"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Posts tagged ‘creativity’

Friday Call For Submissions Love! Mainstreet Rag

M. Scott Douglas has been rocking the lit world since 1996, still and always producing beautiful publications filled with really amazing work. Check out their guidelines, but also peruse and purchase in their bookstore. You won’t be disappointed. 

Here’s their current call: 

Publishing Opportunities at Main Street Rag

Deadline: Rolling

 

If you’re a writer looking for opportunities, Main Street Rag Publishing Company is the place. It starts with The Main Street Rag, our quarterly independent literary magazine which features poetry, fiction, reviews, interviews, and more and has been publishing uninterrupted since 1996. We also publish themed anthologies, poetry books and chapbooks, short story collections, novellas, and novels. Visit our website and take a tour of our publishing options. Visit the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore and sample some of the books we’ve already published. Main Street Rag Publishing Company, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001, www.MainStreetRag.com, , 704-573-2516.

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Editing, fiction, Friday Call for Submissions, Gratitude, litmags, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, publishing, Writing

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Daily Prompt :-) What You Really Want

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poem 🙂 

What Do Women Want?

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it   
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store   
with all those keys glittering in the window,   
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old   
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers   
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,   
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.   
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.   
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you   
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment   
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body   
to carry me into this world, through   
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,   
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,   
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
Make art about what you really want. 
woman red dress

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt :-) Memory and Mystery

The Stolen Child

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

Make art about magical mysterious creatures. Or your earliest art memory. 

stolen child

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Rebirth and Wonder

Happy National Poetry Month! ANDDDD it’s my birthday! So, one of the poets who turned my lil middle school girl self on to the wonder of poetry! 🙂 ❤ 

I Am Waiting

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Make art about the rebirth of wonder. 

ferlinghetti

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Your Singing Place

Happy National Poetry Month! 

The Singing Place

 by Lily Long

Cold may lie the day,
         And bare of grace;
At night I slip away
         To the Singing Place.
A border of mist and doubt
         Before the gate,
And the Dancing Stars grow still
         As hushed I wait.
Then faint and far away
         I catch the beat
In broken rhythm and rhyme
         Of joyous feet,—
Lifting waves of sound
         That will rise and swell
(If the prying eyes of thought
         Break not the spell),
Rise and swell and retreat
         And fall and flee,
As over the edge of sleep
         They beckon me.
And I wait as the seaweed waits
         For the lifting tide;
To ask would be to awake,—
         To be denied.
I cloud my eyes in the mist
         That veils the hem,—
And then with a rush I am past,-—
         I am Theirs, and of Them!
And the pulsing chant swells up
         To touch the sky,
And the song is joy, is life,
         And the song am I!
The thunderous music peals
         Around, o’erhead-
The dead would awake to hear
         If there were dead;
But the life of the throbbing Sun
         Is in the song,
And we weave the world anew,
         And the Singing Throng
Fill every corner of space—-
Over the edge of sleep
         I bring but a trace
Of the chants that pulse and sweep
         In the Singing Place.
Make art about your singing place. 
birds and krishna

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 What We Love

 

Happy National Poetry Month! Another favorite poet, the amazing Amy Tudor. 🙂 ❤ 

What We Love

Amy Tudor
I walk my old dog down a street called Holiday,
past trees whose white bark is trimmed with silver
in the light rain of early Spring. The dog’s small heart
is failing and the vet’s said he shouldn’t be out,
but if we walk slowly he can go four or five squares 
of sidewalk, then I let him stop and rest. 

He puts his nose up into the cool air, the wind ruffling 
his black and white coat and the gray on his ears, 
the wind smoothing over him. When he can’t go 
any further (halfway past that lovely ocre-colored house 
in my neighborhood, the one that’s half-hidden by linden 
and guarded by an iron gate), I carry him against my chest.

One day a black lab stood at a driveway gate
and barked at us as we passed.  My old dog 
looked from beneath half-lidded eyes and didn’t answer, 
and finally the other dog’s owner, an older man,
came out the screen door and called the dog to come back.  
The dog rose from where he sat, a hind leg dragging 
and his right-front hitched as he moved toward the house.  
I watched it go.  The man looked at me holding 
my old dog against my chest.  The man smiled.  
He raised a hand, half-greeting, half-regret.

I should say here that I know the rules I’m breaking.
I was told years ago that poets shouldn’t waste 
their time on trivial  things like dying pets. 
“It’s been done, and done, and done to death,”
a friend once said.  And it has, sure 
as death’s been done and done and done to death. 

So I’ll make a deal with you– forget 
what I’ve said about my dog in my arms, 
his nose in the air, the wind like hands.  And forget 
the man and his black lab that limped up 
those brick back steps.  I won’t write about any of that.  
I’ll write a poem about what we love instead. 

What we love is a night and a house 
wreathed with linden, the dark kept outside 
a circle of light over an iron gate.  It’s fine 
as silver paper or the wind of early Spring.  
What we love is a tree that grows outside our window 
as we grow inside its panes, a small good thing 
we bring home – or that follows us there — one day.  
Then it’s a friend that walks with us, gentle 
and welcome as rain.  It’s what we call to us to come 
when darkness is coming, and it’s what tends us, 
and what we tend. And finally it’s what we carry 
close against us, feeling blessed as we hold it 
and joy for what it gives and has given, 
for the comfort it’s been through hard, heavy days, 
forgiving every burden it’s been, grateful 
for even the grief we must carry when it’s gone, 
that soft, warm, impossible weight.

Make art about what you love.

tenderness

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Must Read Monday! Laura Long: Out of Peel Tree

laura longThis week meet Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree, a novel in stories, and two collections of poetry, The Eye of Caroline Herschel:A Life in Poems and Imagine a Door. Laura has received a James Michener Fellowship, James River Writers Award, Donald Barthelme Fellowship, PEN-Texas Award, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowships, and has published in magazines including The Southern Review and Shenandoah. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia and with the low-residency MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and has taught in numerous community and university settings.

Buy Laura’s Beautiful Books!

Out of Peel Tree

http://wvupressonline.com/long_out_of_peel_tree_9781940425009

Imagine a Door

http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Door-Laura-Longsong/dp/1934999512

The Eye of Caroline Herschel:A Life in Poems

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=

Praise for Out of Peel Tree

“Aside from the gorgeous writing and deeply compelling characters, what I especially value about Laura Long’s Out of Peel Tree is its honoring both the region and the literature out of which it springs, at the same time it brilliantly offers a new vision and shines a light on the path ahead. This is a book to be enjoyed immediately and cherished for years to come.”~David Huddle, author of Only the Little Bone and The Story of a Million Years


“Laura Long has eyes like no other. The world she sees has more dimensions than the mundane 3-D world the rest of us inhabit. In her world even dry leaves and red tomatoes and postcards are sentient.“~Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly and Still Life with Plums

“In an elaborate mosaic that is both moving and uplifting, Out of Peel Tree tells the story of three generations of West Virginia women and their survival against the odds. This vivid, compact work is akin to an unforgiving family portrait that reveals everything—warts and all.”~Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and 2013 recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.

“Laura Long writes with such tenderness for her characters, for place, for the natural world. The images shimmer and the links delight. Out of Peel Tree is tatted into the finest lace—delicate, seamless, and strong. Is it any wonder this is a poet’s novel?”~Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female and Crackpots

Read More from Laura Online!

http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/1680-laura-long-poetry

http://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2015/03/01/untranslatable-writing-fiction-in-the-garden-of-uncertainty-or-being-uncertain-is-a-quality-that-writers-cultivate/

Interview

https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/laura-long/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

 

 

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, poetry, Writing

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Daily Prompt! Claiming What’s Yours

Happy National Poetry Month! ❤ Another favorite poet. This poem’s from an amazing collection entitled Red Sugar. If you haven’t read Jan’s work, do it. Seriously. ❤
 
I’ll Write the Girl
Jan Beatty
 
The thing I’ll never write is the green leaf
with its rubbery-hard veins, I’ll never
write the structure exposed, instead
 
I’ll write the girl picking it up, green leaf,
her pudgy hand & her wanting it, that’s it,
because she knows the sky is full
 
of stumbling ghosts, & she’s back in the cold
room, back on the dark floor, & along
so much sky, what does one person do?
 
She says, bring it to me & devours,
hungry girl, breaks it open, tastes
the day’s first plasma of leaf, first blood
 
of green on her city street, she takes it
to her like morning’s first kill, &
owns it, stem to point,
 
& knows her life will always
be this biting open one thing
to leave another, that the only
 
way she’ll get anything is
with this tiny hammer
in her animal brain
 
saying: mine,
& again,
& now.

 

Make art about what you’ve claimed as yours. 
city-streets-art-three-woman-mural

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Sometimes the Prompt Is the Body

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Daily Prompt Time!

spring song
by Lucille Clifton

the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible

Make art about the body of the planet. 

earth hand

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Nature, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Newest Publication! Thanks to Rogue Agent!

Thanks to Jill Khoury and all the good folks at Rogue Agent 🙂 Thrilled to be included in their anniversary issue!

http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/mcarrollhackett

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Editing, Gratitude, litmags, Love, poetry, publishing, Writing

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