
of flea-like urgencies in your ankle
you would rather die than bend
to attend to. Closing your eyes to this
and the uncompromising grins
stretched across the faces of
these yahoos buying you
beer after beer after beer.


Ralph CULVER
First published in Seven Days