"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 ‘poet’

Monday Must Read! Michael Meyerhofer, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

 

michael meyerhoferMichael Meyerhofer is a contemporary poet and fantasy author who believes those two genres genuinely can get along. To illustrate this, his debut fantasy novel, Wytchfire (Book I in the Dragonkin Trilogy), was published by Red Adept Publishing, and went on to win the Whirling Prize and a Readers Choice nomination from Big Al’s Books and Pals. The sequels, Knightswrath and Kingsteel, are out now. He is also the author of the forthcoming Godsfall Trilogy.
Michael’s fourth poetry book, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive, was published by Split Lip Press. His third, Damnatio Memoriae (lit. “damned memory”), won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize). 

He has also published five poetry chapbooks: Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper’s Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest). 

Michael has won the Marjorie J. Wilson Best Poem Contest, the Laureate Prize for Poetry, the James Wright Poetry Award, and the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Quick Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals. 

He received his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. An avid weightlifter, medieval weapons collector, and unabashed history nerd, he currently lives, teaches, and inhabits various coffee shops around Fresno, CA.

Visit Michael’s Website: https://www.troublewithhammers.com/

Praise for What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

“With a compassionate eye, and his trademark sense of humor that hooks readers from the very first page, Meyerhofer sends us back to our earliest memories, and shows us a world of heartbreak and wonder.” -Mary Biddinger, author of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water

“…Meyerhofer sings in a pure American tenor, his voice haunted by late night diners, small town heartbreak, and somehow, out there in the desolate vastness of the heartland, a flash of humor and a sweet glimmer of hope.” -George Bilgere, author of Imperial

“While never flinching from confronting the irredeemable damage we do to one another, these urgent and necessary poems remind us ‘that if we focus on what hurts, / face it wholly, it dissolves / like a light from a burnt-out bulb, / a curtain gone up in flames.” -Jon Tribble, author of Natural State

Buy Michael’s Books!

What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

Blue Collar Eulogies

Damnatio Memoriae

Leaving Iowa

The Clay-Shaper’s Husband

More From Michael Online

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/michael-meyerhofer

http://www.splitlipmagazine.com/6-meyerhofer-interview

http://www.versedaily.org/2011/aboutmichaelmeyerhoferdm.shtml

http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/meyerhoferportrait.html

 

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, fiction, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Vessels, Relentlessness, and Talk in the Night

17 April 2017

Vessel (n.)
c. 1300, “container,” from Old French vessel “container, receptacle, barrel; ship” (12c., Modern French vaisseau) from Late Latin vascellum “small vase or urn,” also “a ship,” alteration of Latin vasculum, diminutive of vas “vessel.” Sense of “ship, boat” is found in English from early 14c. “The association between hollow utensils and boats appears in all languages” [Weekley]. Meaning “canal or duct of the body” (especially for carrying blood) is attested from late 14c.
Make art about a vessel.

urn

18 April 2017
Make art about something relentless, about relentless emotion.

Relentless

19 April 2017
Awake until four in the morning last night, me and the deer, and a lone owl in the oak outside the window.
Make art about a conversations in the night, about how the night talks to you.

owl

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2017 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Happy National Poetry Month <3 What is Broken Is What God Blesses, Jimmy Santiago Baca

 

What is Broken Is What God Blesses

Jimmy Santiago Baca

   The lover’s footprint in the sand
   the ten-year-old kid’s bare feet
in the mud picking chili for rich growers,
not those seeking cultural or ethnic roots,
but those whose roots
have been exposed, hacked, dug up and burned
			and in those roots
			do animals burrow for warmth;
what is broken is blessed,
	not the knowledge and empty-shelled wisdom
	paraphrased from textbooks,
		not the mimicking nor plaques of distinction
		nor the ribbons and medals
but after the privileged carriage has passed
	the breeze blows traces of wheel ruts away
	and on the dust will again be the people’s broken
							footprints.
What is broken God blesses,
	not the perfectly brick-on-brick prison
	but the shattered wall
	that announces freedom to the world,
proclaims the irascible spirit of the human
rebelling against lies, against betrayal,
against taking what is not deserved;
	the human complaint is what God blesses,
	our impoverished dirt roads filled with cripples,
what is broken is baptized,
	the irreverent disbeliever,
	the addict’s arm seamed with needle marks
		is a thread line of a blanket
	frayed and bare from keeping the man warm.
We are all broken ornaments,
		glinting in our worn-out work gloves,
		foreclosed homes, ruined marriages,
from which shimmer our lives in their deepest truths,
blood from the wound,
				broken ornaments—
when we lost our perfection and honored our imperfect sentiments, we were
blessed.
Broken are the ghettos, barrios, trailer parks where gangs duel to death,
yet through the wretchedness a woman of sixty comes riding her rusty bicycle,
			we embrace
			we bury in our hearts,
broken ornaments, accused, hunted, finding solace and refuge
		we work, we worry, we love
		but always with compassion
		reflecting our blessings—
			in our brokenness
			thrives life, thrives light, thrives
				the essence of our strength,
					each of us a warm fragment,
					broken off from the greater
					ornament of the unseen,
					then rejoined as dust,
					to all this is.


JimmySantiagoBaca_NewBioImage

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Happy National Poetry Month! What’s Broken, Dorianne Laux

What’s Broken

Dorianne Laux
The slate black sky. The middle step
of the back porch. And long ago
my mother’s necklace, the beads
rolling north and south. Broken
the rose stem, water into drops, glass
knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s
pot of parsley and mint, white roots
shooting like streamers through the cracks.
Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,
the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken
little finger on my right hand at birth—
I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t
been rent, divided, split? Broken
the days into nights, the night sky
into stars, the stars into patterns
I make up as I trace them
with a broken-off blade
of grass. Possible, unthinkable,
the cricket’s tiny back as I lie
on the lawn in the dark, my heart
a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.
blue cup

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Friday Call for Submissions Love <3 500 Miles, New Publication Seeking Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

500 Miles Magazine Seeking Submissions for Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry

500 Miles Magazine is a new publication for writers who create work a little outside the mainstream. We enjoy the funny, the experimental, and the generally well written. They are currently seeking submissions in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Rolling submission process.

No bio or cover-letter is required.

Submissions are free.

Please copy and paste your work into the body of your email to: :500milesmagazineATgmailDOTcom.

If your submission is accepted, they’ll ask for your bio.

Category:

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

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Happy National Poetry Month! The Meaning of the Shovel, Martin Espada

The Meaning of the Shovel
BY MARTÍN ESPADA
—Barrio René Cisneros
Managua, Nicaragua, June-July 1982
This was the dictator’s land
before the revolution.
Now the dictator is exiled to necropolis,
his army brooding in camps on the border,
and the congregation of the landless
stipples the earth with a thousand shacks,
every weatherbeaten carpenter
planting a fistful of nails.
Here I dig latrines. I dig because last week
I saw a funeral in the streets of Managua,
the coffin swaddled in a red and black flag,
hoisted by a procession so silent
that even their feet seemed
to leave no sound on the gravel.
He was eighteen, with the border patrol,
when a sharpshooter from the dictator’s army
took aim at the back of his head.
I dig because yesterday
I saw four walls of photographs:
the faces of volunteers
in high school uniforms
who taught campesinos to read,
bringing an alphabet
sandwiched in notebooks
to places where the mist never rises
from the trees. All dead,
by malaria or the greedy river
or the dictator’s army
swarming the illiterate villages
like a sky full of corn-plundering birds.
I dig because today, in this barrio
without plumbing, I saw a woman
wearing a yellow dress
climb into a barrel of water
to wash herself and the dress
at the same time,
her cupped hands spilling.
I dig because today I stopped digging
to drink an orange soda. In a country
with no glass, the boy kept the treasured bottle
and poured the liquid into a plastic bag
full of ice, then poked a hole with a straw.
I dig because today my shovel
struck a clay bowl centuries old,
the art of ancient fingers
moist with this same earth,
perfect but for one crack in the lip.
I dig because I have hauled garbage
and pumped gas and cut paper
and sold encyclopedias door to door.
I dig, digging until the passport
in my back pocket saturates with dirt,
because here I work for nothing
and for everything.
martin-espada
Check out Martin Espada’s website for more beautiful poems! http://www.martinespada.net/

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, One Love, poetry, Poetry Month Poems, Writing

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Daily Prompt Love <3 What You Give

14 April 2017

Make art about service, about how the self is found in service to others. 

ghandi service

 

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2017 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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HeartWood Litmag Issue 3 Now Live!

HeartWood Issue 3 Now Live!

So honored to share work from CL Bledsoe,. J. P. Dancing Bear, Darnell Arnoult, Caroline Malone, Kiyah Moore , Sarah Robinson, Austin Jr., Katlin Brock, Amber Tran, Karla Van Vliet, Kayla Pearce, Susan Moorhead, Meaghan Quinn, Susan Moorhead, Nan Macmillan, Jeremy Reed, Brian Koester, LeighAnna Schesser, Adam McGraw, and Janice Hornburg 🙂

Thanks and Love to the tireless staff ❤ As always, Danielle Kelly, CM Chapman, Beth Feagan, Susan Good, Mary Imo Stike, Jessica Spruill, and Vincent James Trimboli–you rock!

Beautiful work, getting to the heart of the matter Check it out!

And don’t miss the guidelines for our second annual HeartWood Broadside Series Competition. Contest open now!

HeartWood

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

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Happy National Poetry Month! Sing, with Rumi <3

Birdsong brings relief

to my longing

I’m just as ecstatic as they are,

but with nothing to say!

Please universal soul, practice

some song or something through me!

From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks

cardinal

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animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, Nature, One Love, poetry, Poetry Month Poems, Writing

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Happy National Poetry Month <3 Her Kind, Anne Sexton

Her Kind

Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.



wild woman

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