rrrattle poetry prize guidelines 25 r rattleattle e.5e.5 fall 2008 a bout t his e-issue rattle e.5 3...

P o e t r y f o r t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y

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R A T T L ER A T T L EBook Features:Book Features:

Carol V. DavisCarol V. DavisInto the Arms of PushkinInto the Arms of Pushkin

David JamesDavid JamesTrembling in Someone’s PalmTrembling in Someone’s Palm

DavidDavid Alpaugh:Alpaugh:What’s What’s ReallyReally Wrong with Wrong with Poetry Book Contests?Poetry Book Contests?

Landscape Pastels Landscape Pastels by Lois Goldby Lois Gold

Issue #30 PreviewIssue #30 Preview

e.5

C O N T E N T S

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFAlan Fox

EDITORTimothy Green

([email protected])

ASSISTANT EDITORMegan O’Reilly

([email protected])

EDITOR EMERITUSStellasue Lee

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTCassandra Glickman

© 2008 by the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation, Inc.

Fall 2008, e.5

All rights revert to authors on publication.Print issues of RATTLE are 4-color, perfect-bound, and include about 200 pages ofpoetry, essays, and interviews. Each issuealso features a tribute section dedicated to anethnic, vocational, or stylistic group. Formore information, including submissionguidelines, please visit www.rattle.com.

CCOONNTTEENNTTSS

Editor’s Note 3

ARTWORK

Lois Gold About the Artist 3Beach House 10Golden Light 13Marshland 15Dreams & Reflections 17Venetian Light 19

BOOK FEATURES

Carol V. Davis Into the Arms of Pushkin 4David James Trembling in Someone’s Palm 8

ESSAYS

David Alpaugh What’s Really Wrong 12with Poetry Book Contests?

Andrew Kozma Chapbook Roundup: 16Carrington, ellen, Kessenich, McGlynn

#30 PREVIEW

Malcolm Alexander Semiotics 21Chris Anderson Reality Homes 21Robert A. Ayres If You Give a Government Trapper 22

a Roadkill ArmadilloLarry D. Thomas Steers in Summer, Lowing 22Donald Mace Williams from Wolfe 23

INFORMATION

Order Form 24Conversations Book 25Rattle Poetry Prize Guidelines 25

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A B O U T T H I S E - I S S U E

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Immediately you should notice thatthis fall’s e-issue is shorter than it’sbeen in the past. Don’t let the lengthfool you—the content hasn’t changed.We’ve simply decided to make it morestreamlined, more succinctly newslet-ter-like. If you listen close you canhear the sounds of the trees rejoicing,and just below that murmur, the gentleplop of Dunder-Mifflin stock drop-ping a quarter-point. But more thanjust saving paper, the fully integrated,columned format better representswhat this really is: a biannual newslet-ter. Some readers were getting con-fused, and it’s easy to see why, with somuch to savor.

This fall’s e-issue takes you toRussia, with a selection of poetry fromCarol V. Davis’s Into the Arms ofPushkin, and then deep inside themind of David James, whose boxyprose poems house as much imagina-tion as the skull. In our featured essay,David Alpaugh stirs up controversyand subverts everything you thoughtyou knew about poetry book con-tests—if you’re thinking of enteringone, this is a must-read. We round outthe issue with Andrew Kozma’s appre-ciative exploration of the chapbook,and a preview of our forthcoming win-ter issue, dedicated to Cowboy &Western poetry. Lois Gold providesambiance throughout, with her end-of-summer landscape pastels. Asalways, we hope you enjoy.

Timothy GreenEditorSeptember 26th, 2008

ARTIST STATEMENT

My goal as an artist is to invite the viewer into the world as I see it. I amattracted to natural forms whether it is a shell, a flower, a fruit, or a land-

scape and I try to imbue each form that I paint with my own language. My images areoften painted from sketches, photographs, and/or from memory. When I paint I mayhave an image in my mind of the final result, and then life surprises me so that theprocess becomes intuitive and spontaneous. It reflects my mood or sometimes themusic to which I am listening. Thus, the end result is often very different from what Ihad planned much like life’s endless unpredictability.

What I leave out of my paintings is as important as what I put in. I do not paintfactories, grafitti, commercial buildings or any evidence of destruction, decay or over-population. My paintings are idealized visions of the world as it used to be. I amreminding my audience of the beauty and fragility of our world and how we must pre-serve it.

I am a colorist and have been greatly influenced by the great colorists of art his-tory—especially Bonnard, Matisse, and Rothko. I have studied the paintings ofHopper, Homer, and Sargent and the way in which they explored the use of water-color. Hopper’s lonely landscapes resonate with me and inspire me.

I work in several mediums—gouache, chalk pastel, oil pastel, watercolor andmixed media. My pastels are painted on toned papers, and my watercolors are paintedon the whitest of white archival paper in many layers. Sometimes I mix the water col-ors with gum Arabic to add luminosity. Painting on paper or board is my preference.

My paintings have often been called moodscapes—portrayals of theouter world, inspired by my inner one.

BIO

Exhibited at Lizan-Tops Gallery, East Hampton, New York-1994-2004, Martha Keats Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico,1999-2004, Ruzetti and Gow, New York City, 1998-2007, theNutmeg Gallery, Kent, Conn., 2004, 2006, Summa Gallery, NewYork City, 1990-1995, the Flinn Gallery, Greenwich Conn.,2005, among many others. Cover art for Dan’s Papers, 1999-2004, Published in “Southwest Art,” 2002, Book Art Press,2002, The Pastel Journal, 2003, Who’s Who in American Art,1995, 1996, 1998, The Pastel Painter’s Solution Book, 1996,

Pastel School, 1996, Painting Shapes and Edges, 1997, The Best of Flower Painting,1998, Pure Color, The Best of Pastel, North Light Books, 2006, The Pastel Artists’Bible, Chartwell Books Inc., 2006, Bentley Publishing, Poster Art, 2005, Pastel ArtistInternational, 1999, The Pastel Painter’s Solution Books, David Cuthbert, North LightBooks, 1996, The Artists Magazine, 1993, featured artist and cover art. Award win-ner of the 20th and 21st Century Achievement Award, International BiographicalCentre, Cambridge, England, 1999, 2005. Part of the corporate collections in the NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, The Four Seasons Hotel, Brooklyn Union Gas, BostonUniversity, Bristol Myers Squibb, and many more. Juried member of the NationalAssociation of Women Artists, juried associate member of the Pastel Society ofAmerica since 1995. Boston University, B.A., Columbia University, M.A.

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LL ANDSCAPEANDSCAPE PP ASTELSASTELSby

Lois Gold

www.LoisGoldArt.com

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B O O K F E A T U R E - D A V I S

RATTLE e.54

Carol V. Davis is the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia. Her fascinationwith Russia, aided by a Fulbright grant, drew her to St. Petersburg in the mid-1990s.Over the next decade, she divided her time between the U.S. and Russia, where, as anAmerican-born Jew, she was an outsider in Russian society. This collection of poemsexpresses the struggle with language barriers and cultural differences—strugglesheightened as Davis helped her children adjust to their new daily life. Inspired byRussia’s rich history, its economicchanges, and landscape, thesepoems express a unique perspectiveof Russia.

CAROL V. DAVIS is author of twochapbooks, The Violin Teacher andLetters from Prague, and a bilingualcollection, It’s Time to TalkAbout..., published in Russia. Herpoems have appeared in variousjournals and anthologies. Shereceived two Fulbright scholargrants to Russia in 1996-97 and fall2005 and teaches English and cre-ative writing at Santa MonicaCollege, Los Angeles.

II NTONTO THETHE AA RMSRMSOFOF PP USHKINUSHKIN

Poems of St. Petersburg

by Carol V. Davis

Winner of the 2007 T.S. Eliot Award

Truman State University Press100 East Normal StreetKirksville, MO 63501-4221ISBN: 978-1-931112-70-3 96 pp., $15.95, Papertsup.truman.edu

Russia centers this world, in person and ata distance both. The casual detail andpatient telling add up everywhere, giving usmeaning where difference had been.Showing us what this particular life inRussia feels like makes it our world, evenwhen the speaker struggles to draw mean-ing from confusion or frustration. In onepoem, the speaker tells of laying out thelanguage of the next day on the back of thechair, quite as if it were clothing. We graspthis moment with depth, startled to makethe connection between language andclothing. These are great moments in theirsmall detail, abstractions given recogniza-ble form. Finding meaning—a continualact of translation and its failure in so manythings—propels the poems in this book.

—Alberto Rios, 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize judge

Struggling to speak a new language, whileimmersing herself in Russian culture,becomes Carol V. Davis’ trope for a spiri-tual quest in this book-length narrative ofsensuous, tangible, shape-shifting poems. Ifeel constantly enticed into her richly tex-tured world.

—Diane Wakoski

Rich, resonant, Russian—these alliterativeadjectives barely begin to describe thecharisma of Carol Davis’s evocativeengagement with Pushkin, St. Petersburg,and a mythic yet quotidian countrywhose archaic capital, Novgorod, is a city“so ancient/its language oozes out of thedark soil.” Plucked (like the beets on whichshe broods in several poems) from the earthof Russia and the groceries of St.Petersburg, from the “arms of Pushkin”and the streets he once wandered, Davis’swonderful poems transcend the “struggleof translation” between one culture andanother. To read them is to love them andto sigh with sympathy!

—Sandra M. Gilbert

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Note: Some of the poems reprinted here first appeared in the following journals:

“The First Nights in St. Petersburg” in West 47, Curit Journal (Galway); “The Violin Teacher Gives a Lesson in How to Sing” in Janus Head; “The Violin Teacher Plays Bach” in Half Tones to Jubilee; “The Poplars of St. Petersburg” in City Works; “Birding” in Nimrod. “The New Russia” first appeared in the book.


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THE FIRST NIGHTS IN ST. PETERSBURG

I can tell you what is different, what the same.Bananas are also imported, sold on streetcorners and given over like bunches of small balloons.

The butter sliced here from a huge slab into chunks of broken iceberg.I remember pools of it formed after long dinners

in the heat of Indian summer at home. Too tired to clean up, too hot for love. From my apartment window

I see more windows. A grandfather drinks tea at a kitchen table.

Jars of homemade pickles readied for winter line the sills. In the courtyard cats

scavenge for food.I want you to know what it is to stumble in another language,

where effort is weighed against outcome like spoons of sugar.Shopkeepers smile secretly

at one another in recognition. An old woman asks sweetly Are these my children?

Her voice slides into rebuke when I fail to understand.It is then I hurry to enclose

my children set adrift in the unknown.

THE VIOLIN TEACHER GIVES A LESSONIN HOW TO SING

I take his voice, not knowingif the words will trip, hesitant as a toy coil on stairs, in his language or mine.Internalize it, play it back.Even when the teacher explainshow the student must imagine the note:hold it under the tongue like a magic stonethen widen the mouth and let it go.There is the moment when the cage door is opened before the bird flies out.It knows its life is about to changeas yours is, when the mold of the canary’sfeathers leaves the pillow of your palmwhen the note is released without a waverand the prayer drifting or steady rises from your lips to God’s ear.

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from INTO THE ARMS OF PUSHKINCarol V. Davis


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THE VIOLIN TEACHER PLAYS BACH

First an explanation for his restless student. As the mouth shapes into words, vowels lean on consonants, press tightly, knocking over each other like dominoes. Syllables drop at his feet in the confusion ofmultiple languages: English for the student,Russian between us. A triangle of anticipationstretches like taut strings.

He picks up the violin,eyes narrowing like the smallest crevice inthe Western Wall, where pleas, scrawled and stuffed between stones, click in the wind.The messages rise quickly to a slit in heaven. Who are we to question such wisdom?

They say Bach’s musicis like mathematics—all calculation and noabandon, but as the bow slides into triplets,gives way to trills, I think of the angels on the ladder with Jacob. One angel stuck his finger in the ground and a volcano erupted.

The allegro quickensas if in a storm, but the violin teacher’s wrist

ever soft and pliant as bulrushes lakeside. The two wives, eleven children, cows andsheep sent to the other side of the stream.Jacob asleep on the rocks still.

Notes stack.Angels perch on the ladder’s rungs;one descends and kneels. A confusion of angles: elbows and knees entangle in a coat of dust.The allegro reaches its crescendo in the uncertainty of conclusion. How is it that the music can end?

The angel,certain of defeat, touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh and begins to sing. The violin teacher lays down his bowand opens his eyes.

THE POPLARS OF ST. PETERSBURG

Summer delayed this yearin the far north.Late June and only nowthe poplars rip opentheir winter coatsshelling the sidewalks with puffs of white stuffing, pookh, in Russian,summer snow.The balls stick in the corner of the eyelike a memory of sleep,or slide onto the tongue,lodge in the gullet.Then expand in the bellyas unsatisfying as fistfulsof snow to the hungryold women who shuffleinto the metro, clinging to passageways like mollusks to a host.First time visitors to the city puzzled, then charmed; the residents tired of it and all that clogs this city—broken trams, hundreds of carsslinking towards Palace Square. And the embarrassment of this foolishness—too manyfemale trees planted by Stalin.The pookh exposing the sex of it, a parody of the bodies pressing one to the other on overcrowded trolleys.No attraction, only necessity, so that the shell of boundaries thins and wears, the coating of anonymity over the eyes tearing in spots, while all around the pookh beckons.

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BIRDING

Let me come back a birder.Name with certainty that squawkeroutside my kitchen windowI think is a Willow Warbler. Next time, give me useful knowledge.Names I can attach myself to like the weight on a kite’s tailthat keeps it from pulling out of a child’s fist in a sweep of wind.

I forgot to tell you I am back in Russia.But I am not asking for names in both languages. Just reassure me that the birds swirling outside my 5th floor apartmentare indeed Common Gulls swept in from the Baltic ahead of the approaching storm.

It is September 1st—Day of Knowledge.The balloons tied to the lampposts declare it so.Seven year olds in maroon blazersremind me of Red-breasted Mergansersthat lost their way from Alaska heading west across Siberia.

Opening day of the school year.I saw a girl in a ponytail fastened by fur fluffy as a Willow Tit.Her mother held one hand, grandmother the other.I thought they would lift up in a whirl of wings, the older generations so puffed up with pride. They crossed over the bridge of the little river that winds near my building.The three of them bent over the railingto call to the ducks below.

THE NEW RUSSIA

More a wave than a driftthe flakes churn, white froth arcing

over the fierce wind. First blizzard of the season,

though elm leaves still shine like a constellationof yellow suns against the morning gray.

The kind of day Americansalways picture:

Snow, buildings drained of color.Dreary grandmothers weighed

down with sacks of potatoes and beets.It’s not like that anymore.

Now the spiked heels of young women clatter down the pavement

toward the open mouths of designer stores.No more hooded kiosks line the boulevards where customers bought

dark loaves cut in half and men stood about waving beer bottles.

This is the new Russiaof suntans from Egyptian holidays,

gated houses with security cameras,foreign cars and chauffeurs waiting at the curb.

Still when the church bells summonthe faithful and the government shuts down another

newspaper it’s hard to remember what century this is.

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B O O K F E A T U R E - J A M E S

RATTLE e.58

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Trembling in Someone’s Palm is an eclectic book of prose poems by David James whosework often focuses on the unreal, surreal, bizarre and imaginative. Whether the pieceis about a man talking to God about spring or a young couple who adopt a small tablelamp, James accepts the premise and writes with a clearness that is deceiving.

DAVID JAMES’ first book was published over 24 years ago by Carnegie MellonUniversity Press, A Heart Out of This World. Since then, he’s raised three children (ateacher and two RNs) and has managed to stay married for overthirty years (to one woman). He’s published four chapbookswith March Street Press: Do Not Give Dogs What Is Holy, IDance Back, I Will Peel This Mask Off, and Trembling inSomeone’s Palm. He’s recently tried his hand at playwriting andhas had one-act plays produced off-off-Broadway, in Nantucket,and in Michigan. Though by this time in his life he’s given up allhope of fame and glory, he feels like he’s starting over each day,a newbie, thrown out into the world, naked and amazed. It’sthrilling, but not pretty. ([email protected])

TT REMBLINGREMBLINGININ SS OMEONEOMEONE ’’ SS

PP ALMALMby

David James

March Street Press3413 Wilshire Greensboro, NCISBN: 1-59661-073-540 pp., $9.00, Paper

www.marchstreetpress.comor

www.Amazon.com

“James’ writing is imaginative, clear, acces-sible, and funny. David is one of an all toosmall minority of poets who is able to usehumor in his work. He is a writer whoentertains without playing to his audience,a writer genuinely interested in the art ofcommunication.”

—Stuart Dybek

“I’ve been a fan of David James’ and hisexcellent work for over two decades andcan say—without hesitation—that here is atrue original. Whether in prose orpoetry...the results are always striking,sometimes scary, often hilarious, and wellworth the read.”

—Judity Minty

“These wise and humorous prose poemsstun us with their illuminations of family,love, marriage, loneliness, sex, and creativ-ity. James is a master of metamorphosis, lit-eralizing his metaphors to recover the won-drous in the quotidian. Read this originalbook.”

—Peter Stine

“David James is a hardass with a big oleheavy heart. If he writes it, you betterbelieve it. He means it. And he means itwith the subjects he explores and with theartistry he brings to bear on every poem.”

—Jack Ridl

First of all, it's inexplicable that DavidJames has only one full-length book ofpoetry to his name—A Heart Out of ThisWorld—which was published by CarnegieMellon University Press back in 1984. [...]Although the prose poems that compriseTrembling in Someone’s Palm have certainantecedents, they successfully manage toescape the “anxiety of influence” that anearlier poetic generation so anguished over.In breaking new ground these poems have atwin appeal: what it is they accomplish,and what they point towards.

—Marc SheehanNote: Some of the poems reprinted here first appeared in the following journals:

“A Burning Bush of Sorts” in Lalitamba; “The Writer Makes a Case for Inspiration”in Mississippi Crow; “The White Dream” in Poetry East. “A Visit from My Brother”and “The Gold Dream” first appeared in the book.


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A BURNING BUSH OF SORTS

God spoke to me while I sat alone on the park bench. Itwas a sunny day, early spring; I could see buds on the trees.

“So, what do you think?” he said.“About what?”“All this life busting out around you.”I didn’t expect God to say “busting out.” I expected

manifesting or conjuring.“It’s wonderful,” I said. “Nice work.”“Do you think there are too many birds? I could cut

back on a few species.”“No, not at all. It’s the return of the birds that make me

think of spring.”For me, the return of the robin was the beginning of

spring. My wife says the first robin around our house is hergrandmother, checking in on us. She used to love seeing thefirst robin. Then, the idea struck me.

“Here’s a question for you, God. Is that first robin wesee every year our Grandma Ketterer?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d have to check the inventory andthat takes a while up here.”

“But in theory,” I said, “do the dead come back to visitus as animals? Or as living things, in general?”

“It’s possible,” He said. “With me, anything is possible,you know.”

I took that as a yes, thanked him, and ran home to tellmy wife the good news.

THE WRITER MAKES A CASE FORINSPIRATION

The man is writing his fifth novel. It starts, stops, andslides off the page like a wet sunfish. He wipes sweat fromhis forehead and thinks about foreskin, about what it mustfeel like to have that little piece of skin cut off as an infant,about the miracle of one word leading to another and, if youfollow it, how that word takes a person to a level he neverthought he could reach when he first sat down. In the novel,a man is writing his fifth novel. It is not coming easily. Infact, it’s not coming at all. He sits in front of the computerand stares at a blank screen. He scratches himself between hislegs and suddenly thinks about forehead, about a person withfour heads, and how that person would kiss another withonly one head, about the inadequacy of language to describeintention...

Thirty pages in, the author knows the man writing thenovel will never finish it. He’ll fool himself into writing forfour or five more weeks, accumulating 127 pages in all. Theman will let the manuscript go like he let his wife go, hisjobs, his hair, his mother, his chance at making somethingout of his miserable little life. He’ll drink cheap wine until hepasses out, cutting himself above the right eye. When hefinally wakes, the first line of a new novel will come to himand he’ll find some paper and write—A man wakes up on thekitchen floor, vomit dried down the front of his shirt, andbegins to write his sixth novel.

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from TREMBLING IN SOMEMONE’S PALMDavid James


RATTLE e.510

A VISIT FROM MY BROTHER

I am peeing out my left ear, spraying green jello all overthe kitchen cabinet. When I cough, a miniature train flies outof my mouth and sticks to the ceiling, circling slowly. So Icarry my dead brother upstairs, lay him on the ironing board,and massage his open wounds. Within minutes, he jumps tohis feet and sings a little song in Japanese. He begins todance, shaking his skinny bootie, mimicking MichaelJackson. Suddenly, five gallons of Guinness appear in twolarge buckets. My brother takes one and I take the other. Wesubmerge our heads into the beer and gulp, slobber, come upgasping for breath, and dive down again, laughing like weused to, like there’s no tomorrow, like there’s nothing Iwouldn’t do to bring him back to me.

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Beach HouseLois Gold


RATTLE e.511

THE WHITE DREAM

A man I don’t know opens his mouth to speak and lightflashes out. As his mouth opens and closes, he creates astrobe effect, so the chairs and trees and stars dance in slowmotion. I look down from the rooftop and jump into fourfeet of snow, burying my legs, up over my waist in the whitestuff. I start swimming across the field, splashing snowbehind me, gliding like a sled at times. Coming to rest by apond, I sit at the table set up there, white cloth, china plate,hot mashed potatoes piled high. They taste like memories. Iam eating my childhood: kite strings, baseballs, tadpoles. Mymother steps into the room and smiles. I hug her and sheturns into marble or porcelain, a frozen statue, arms out toembrace. Hanging my coat on her left hand, I begin to singin Italian. From everywhere, birds fly in and land around myfeet—swans, white geese, albino crows until it’s a sea ofwhite feathers. There’s a light in the distance and I know it’smine, so I wade through the birds slowly, parting in front ofme like the future, filling in behind like the past. THE GOLD DREAM

When I cough, a gold nugget plops out of my mouth, thesize of an acorn, but perfectly rectangular. I dip each one invinegar to test its chemical properties. In the living room,there are now 719 gold nuggets stacked in the corner. Forbreakfast, we throw a handful of them in with our Cheeriosand, of course, chew for hours.

“Good for your complexion,” I say.“But damn hard on the teeth,” you reply.And then we’re shitting out the gold nuggets, peppered

like corn in our stool. We’re brushing our teeth with gold,cutting our toenails with gold, sewing our buttons with gold,putting gold in our eyes as contact lenses, cleaning our earswith gold, slicing up gold wedges for our omelets and friedzucchini dishes. Before long, I am gold and you eat me—andyou are gold, so I eat you and then we’re both traveling upan esophagus, wet and slimy gold nuggets trembling in some-one’s open palm.

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E S S A Y - A L P A U G H

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Isn’t that a rhetorical question?Everyone knows what’s wrong withpoetry book contests. They’re rigged! In2004 the web site Foetry began investigat-ing personal connections between contestjudges and winners. The poetry worldwas shocked by allegations that some ofAmerica’s most prestigious prizes weregoing to the judges’ students, friends, col-leagues, even lovers.

Dishonesty! Cronyism! That’s what’swrong with poetry book contests, right?

Not really. Most contest operators,screeners, and judges would never engagein the deplorable but statistically rare con-duct outed by Foetry. I didn’t know anyof the parties involved in the judgingprocess that led to my own book award.During the five years that I ran a nationalchapbook contest there were never anypersonal connections between my screen-ers and judges and the finalists and win-ners they selected.

A glance at recent headlines shouldassure us that there’s no more corruptionin “po-biz” than in sports, medicine, law,politics, media, religion, or any otherhuman enterprise. To their credit, manycontests responded to the concerns thatFoetry raised by establishing clear ethicalguidelines for screeners and judges and bytaking steps to assure the anonymity ofcontestants. Manuscripts are more likelyto be evaluated solely on their merit todaythan ever before.

Exclusive focus on the minor prob-

lem of contest fraud, however, hasallowed more serious, systemic problemsto go unnoticed. What’s really wrongwith poetry book contests? They arebeing rendered less effective each year bythe supply side economics that has subsi-dized their exponential growth and thatpromises even more in the foreseeablefuture.

A well-advertised contest, judged by awell-known poet, will attract hundreds ofmanuscripts, each accompanied by a $15to $25 reading fee. Five hundred entriesat the industry standard of $20 a pop willnet $10,000. That’s enough to fund thecash award for the winning poet; com-pensate the judge and screeners; pay thebills for advertising the competition; andeven cover the cost of printing the prize-winning book.

Since all but the advertising is payableafter fees are received, contests are seduc-tively risk-free. Anyone can set up as apublisher for little more than the price ofa web site, a classified ad in a few literaryjournals, and some low cost, often free,announcements via internet poetry sites.

This risk-free dynamic is a powerfulmagnet, not just for existing literarypresses and journals but for poetry entre-preneurs for whom book publishingwould have been a financial impossibilitytwenty years ago.

The road to glut is paved with goodintentions. Each additional contest-driven“publisher” believes that his or her con-

test is special; that it will advance thecause of poetry by introducing wonderfulnew poets to receptive readers via theprestige of a truly deserved book award.

But hold on to your ISBNs. There’s asignificant difference between an “entry”and a “submission.” Traditional publish-ers are free to consider an unlimited num-ber of submissions without obligation toaccept a single manuscript. They are alsofree to solicit work from poets who havean established track record with at least asegment of the poetry reading public.

If 500 manuscripts fail to impress atraditional editor/publisher as marketable,or important enough to risk subsidizing—into the valley of rejection ride the 500!Many poets opt for the contest route onlyafter being rejected multiple times by tra-ditional publishers. If the same 500 man-uscripts are entered in a contest, however,one of them must be given an award andmust be published, usually with a glowingendorsement from the contest judge onthe back cover.

Traditional publishers can deal withthe fact that the supply of poetry greatlyexceeds the demand by refusing to acceptunsolicited manuscripts, and most ofthem are doing just that, making conteststhe only probable avenue for first bookpublication. The contest boom is furtherfed by the growing number of MFAs whoneed a book award if they are to have ashot at landing a position in a creativewriting department. Since poetry bookcontest bottom lines depend upon entryfees, more and more wannabes areencouraged to put books together forentry in more and more contests everyyear.

Fifty years ago (around the timetraditional publishers were introducingreaders to Bly, Creeley, Ferlinghetti,Ginsberg, Hall, Justice, Plath, Sexton,Snyder, et. al.) the Yale Younger PoetsSeries, begun in 1919, was still the onlypoetry book contest. Today, a short searchof the web turns up over 300 chapbookand full-collection competitions spon-sored by colleges, universities, founda-tions, literary journals, publishers largeand small, and by a variety of local andnational poetry booster organizations.

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WW HAHATT ’’ SS RR EALLYEALLY WW RONGRONGWITHWITH

PP OETROETR YY BB OOKOOK CC ONTESONTES TSTS ??by

David Alpaugh

Note: As winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize andowner of Small Poetry Press, David Alpaugh has both wonand run a Poetry Book Contest.


RATTLE e.513

Even if contests merely continue to esca-late at the rate of five or six extra compe-titions per year, an astounding minimumof 50,000 poetry books will be publishedas distinguished award-winners by the endof this century!

Remember Ionesco’s The Chairs? Theuniverse of exceptionally talented poetsbeing finite, there’s an almost theater-of-the-absurd irony in this “new math.” It’snot that most or, indeed, any of the prize-winning manuscripts are bad. Each hasbeen chosen, after all, from hundreds ofentries. All are well written, many quitereadable. The trouble is, as AlanWilliamson pointed out to a roomful ofpoets in Berkeley some years back, “Thegood poetry drives out the best.”

As the number of contests, entries,and awards burgeons, the standard ofexcellence declines until even once presti-gious contests like the Yale and Whitmantrail wispier (and whispier) clouds ofglory. Not even the most zealous poetrylover can purchase and read more than afraction of the 300 (soon to be 500?1000?) prize-winning books publishedeach year. Pity the 22nd-century Englishprofessor who will have to read 50,000-plus prize-winning books, each claimingto deserve careful attention by anyonehoping to be an expert on 21st-centurypoetry!

Ezra Pound would be horrified tolearn how little pruning is going on thesedays in the Garden of the Muses. Poetrybook contests transform editors and pub-lishers into bureaucratic bean counters.Instead of proactively working to dis-cover great poetry, they spend their timewriting and placing ads; logging entries;depositing checks; and distributingbatches of poems to screeners, and final-ists to the judge. Like Chauncey Gardinerin Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, most con-test operators “like to watch,” but take noactive role in the selection process.

Nor should we assume that the poetjudge is passionate about his or herchoice. He has been hired not to discovera great book (that word is frowned uponin professional circles) but merely tochoose the best of those presented byscreeners who are often inexperienced

MFA candidates. Trapped like a spider ina web, not of his own spinning, the judgeis a relativist when it comes to taste. Hemust be satisfied with the juiciest fly thatwanders in. Once he’s rendered his ver-dict and written his blurb, the judge’scommitment to the book, for all practicalpurposes, ends.

In many cases the judge could pick upthe phone and get a better book from afriend, colleague, student, spouse, orlover. Paradoxically, contest ethics rulethat out. Were contestants to learn that ajudge had strayed outside his web of offi-cial entries to procure superior poetry hewould be whipped down the slopes ofParnassus by Foetry-maddened bloggersfuriously crying, “Shame!”

Which brings us to the profile of thetypical contest judge. Who better to select

the best collection of poems than a widelypublished, celebrated poet—a winner ofmany prestigious awards in his or herown right? Oddly enough, if the goal is tohave contests decided by impartial bro-kers the standard profile leaves much tobe desired.

When I ask poet friends if they planto enter a particular book contest and theanswer is “No”—the negative is alwaysfollowed by the assertion: There’s not achance in hell that X (or Y or Z) would likemy work!

We need only mention a few super-star poets who have also judged con-tests—John Ashbery, Billy Collins, LouiseGluck, Jorie Graham, Richard Howard,Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, CharlesSimic, C.D. Wright—to remind ourselvesthat poets become famous for recogniza-

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ble subjects, tones, and styles. They areoften affiliated with partisan aestheticmovements: Mainstream, Confessional,New Formalist, New York School,Language Poetry, etc. Many haveannounced their predilections via essaysor interviews in books and journals.

Asked to name four or five of the bestcontemporary poets W.H. Audenquipped, “It isn’t a horse race, youknow.” Race tracks have an absolutemethod for measuring and determiningwinners, as do golf, tennis, shot put, andmost competitive sports. Poetry contestsare more like Olympic figure skating orDancing with the Stars. Preference forone contestant over another (given themost qualified judge in the world) is ulti-mately subjective, unverifiable; there trulyis no “accounting” for taste.

Still, it’s quixotic to pretend that poetjudges will not prefer work akin to thesort that they write and espouse. No mat-ter how good the poetry, it’s unlikely thata “New Formalist” will award a prize to a“Language Poet” or vice versa. My poetfriends are right not to waste their twentybucks.

It might make more sense to havecontests judged by non-poetry-writingEnglish professors—specialists inAmerican literature who have no aesthetichorse at the starting gate. It would also ridcontests of distracting po-ethical concernsthat occasionally arise from inevitableconnections between poet-judges andcontestants who frequently associate andsocialize in classrooms, workshops, and atwriters conferences.

Needless to say, my suggestion is anon-starter. Though English professorswould probably be more objective andimpartial referees, they lack the namerecognition crucial for a successful poetrycontest. The more famous the judge, themore entry fees. As always, po-biz trumpsars poetica.

Someone flicks a switch with an ad ortwo and the poetry express gallops downthe track! The P.O. saddlebags get fullerand fuller as the deadline approaches. Sixmonths after it passes, the lucky finalistsare announced by letter or email. Thenthe judge weighs in, and the publisher

proudly announces the name of the win-ner and title of the book. A year or solater (lente, lente, oh horses of the write)the book finally appears. A few copies aresent with a press release to literary jour-nals for “possible review.” (Don’t holdyour breath; rather than deal with hun-dreds of prize-winning books, most edi-tors throw up their pens in despair andreview none.)

With no direct commitment to thepoetry it should not surprise us to learnthat contest publishers are minimalistswhen it comes to marketing their win-ners. Whereas a traditional publishermust sell hundreds of books to remainsolvent, and must therefore take potentialreadership into account when selectingmanuscripts, the contest publisher neednot be concerned with readers at all.Having met his expenses in advance, andin some cases even turned a profit, heneed not sell a single copy of the prize-winning book. The first edition was, infact, sold-out before it was a tear or twin-kle in the judge’s eye to readers whobought it blind, knowing neither title norauthor.

It is routine practice for contests tothrow in the winning book as a consola-tion prize for non-winners. In most caseslosing poets constitute the main reader-ship for award-winning books! May I sug-gest that they are perhaps the least likelycritics to receive the book favorably?—that many of them begin reading with aquestion that would not be asked by read-ers of a traditionally published book?(How could Judge X possibly choose thesepoems over mine?).

Finally, and perhaps most worrisome,book contests subtly corrupt the art bysubstituting the petty goal of winning forthe grander one of writing original poetry.Contests have their unwritten conven-tions which, if followed, will increaselikelihood of success. Study as manyprize-winning volumes as you can; adjustyour style and content accordingly; andyou may find yourself in next year’s win-ners’ circle.

Poetry book contests privilege seriouspoems over humorous ones; pathos overwit; “sincerity” over virtuosity; they

eschew satire and persona; and devaluevariety in favor of consistency of theme,form, tone, and “voice.” A swerve intothe ineffable in the last few lines of eachpoem will keep your work “open” and“risky” in conformance with currentMFA workshop practice. Prefacing poemswith epigraphs from fashionable poets(usually in translation) will let the judgeknow that you are or aspire to be profes-sionally hip.

When in doubt refer to one of themany how-to, poetry-for-dummies booksfrom creative writing department pros.They may be judging some of the contestsyou enter, so learning their tips for writ-ing the way they do will stand you ingood stead.

Above all, keep in mind that poetrycollections must be novelistically struc-tured. Before Emily Dickinson’s heap of1,775 untitled poems could be competi-tive she would have to discard 1,700 ofthem; give each of the remaining 75 atitle; sort them into three thematicbatches, each with a section title and epi-graph; and come up with a catchy“umbrella” title (Wild Nights might be ahit with student-screeners). This proce-dure is so de rigueur these days it’s as ifthere were a bumper sticker slapped onevery collection, boasting: “My otherbook is a novella.”

Every once in a while, to be sure, anexciting, original book of poetry isselected by this suicidally inefficientprocess. Unfortunately, when this hap-pens a book that deserves to be widelyread is just another dim star lost in themilky way, barely able to shine its lightbeyond the captive audience that the con-test launches into orbit around it.

Imagine what twentieth centurypoetry would be like had Ezra Pound,Mrs. Alfred Nutt, John Quinn, JamesLaughlin, Barney Rosset, Cid Corman,Lawrence Ferlinghetti been content to beuncommitted contest coordinators ratherthan passionate editors, publishers, orpatrons of the art. Behind The WasteLand, North of Boston, Patterson, Howl,and other landmark books of the last cen-tury were men and women willing to riskmoney, credibility, even imprisonment for

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poetry that mattered.The reader may be wondering why

I’ve limited this article to poetry bookcontests. Are not my criticisms as applica-ble to single-poem contests run by literaryjournals, including the one in which thisessay appears?

Once again my answer is: not really. Single-poem contests do what con-

tests should do—distinguish excellentwork, without the negative side effectsthat book contests produce. The likeli-hood of the judge recognizing an associ-ate is much less when a single-poem(rather than an entire book) is on thetable. Nor do single-poem contests addone jot to the glut that is increasinglymarginalizing, even obscuring the bestpoetry. The winning poem appears onpage x of the multi-page journal. A poemwill appear on that page with or withoutthe contest. By encouraging poets to sub-mit their best work single-poem contestsimprove the quality of poetry publishedby the journal. Finalists frequently appear

along with the winner(s), and the averagequality of poems available to editors isheightened.

Single-poem contestants who receivethe journal as an entry-fee benefit aretreated not just to the work of the winnerbut to dozens of other poets, many ofwhom have proven track records andmost of whom are being publishedthrough the regular submission process.This comparative dynamic encouragesevaluation of both the winning poem andthe judge’s decision; and that can leadentrants to reevaluate their own aesthet-ics, preferences, biases—a useful exercisethat the hermetic nature of book contestscannot provide.

In the long run, the only genuinehonor for a poet is readership born oflove. Such readership does not alwayshappen in the poet’s lifetime (Blake,Whitman, Dickinson); but when it does itcontinues for generations, even centuries.As one thumbs through issue after issue ofPoets & Writers Magazine, each announc-

ing yet another crop of poetry book win-ners, it’s difficult not to feel that one iswatching the caucus race in Alice inWonderland where, as the Dodo explains,“Everybody wins, and all must haveprizes.”

Alice can hardly keep from laughingwhen the solemn-faced Dodo presentsher with an “elegant thimble” (taken fromher own pocket) as all the animals cheer:

Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked

so grave that she did not dare to laugh; and as she could not think

of anything to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble,

looking as solemn as she could.

Book awards may look impressive ona poet’s resume, cover letter, grant pro-posal, or workshop-leader bio; but read-ers do not fall in love with poems becausethey win prizes, and accreditation is apoor substitute for readerly love. Whatwe need now more than any time in thepast is not fifty or a hundred thousand“distinguished prize-winners” (each bran-dishing his or her thimble)—but a fewgood books. As more and more publishersand poets drink not from the PierianSpring but from an intoxicating bottlelabeled “Poetry Book Contests” their fail-ure to offer readers poetry that mattersbecomes more obvious each year.

Shall we continue to curtsey likeAlice? Or dare to laugh?

DAVID ALPAUGH’s latest collection, HeavyLifting, was published in 2007 by AlehousePress. His first collection Counterpoint wonthe Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from StoryLine Press. Publications where his workappears include The Formalist, RaintownReview, Poetry, Zyzzyva, and CaliforniaPoetry from the Gold Rush to the Present. Hisarticle “The Professionalization of Poetry” wasserialized by Poets & Writers Magazine in2003, drawing over 200 letters and emails andwide discussion on the internet. He lives inPleasant Hill, California, and coordinates apopular Bay Area poetry reading series inCrockett. (www.davidalpaugh.com)

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Chapbooks are a special breed. Inmany ways, they are just as difficult as abook in terms of the poet reaching outfor publication, and the overlap betweenthe two isn’t as large as one might think.In short, the chapbook is not a stepping-stone towards full-length book publica-tion. There is no magical path to followthreading magazine publication tothemed-anthology inclusion to chapbookto full-length book to literary greatnessand a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowshipjust around that final corner.

While I stand by the statementabove—much to my chagrin, as I would-n’t mind a magical path—the building-upon-previous-accomplishment nature atthe base of it reflects more truly what Isee as a writer’s growth. First, one beginsby writing a poem, and through lookingat that poem, learns more about poems ingeneral. Each poem after that expandsunderstanding of what a poem is andwhat it can do and what, in that particu-lar writer’s mind, a poem should do.Once the writer starts delving into thehistory of poetry, either through classesor reading on their own, there’s theinescapable conclusion that all poems arerelated, through form, subject, or directcommunication—Ezra Pound’s “transla-tions” of Li Po’s Chinese originals or thecountless poems written “after” the styleand specific poem of another poet, suchas César Vallejo’s “I will die in Paris…”and Donald Justice’s response“Variations on a Text by Vallejo.” Fromhere, it’s a small step to see that this his-tory is enacted in miniature in one’s ownwriting. Themes repeat. Images echo.

Poems argue with one another, or worktogether to create a more complicatedargument.

By now, you’ve probably guessedhow chapbooks work into this scheme.First there’s the single poem. Thenthere’s the group of intimately relatedpoems: the chapbook. Then there’s thelarger collection of poems, the widelyscattered shotgun blast: the full-lengthbook. And although it seems like I’mprivileging one over the other, I see thegradations more along the line of flashfiction, short story, novel—each an inde-pendent form requiring its own skills andrewarding with its own particular pleas-ures, and its own pitfalls.

A chapbook, more so than full-lengthbook, requires tightness, cohesion, andcareful arrangement of poems. In a shortstory, it’s often said, there’s no room towaste a sentence or to expound on a par-ticularly clever tangent; you only have alimited amount of time, so don’t let thereader wander. In a chapbook, it’s thesame—there’s an expectation (notableexception: the Pudding House GreatestHits series) that the narrative is clear andthe connections between the poems tan-gible as ligaments. Don’t be deceived byall the comparisons to fiction: narrativehere isn’t plot—though it can be—asmuch as continuity. A coming-of-agestory, a study of certain emotions, anexploration of form, even something asdirect and difficult as the evocation of astrong, singular voice, all of these canwork as an organizing principle as long asthe poems talk to each other. There’s noroom for poems that simply take up

space. This lack of room is also a bless-ing, as this means chapbooks can be con-centrated examinations of a particularproblem without bowing to the need tofill forty-eight pages.

Now that I’ve set the ground rulesfor this review, let’s start with the chap-books. The first two I’ll be talking aboutare put out by Main Street Rag, both partof the press’s Editor’s Choice ChapbookSeries. The chapbooks are PatrickCarrington’s Hard Blessings and ellen’sReverse Kiss.

Patrick Carrington has skill as a poet,and he demonstrates that through thiscollection that orbits the story of a manat war with his desires, since those desires

HARD BLESSINGSPatrick CarringtonMain Street Rag, 2008ISBN: 978-1-59948-115-942pp., $10, paperbackwww.mainstreetrag.com

REVERSE KISSellenMain Street Rag, 2005ISBN: 1-59948-006-935pp., $7.00, paperbackwww.mainstreetrag.com

STRANGE NEWSLawrence KessenichPudding HousePublications, 2008ISBN: 1-58998-669-532pp., $10.00, paperbackwww.puddinghouse.com

SCORPIONICAKaryna McGlynnNew Michigan Press, 2007ISBN: 978-1-934832-01-130pp., $8.00, paperbackthediagram.com

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& M& M CC GG LLYNNYNN

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often lead him astray, whether throughalcohol or sex or some other physicalneed that causes him to treat the world asa repository of objects destined for hisuse rather than a habitat for subjects whoare just as full of needs as himself.

There are no clocks here. Who needs them?

Not me. After the regular intervalsof heartbreak, scars are the way I keep

time.I count my defects to bring back the night

I drew your scent in, so slowly I thoughtI’d never have to give it back.

(“Lullaby of Atlantic City”)

Carrington’s poems are formal in

that they’re shaped, a free-verse carefullyarranged into stanzas that are most oftendivided by subject and theme rather thannumber of lines. The lines, similarly, arebreaking at points to emphasize each lineas a thought and a complete unit, anallowance for surprise in poems that keepnarrative on a tight leash and use imagesin an expected way.

Which is not quite the way I want tosay it. Here, expected means overdeter-mined, and overdetermined means thesetting up of a premise that the poem doesnot stray from. In too many ofCarrington’s poems, once an image islaid up for the reader’s eyes, it spins will-fully and predictably into variations ofitself, the image becoming the guide for

the poet’s imagination, so that when thespeaker in “Pattern” brings up cloth as ametaphor for relationships or the speakerin “Jonagolds” holds up an apple orchardto symbolize a life, well, that’s almost allyou need to know. Alternatively, some-times images that escape the poem’soverarching metaphor simply seem ill-thought out: “Resisting the Pull” has a“hand... reaching/ toward a cheek it haswanted/ to touch for light years” withouttaking into account that a light year is ameasure of distance, not time.

In the worst of his poems, the manwho speaks has his voice filled with toomuch self-pity, and no reason for thereader to look beyond his hard, dentedshell. But in the best of Carrington’spoems, like “Nowhere” and “Lullaby ofAtlantic City,” this poet takes the personaof the troubled man and makes himempathetic and real, with language that istrue to the voice and beautiful on thepage and in the ear.

ellen’s Reverse Kiss doesn’t gatherforce until the end of the book, whensuddenly the airy voice that has poeti-cally set its sights on weather, on flowers,on other poet’s poems, this voice settlesinto a subject that matters to it: the deathof a parent, and the tangled weave offeelings that accompany a parent’sdecline into old age.

Too many of ellen’s poems in thiscollection seem unshaped, as does thechapbook as a whole. It harkens back towhen a book of poems was simply a col-lection of what had been written sincethe last collection, and here it feels likethere was no culling. When a poembegins

Hass speaks of cormorantsI have always wantedthe word cormorantsin a poem

(“13 ½”)

it really doesn’t have anywhere else togo—it has achieved its, and the poet’s,apparent goal. Which is not to say that apoem couldn’t start that way and twistinto a new shape just a few lines

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onwards, but most of ellen’s poems, eventhose with cud to be chewed over, oftenfall into just what you might expect fromthe title and the opening lines. And some-times the formal shapes she sets herself,mostly in terms of repetition and chant,are imbued with excitement, such as withthe beginning of “Sing”:

sing for the trailsa single seedfor the green surrounding greenthe unintentional clickof a camera in the back seat of a caran executioner

But after that opening, the images thatevoke with their strangeness and mysterydevolve into shapeless phrases and trite-ness (“sing for a laminated tee shirt/ thepower of a teenager/ to wear color/ overa mended bra”).

The poems at the end of Reverse Kisshint at complexity. The narrator isn’tafraid to bring forth the exhaustion thatcomes from taking care of an aged par-ent, or the resentment that grows fromhaving one’s own life in its prime teth-ered to the end of someone else’s.Unfortunately, what could come across asa moving examination of hard feelingsinstead paints the speaker as mean-spir-ited and unsympathetic. The ellen who inthis section writes “in the deep hollow/ ofwhich dying is a part” is capable of muchgreater poetry. It is not here.

I apologize for the next part of thisreview in advance.

Lawrence Kessenich’s Strange Newsmakes me angry. By the time I was donereading the book, I wanted to destroy it.And I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true, andI’m going to try and explain why.

In essence, Kessenich’s PuddingHouse-published chapbook seems toconform to the ideals I put above. Thetitle is the rubric for the construction ofthe book, the conceit that each of thepoems is based on some piece of unattrib-uted “strange news”, such as the fact that“[t]hree babies were born at the 1969Woodstock music festival” (“GenerationGap”) or that “[i]n 1909, impresario

David Belasco had an apartment builtabove his New York theatre to which heoften invited young actresses” (“TheBishop of Broadway”). Sometimes, he’llbreak from this pattern, such as when heuses the adage “[a]n idle mind is thedevil’s workshop” to imagine the devil inhis mind, at his workshop (“TheArtisan”). In none of these cases, how-ever, does the poem overtake the conceit,or justify its existence (the poem’s or theconceit’s).

And I wouldn’t be angry if Kessenichwas clearly a no-talent hack. At thatpoint, the book and he would be easy todismiss, not worth the act of criticism.And, clearly, Kessenich is often writingwith an eye towards humor—which Iwouldn’t mind if the humor was there todraw out. But the best premise, andKessenich does find some interestingones, cannot stand by itself: so what ifyou write a poem from the perspective ofthe tightrope walker who crossedbetween the Twin Towers watching thetowers fall? It’s not enough to put therelation there and say, Wouldn’t that besomething?

The answer: Yes, it would be, if therewas a poem behind it. Poems are made ofconnections, the drawing out of unex-pected resemblances and intriguing per-spectives. Poems, for better or worse,need to say something, preferably in away that shows the mind behind thewords, that unique being that makes thispoem unique, that allows us to read apoem about flowers and enjoy it eventhough we’ve read thousands of poemsabout flowers before this one raised itsconventional little head.

There is no voice hiding in StrangeNews or, if there is, the thoughts it has tosay are banal and the images it uses toexpress them are often misplaced, tonallyand spatially. How else to explain astraightforward poem about a group par-tying while watching test atomic explo-sions from a rooftop in Las Vegas thatincludes the following

And when I ejaculated, the white cloudof my semen mushrooming inside of her

(“Bombed in Las Vegas”)

and does so with no sense of humor, nosense of irony, but expects that image tobe powerful, moving, and taken seriously.

Right now, I’m looking at a windowwhere a hunting spider is trying to catchan insect on the other side, the concept ofglass incomprehensible. That’s howStrange News makes me feel about thepoet who wrote it. And despite all theawkward line breaks, awkward images,and awkward poems here, there’s thesense that this poet, Lawrence Kessenich,could write a good poem if he would juststep back from the glass and notice hisown reflection.

Karyna McGlynn’s Scorpionica is abeautiful book, both in design (likeCarrington’s Hard Blessings) and con-tent; this is not that surprising, since thechapbook was published by NewMichigan Press, the same people associ-ated with the on-line magazine Diagram,a journal overly concerned with designand appearance. But outside of the visualaesthetics, McGlynn’s book fits the ideaof a chapbook I put forward at the begin-ning of this review: the book is a coming-of-age story of a young woman toldchronologically and from multiple per-spectives—an easily comprehensiblepremise, and yet only a few of the poemstake the easy road in terms of narrativeor image.

This is not to imply that the book isnon-narrative or non-linear, though youmight be forgiven for thinking so uponreading the first poem, “Animals Goingto Hell.”

Quiver gentle over their sins,taste the spring melt.

Nothing on the televisionabout taboos or the mongrelswhich are unto our city—

Who isletting you go, ma chienne?Where will you crawl to die?

The blossomson the tomato-plants are fallingfast this year, only June now.

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This morning here, a little girlcame into our kitchen,a rifle through her empty leash.

That’s the entire poem, and if youcan enter into it, let it enter you, thenyou’ll have no difficulty with any ofMcGlynn’s poems, many of which aremore distinctly narrative, but none ofwhich loose their tight grip on languageor abandon belief in the evocative image.Her poems dance within an awareness ofline and form whether in couplets or infree-verse style blocks where shape ischiseled out of the exact right word turn-ing the line back into itself. These poemsexhibit an awareness of adult life in adash for the erotic that isn’t afraid ofraunch, whether with summer camp girls

or flowers. Here’s both:

We knew, intimately, the location of every penis

on the grounds of Camp Mystic for Girls—

each man a burning “Y” beneath our eyelids.

(“The Men of Camp Mystic”)

Loose, the violent bulls-eye genitalsof overblown poppies, bloody dinner

plate (“Suburban Barbarism”)

I admit, I like poems that resist me,that call to be re-read because you’vebeen skimmed like a stone along a beau-tiful surface. But that resistance is also amatter of complexity, by which I mean an

awareness that life is not simple, and apoem which provides a simple answerisn’t even a beautiful lie. These poemsaren’t difficult, but they do show craft, adepth of language, an awareness ofpoetic technique, a wealth of tools thatdemonstrate McGlynn is beyond herapprenticeship and is writing poems fullof emotion and weight, not with ease,but with the appearance of ease.

And this is not to say that there areno flaws here, no poems that leave offlike unexpected dead-ends or images thatreach too far and fall short. But unlikemany chapbooks, many sold for just a lit-tle less than a full-length book of poems,Karyna McGlynn’s Scorpionica is worththe price of entry. I’ll leave you withthese lines from the title poem that per-haps describe the poet herself, or thereader’s intense pleasure in reading:

I figure and refill with figure, words looping

their long unfinished tails along my lips. (“Scorpionica”)

ANDREW KOZMA received his M.F.A. from theUniversity of Florida and his Ph.D. in EnglishLiterature and Creative Writing from theUniversity of Houston. His poems haveappeared or are forthcoming in ZolandPoetry, Subtropics, AGNI Online, Dislocate,Hunger Mountain, and a non-fiction piecewas recently published by The Iowa Review.His first book of poems, City of Regret, wonthe Zone 3 First Book Award and wasreleased in September of 2007.

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TT RIBUTERIBUTE TOTO CC OO WBOWBOYY& W& W ESES TERNTERN PP OETROETR YY

Releasing December 2008, issue #30 celebrates the poetry ofthe western range with work by 24 cowboy & western poets.Developing primarily as an oral tradition, the genre is oftenthought of as a hybrid between story and song—a collectionof tall tales and folk ballads that sit well around the campfire.But the image of the cowboy has been mythologized byHollywood, and the image of the cowboy poem has beenoversimplified, as well.

Modern cowboy & western poetry is as complicated andeclectic as the modern cowboy—there are plenty of appear-ances by cattle and corrals and ranchers breaking horses, butthe topics range from love and politics to ecology and philos-ophy. And while many of the poems speak in meter and rhyme,plenty of others roam wild and free. The tribute section evenincludes the longest poem we’ve ever published, a 20-pagewestern retelling of Beowulf by Donald Mace Williams.

Also in the issue, Alan Fox interviews three-term PoetLaureate Robert Pinsky and Pulitzer Prize winner NatashaTrethewey. Along with 60 pages of open poetry, we share the11 winning poems from the 2008 Rattle Poetry Prize.

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POETRY

Malcolm Alexander • Sherman Alexie • Dick AllenChris Anderson • Tiffany Beechy • Helena Bell

James Best • Sally Bliumis-Dunn • Traci BrimhallTrent Busch • Marcus Cafagña • Bruce CohenElizabeth J. Colen • Jennifer Pruden Colligan

Megan Collins • Gegory Crosby • David M. deLeon Gary Dop • Anna Evans • Alan Fox • Ed Galing

David Lee Garrison • Ted Gilley • Paula GoldmanBob Hicok • Eric Kocher • Hilary Melton

Brenda Paro • Marge Piercy • Doug RamspeckEric Paul Shaffer • Joan I. Siegel • John Spaulding

Alison Townsend • William G. WardCharles Harper Webb • Jonathan Wells

TRIBUTE TO COWBOY& WESTERN POETRY

Robert A. Ayres • Bruce Berger • J.V. BrummelsJoshua Dolezal • Cal Freeman • Thea Gavin

Christine Gelineau • D.W. GroetheMark D. Hart • M.E. Hope • Mikhail Horowitz

Bil Lepp • Lisa Lewis • Jennifer MalesichAl “Doc” Mehl • Rod Miller

David Ramtvedt • Luke ShuttleworthRed Shuttleworth • Laurence Snydal

Jeff Streeby • Larry D. ThomasDonald Mace Williams • Paul Zarzyski

RATTLE POETRY PRIZE WINNER

Joseph Fasano

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Phyllis Aboaf • Meghan AdlerJohn Brehm • Ted Gilley

Douglas Goetsch • Rebecca LehmannHilary Melton • Robert Peake

Debora Tobola • Amie Whittemore

CONVERSATIONS

Robert PinskyNatasha Trethewey

ARTWORK

Mike CallahanCiara Shuttleworth

$10.00 US/CAN(www.rattle.com/purchase.htm)


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Malcolm Alexander

SEMIOTICS

Ironic that within this sign, the outer circle of whichsymbolizes the joining of hands of all nations,

looms a ready missile. Peace be damned, it middlefingers.If you want a piece of me, give it your best shot.

So human nature yanks out from under usthe gantry of human achievement.

Yanks, yes, as in Yankees, often champions of a confrontationthe object of which is to bludgeon something

harmless and resembling a child’s head. Head, as in warhead,meathead, penis, love missile: pick the term which doesn’t belong

to us. As much as we scratch our heads,we discover that we are, inescapably,

our language. Just imagine, such strange symbols, indecipherableacross cultures as a chicken’s scratch, on occasion

one’s only, momentary before the head-chopping,may one day be weighty enough to change the world!

And given the terrifying gravity of all meaningful things,from whose unholy grasp neither we nor missiles

nor in fact anything escapes, if we fail to translateour barriers into bridges, we may just conclude

ourselves. Ironic that only if we scratch the sole sign-making species from the face of this planet

will be unavoidable.

Chris Anderson

REALITY HOMES

The falling of a leaf onto a pond is one movementin a process composed of many movements.It floats for a while, crisply. Then softens and sinks.It’s funny what comes to mind. All day you thinkabout a woman you haven’t seen in many years.Her soft, brown hair. The way the corners of her eyespulled down. It’s not that you are filled with longingor regret. But you are filled with something.In a dream you climb a hill on the other side of town.It is an arduous climb. At the end you are afraidof falling. But then you look down and realizeall the houses are exactly like the house you live in.In the distance, the same kind of highway.Everything is the same. It’s just on the other side.

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from RATTLE #30, WINTER 2008Poetry


RATTLE e.522

Robert A. Ayres

IF YOU GIVE A GOVERNMENT TRAPPERA ROADKILL ARMADILLO

If you give a government trappera roadkill armadillo, he’s likely to take it home.

And if he takes it home, and his wife’s not there,he’ll take it in the kitchen,stick it in her spaghetti pot—tail sticking out the top—fill the pot with water,turn the burner on,and cook it till it’s squishy.

And if he cooks it till it’s squishy,and his wife’s not back,he’ll scoop the innards from the shellinto her Osterizer blender,add a little glycerin,and push “Puree.”

And if she’s still not back,he’ll spoon dollops of pâtéinto tiny Tupperware containers,and stash them in her deep freezeuntil he needs it for bait.

But if his wife comes home,that’s that.

Larry D. Thomas

STEERS IN SUMMER, LOWING

Against a backdrop of blue heavenand mesas hot as blacksmiths’ anvils,still stunned by the musk of menwho castrated them as calves,

they blanket the bleak rangelike an unrolled scroll of reddish-brown parchment scrawled with a savagecalligraphy of horns. Tails lash

hides so sunstruck they’re tannedalive on racks of ribsguarding hearts and the grandbellows of lungs. The nubs

of grass they grind with giant molarsare but straw they burn to fueltheir hellfire breath. The lavendersof the evening ahead are cool

foreshadowings of their fateof cold storage lockers on whose dimhooks they’ll sway as sides of meat,drooling the mouths of those who fed them.

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from RATTLE #30, WINTER 2008Cowboy & Western Poetry


RATTLE e.523

Donald Mace Williams

from WOLFE

[...] From deepIn the fierce breaks came a reply,A drawn-out keening, pitched as highAnd savage as if cowboy songs,To strange, sharp ears, summed up all wrongsDone to the wilderness by men,Fences, and cows. With bared teeth then,Ears back, the apparition skulkedAcross the ridges toward the bulked,Repulsive forms of house and shed,Till now not neared. The next dawn’s redRevealed a redder scene. The penWhere calving heifers were brought inIn case of need lay strewn and gory,Each throat and belly slashed, a storyOf rage, not hunger; nothing goneBut one calf ’s liver. His face drawn,Rogers bent close to find a trackIn the hard dirt. Then he drew back,Aghast. Though it was mild and fair,He would always thereafter swearThere hung above that broad paw printWith two deep claw holes a mere hint,The sheerest wisp, of steam. He stoodSilent. When finally he could, He said, “Well, I guess we all knowWhat done this. No plain lobo, though.I’ve seen a few. They never killedMore than to get their belly filled.This one’s a devil. Look at that.” He toed a carcass. Where the fatAnd lean had been flensed, red and white,From a front leg, a second biteHad crushed the bone above the knee.By ones and twos men leaned to see With open mouths. A clean, dark holeAt one side punched clear through the bole.“That’s no tooth, it’s a railroad spike,” One cowboy breathed. Or else it’s like,Tom Rogers thought, a steel-tipped arrowSuch as once pierced him, bone and marrow,Mid-calf when, riding in advanceOf wagons on the trail to Grants,Attacked, he turned and in the mudEscaped with one boot full of blood.At least the Indians had a cause,He thought. This thing came from the draws

To kill and waste, no more. He spatAnd said, “I’ll get hitched up.” At that,Two cowboys jumped to do the choreWhile from the pile by the back doorOthers, jaws set, began to carryCottonwood logs onto the prairie Where horses dragged the grim night’s deadLike travois to their fiery bed.Rogers, with hands in pockets, stoodAnd said, “That barbecue smells good.”But the half-smile he struggled forTurned on him like a scimitarAnd cowboys, sensing, kept their eyesDown and said nothing. By sunriseOf the next day the word was outBy mouth and telegraph aboutThe beast that crept out of the darkAnd slaughtered like a land-bound shark, Evil, bloodthirsty, monstrous. SoonThe story was that the full moonCaused that four-legged beast to riseOn two feet and with bloodshot eyesTo roam the plains in search of preyLike some cursed half-man. In one dayThree of Rogers’ good cowboys quit,No cowards but not blessed with witTo fathom the unknown, and moreKept glancing at the bunkhouse doorAt night as if, next time, the thingMight burst inside. “Hey, man, don’t sing,”One said as a guitar came out.There did seem, thinking back, no doubtThat music must have been what stirredThe anger out there. Some had heardThe answer. They agreed the soundCame after Ashley’s fingers foundThe highest note of that night’s strumming.“Play it again you know what’s coming,”Said one named Humphrey. [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The above is extracted from a 20-page moderniza-tion of the Old English epic, Beowulf. In the original, Beowulf, a heroof the Geats, battles Grendel, who has been attacking the newly con-structed beer hall in Denmark, and later Grendel’s mother in her denbelow the sea. In this passage, Tom Rogers, modeled after Hrothgar,ruler of the Danes, surveys the damage from the monster’s firstattack.

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from RATTLE #30, WINTER 2008Cowboy & Western Poetry

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