A Sapphic Ode to Ireland and a Clockwork Phoenix
I have a poem in the 50th issue of The Pedestal Magazine:
"Ireland, A Sapphic Poem." A poem about lovers, about the love between poet and place, about the evocation of place in succinct lines.
Please drop by and read it, and the other amazing poems featured in this issue. I found "Suitors," which follows my piece, to be particularly engaging. Also, as guest editor Susan Terris notes in her introduction, she strung these poems together as beads on a string, so that each bead complements both the bead that came before and the one that tumbles after.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, both on my work and the rest of the magazine.
Also, at long last, my review of Clockwork Phoenix edited by Mike Allen has appeared at Green Man Review.
The subtitle featured on the cover of Clockwork Phoenix is "tales of beauty and strangeness" and, with Mike Allen's introduction, he immediately attempts to deliver on this promise. Readers are treated to an extended metaphor -- a brief sketch of a literal clockwork phoenix and its searing flight through a strange and moving train -- meant to prepare us for the contents and the journey this collection represents. This introduction comes across with mixed results: I prefer my introductions to be less abstract and with more relevant introspection. However, if you prefer to look at the anthology as a structure, I'm not sure what more appropriate foyer the architect could have afforded visitors.
The mixed results of the introduction are, in a way, perfectly representative of a collection of stories that is mixed in quality. Some of the worst stories seemed promised front-runners -- witness Catherynne M. Valente's "The City of Blind Delight" and John Grant's "All the Little Gods We Are" -- while some of the best stories turned out to be by relative unknowns, such as Erin Hoffman's "Root and Vein" and Michael J. DeLuca's "The Tarrying Messenger." Instead of trying to group these into sections according to their perceived quality, however, the best way to examine this anthology is surely to follow it through in its arranged order. [Read the rest of the review at this link.]
"Ireland, A Sapphic Poem." A poem about lovers, about the love between poet and place, about the evocation of place in succinct lines.
Please drop by and read it, and the other amazing poems featured in this issue. I found "Suitors," which follows my piece, to be particularly engaging. Also, as guest editor Susan Terris notes in her introduction, she strung these poems together as beads on a string, so that each bead complements both the bead that came before and the one that tumbles after.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, both on my work and the rest of the magazine.
Also, at long last, my review of Clockwork Phoenix edited by Mike Allen has appeared at Green Man Review.
The subtitle featured on the cover of Clockwork Phoenix is "tales of beauty and strangeness" and, with Mike Allen's introduction, he immediately attempts to deliver on this promise. Readers are treated to an extended metaphor -- a brief sketch of a literal clockwork phoenix and its searing flight through a strange and moving train -- meant to prepare us for the contents and the journey this collection represents. This introduction comes across with mixed results: I prefer my introductions to be less abstract and with more relevant introspection. However, if you prefer to look at the anthology as a structure, I'm not sure what more appropriate foyer the architect could have afforded visitors.
The mixed results of the introduction are, in a way, perfectly representative of a collection of stories that is mixed in quality. Some of the worst stories seemed promised front-runners -- witness Catherynne M. Valente's "The City of Blind Delight" and John Grant's "All the Little Gods We Are" -- while some of the best stories turned out to be by relative unknowns, such as Erin Hoffman's "Root and Vein" and Michael J. DeLuca's "The Tarrying Messenger." Instead of trying to group these into sections according to their perceived quality, however, the best way to examine this anthology is surely to follow it through in its arranged order. [Read the rest of the review at this link.]