Book Review: Hoodwinked by David Hernandez

Hoodwinked by David Hernandez
Sarabande Books, Inc. Available August of 2011.
Poetry Review by Debrah Lechner.
debrah.lechner@gmail.com

Hoodwinked won the 2010 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in poetry, and for good reason.

The vast majority of images in the poems of Hoodwinked are of everyday life, an ordinary, common life filled with ordinary beauty and common events; but the repeated theme of death and decay draw these images into magnified, sharp focus. From the start the poems read like the memoir of a survivor. There are in fact two or three references to war, but the overall impression is of occupation, an imprisonment in the unforgettable reality of universal entropy. David Hernandez writes fearlessly, unapologetically and coherently of the vital subject of inevitable deterioration.

It is a preoccupation that drives many poets, sometimes presented in abstract form. But melting clocks and the like only have so much emotional leverage, and in David Hernandez’ poetry it is the recognizably lived life that loads the emotion and gives such power to its discharge.

(Finally, I thought, a poet who is as morbidly obsessed as I am.)

A line of ants march through this volume. They appear and disappear again three or four times, and each time carry away bits of matter and moments that will never return. From the poem "Hangover."

On the lawn, a paper plate

dotted with cake crumbs,
a flurry of ants. I think

through the throbbing

and the night spools back
in scraps, the gaps in-between

large, deleted for good.

A little like death. Or nowhere
near. What dying will do

with memories I can only

speculate: crumbs
left on a plate or carried

one and one into the grass.

It’s good to think about these things, to notice such details, to memorialize them, and not only because it is a reminder to Use Time Wisely, but because if you’re going to live, you might as well live in reality. Anything less is cheating.

(In grammar school, I was always graded poorly in the category of “Uses Time Wisely.” No matter. Aging takes care of that.)

I love it that David Hernandez is sorry to see flies die. I love it that he grieves the consumption of cake and oranges and time.

I love the very funny and brazen poem about James Frey, in which he asserts he was sitting in the seat next to Frey in the airplane, and relates his own version of events. Why not? More writers should publish their “memoirs” of that incident.

In Panoramic the poet takes “a short walk down a long road,” and a promising October day delivers some disturbing moments. “A small bird made smaller by a flurry of ants. . . a hawk, its red shriek tapering off to silence. . .” and a picnic attended by mourners that a thunderstorm scatters. Then:

. . .Raindrops stipple
as I hurry home to the antidote

of your hands. When the time comes to lie down
beside you, I’ll begin forgetting what my eyes

have recorded: the dead bird, a shrieking hawk,
mourners scattering under the flashing sky.

2.

The dead something, the shrieking something,
something scattering under the flashing something.

Honest, evocative, profoundly felt: this is a love poem that records how wrong it is that such things can haunt us even when we know we are loved.

God is the big nothing that allows
you to move around in this world

Hernandez says this in his last poem, "The Big Nothing, or the Gap Between David Letterman’s Teeth."

The world is full of a number of things, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote. The presence of death doesn’t preclude the enjoyment of the random beauty we find in life. Maybe when death is remembered at such moments, the moment lingers a little longer, or a fly’s life is spared for another several wing beats.

Or maybe that’s a little too whimsical. In any case, there death is: we really have no choice but to decide whether or not we’ll be honest about it.

David Hernandez is the author of other award-winning poetry collections, and his poems have appeared in numerous publications. He is also the author of two novels for teens. Visit his Home Page to see what David Hernandez has written lately and read more about him. Hoodwinked is available here at Amazon.com, or from any other number of vendors.

Inspiring Comedic Vacations

In Vacationing with Goodman Brown, a vacation to New England was in the works. We found personal inspiration from the breathtaking beauty and literary destinations of the likes of Nathanial Hawthorne. But spur-of-the-moment jumping on the plane is becoming increasingly more difficult with regulations and pat downs. Many of us prefer the “stay-cations” of our backyards just to avoid the hassle. Especially during long summer months, literature offers an escape and is often a “vacation” from reality and a comedic release.

Patricia Lockwood, a contributing author and poet whose poetry appeared in issue #47 and #48 (and forthcoming in #49!), cites that her source of inspiration for writing was not something impressive like the Bible of Ulysses. But rather Jack Handy’s Deep Thoughts.

I alone seemed to understand that this was dangerous: if you read this book in the bathroom, I believed, the power of its insights would send your pee back up inside you. The Deep Thoughts themselves were … sentences? Except I thought I knew what a sentence was, and these were different: "The tiger can't change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!" "Whoa God that is fancy," I breathed to myself. "How did he do it?" I read them over and over to the point of obsession, trying to figure out how they worked. It was the first time I realized that you were allowed to do whatever you wanted. Anything could happen and anything could happen next.

However, a vacation that is inspired from this is not a journey that you need to book far in advance, rather all you need is a computer. Head online and check out how one author’s form of “weird” inspiration has spiraled down to all levels and even was transformed into an SNL skit and other parodies.

A second type of literary vacation other than comedic escape is choosing to immerse yourself in a completely foreign country where the language and culture is completely different. Author E.C. Belli does this just as a profession. His translations allow the reader to encounter the foreign and through that, explore a whole new world of literature. His works appear in HFR issue # 48. Belli sights Victor Hugo as a main source of inspiration for his translations and the need to share the beauty of Hugo’s work with his family.

Victor Hugo was also at the root of my interest in translation. His poems being so beautiful, and my wanting so badly to share them with the British side of my family who did not speak French, specifically my grandmother, I would find myself doing line by line translations, and from the age of ten on, stood rambling in the living room, trying to capture the “terrible crystals,” as my teacher Lucie Brock-Broido calls them, that make these poems so tragically beautiful. I almost always failed but when I was able to grasp even one of his “pure notions” (to borrow language from Mallarmé) and clothe it in the adequate, corresponding English vernacular, I’d feel the most intense satisfaction. This never lasted long unfortunately, as the next line proved impossible again. Through that process however, I learned to be comfortable in the eternal imperfection of translation while remaining convinced that it was also the most essential thing.

Thankfully Belli’s work is that of beautiful translations, but this is not always the case. Whether journeying abroad or reading a work that has been translated from its original language, you must always be careful that the real meaning is being conveyed. Unfortunately, these translations were not done as carefully and precisely. Hopefully no injuries occurred!

Unusual Calls for Submissions

The Mom Egg publishes sharp, articulate, inventive work by mothers about everything and by everyone about mothers and motherhood. So if you are not a (self-identified) mother, your work should deal with mothers or motherhood. Submissions period for poetry, fiction, creative prose and art for The Mom Egg 2012 Vol. 10 will be July 15 through Sept. 30, 2011. The issue will be a themed issue on "The Body"-- the human body, of course, but also bodies of work, water, land, the body politic or corporate, the mind/body, etc. Submissions must relate to that theme to be considered. Please include a brief, 3-5 line bio and cover letter. Submissions will be accepted via our new submissions manager. Up to 5 poems; prose and fiction up to 850 words.

Monkey Puzzle Press' 3rd annual flash fiction contest! First Prize: $300.00 plus publication, Second Prize: $150.00 plus publication, Third Prize: $50.00 plus publication. Submit one story per entry, 1000 words or less. $10 entry fee (check or money order) payable to Monkey Puzzle Press. Go here for more submission details. We won't be judging stories based on any particular content or context, just send your best piece of flash fiction! Please keep in mind that we do appreciate work exhibiting socio-political-cultural awareness and humor. To get an idea for the kind of work we like, check out our Magazine page for free downloads of past issues.

The Destroyer is now accepting submissions for our first issue. We're looking for poetry, texts with no determinate genre, video, audio, and new media. Translations welcome. Additionally, we have a Rant section. See submission guidelines on our website for more details. We're looking for work that's visceral and honest. Work that simultaneously addresses multiple audiences, including, perhaps most importantly, the public. We are open to a variety of aesthetics, though we are particularly drawn to styles that currently lack a clear-cut literary/artistic niche. We believe that traditional lyricism piggybacks off the institution of "Poetry." We respond to work that challenges this lyrical model. We don't want a jaunt on a yacht; we want a motorcycle ride. An Online Publication of Text, Art, and the Public Rant. Visit our Submishmash Site to submit.

Measure, a biannual print journal of formal poetry, is seeking submissions for upcoming issues. We're looking for both established and emerging poets writing interesting, contemporary metrical verse. Measure has published work from poets such as Richard Wilbur, Derek Walcott, Wendy Cope, Seamus Heaney, Dick Davis, X.J. Kennedy, and a host of others. Measure was begun in 2005 by Rob Griffith and Paul Bone in response to the demise of The Formalist, a journal which had helped renew and sustain interest in formal poetry. Measure has a mission not only to publish the best new poetry from both established and emerging writers, but also to reprint a small sampling of poems from books of metrical poetry published the previous year. Likewise, each issue includes interviews with some of our most important contemporary poets and also offers short critical essays on the poetry that has helped to shape the craft. For complete submission guidelines, please visit our website at: http://measure.evansville.edu.

Introducing the 2012 Bat City Review Art & Writing Collaboration Prize! What We're Looking For: A bold, intoxicating combination of written text with visual art that engages and expands each medium in concert with the other. Collaborative submissions (from multiple persons) are acceptable. It is necessary for the entrants to own the rights to all original work submitted. Pieces that involve other artists' writing or work are welcome, as long as said art is in the public domain or the entrant can prove reception of the artist's permission. Judge: Tomaz Salamun, Award: $1000 for the winning entry and publication in the 2012 issue of Bat City Review, Deadline: November 1, 2011, Cost of Entry: An issue ($8) or subscription ($14). Visit http://www.batcityreview.la.utexas.edu/submgr/ for more details.

Book Review: Go Southwest, Old Man by Mario Materassi

Go Southwest, Old Man, by Mario Materassi.
Firenze University Press, 2009.
Nonfiction in English and Italian.
Review by Debrah Lechner
debrah.lechner@gmail.com

Mario Materassi is a prolific author both in Italian and English, and has translated Faulkner, Henry Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Bernard Malamud, Stanley Crawford, Lynne Sharon Schwartz and Norman Mailer among others. Materassi has followed an interesting path in his life, and the flavor and direction of that trek is the substance of Go Southwest, Old Man. A Florentine, he migrated to New York and through several states before finding his second home in the Southwest. By several astonished accounts, he so completely absorbed the language, idioms and culture of the Southwest that his speech and writing became indistinguishable from that of a native. This has made his writing accessible to readers in English, a happy event.

In Go Southwest, Old Man Materassi mentions that the reader shouldn’t expect a travelogue, but the sensation of movement is palpable in the decades that are chronicled, and in the fluid interweaving of essays, absorbing interviews, personal anecdotes and memorable photographs. The book is informed throughout by a profound aesthetic:

The dark gorge, the towering peak or thundering waterfall are no more “sublime” than the cracked earth of a gray stretch of desert, the cone of ashes of a small dead volcano or a tuft of rabbit-ears weeds in a ditch. . .

For there is no order of beauty in nature; there is no hierarchy, no scheme of relevance.

In his anecdotes, Materassi wanders into a variety of situations: encountering mountain lion tracks; using a Rolleiflex camera in a digital age; witnessing an entire audience holding their breath when an eagle feather is dropped in a dance; attempting to create an authentic exhibition of Southwest culture in Italy (while avoiding stereotypes that the sponsors find marketable.)

Materassi defines his life in large part by the people he has known, a generosity of spirit that reveals itself in interviews with other writers of the Southwest, notably Rudolfo Anaya, a revered writer who opened the door for modern Chicano writers with the novel Bless Me Ultima. There are also interviews with Stanley Crawford, John Nichols, Tony Hillerman, Walter Satterthwaite, Judith Van Geison, and Steve Brewer.

These essays and interviews are only what is available in English. Oh, the tempting titles and familiar names in Italian! Yet unreadable for someone who speaks only one language. How frustrating. If there is one thing that would improve this reading experience, it is translation, if not in book form then perhaps on a website.

Note also that the photographs in Go Southwest, Old Man are not to be missed. The exposure and printing process contribute to capturing the shifting, transitory nature of much of the Southwest. Subthemes emerge: automobiles as art objects and decansa (memorials to those who have died in auto accidents) found along the highway are examples.

Photographic images of the Southwest are often best made at dawn, dusk, or on days that are rainy, hazy, or cloudy. Otherwise, the colors in the scene are bleached by the blazing light and overcome by the arresting shadows it produces, and objects are often rendered two-dimensionally. You can have the sun, or you can have the color: it’s difficult to experience both at the same time, except in person.

But reading Go Southwest, Old Man comes pretty close to creating such a complete encounter.

You must read this book! But bad news: you can’t buy a physical copy. The good news: it is published open source, so you can read it for free! The entirety of Go Southwest, Old Man free online, including the photographs. You can read it at Google Books by following this link: Go Southwest, Old Man from Google Books.

Readers may be more familiar with GoogleBooks, but Mario Materassi and Chiara Mezzadri were kind enough to supply another link in Italy where you can download the book in PDF format and save it, so you will probably find this the better option. Click here: Go Southwest, Old Man Italian Link to either open it and read, or to save to your computer.

Below is part of the email I received from Mario Materassi when asking where the book could be purchased. I’m reprinting part of it here, because I think it is charming and very funny. New writers, take note of someone who knows how to value their work despite the many ways you may be prevented from being paid for it:

Dear Debrah,

Thank you for your very kind email.

To answer your question, the book cannot be bought. I believe it's one of those mysterious (for me) affairs called "open access." As I am a total ignoramus as regards this new culture of communication, I am copying you (this obnoxious lingo . . .) an email from a former student of mine, Chiara Mezzadri.

Chiara suggests the second link. I have no idea if any of this makes any sense. The main thing is, FUP, or Florence University Press, is following the new rage (so they tell me) of publishing books that are not books, so they don't have to pay the authors (I had to pay for the 40 copies, one of which you received through the kind hands of Beth, your editor), so now I can look at it and say, with a shrug, That's my book. (Incidentally, I also had to privately pay for the dust jacket with which I tried to cover the horrendous official FUP cover.)

(Yes, and this aroused the reviewer’s curiosity, because I was having trouble getting enough information. So it was all I could do not to pick the new cover off. But I restrained myself, Beth.)

I am sorry I had to subject you to this probably useless trial through the thickets of my ignorance of the world in which I am supposed to spend the last leg of my existence.

Thank you for favor of the reply, Mr. Materassi. It was quite useful, and if this review offers more readers the opportunity to access your work, I will be very proud to have taken part in that.

All of us are involved with spending the last legs of our existence in the thickets of our ignorance, even if some of us are too young to realize it, or some of us simply choose to be oblivious. It’s invaluable to see an exemplar of a path taken through these trials with such success.

News Around the Net

Hey, journalists, cut it out with the book writing already! Everyone else, I'm keeping my eye on you too.

Looks like Stephen King's Dark Tower series won't be made into a film after all. What's a couple years of work for nothing, Ron Howard?

We needed something about Harry Potter.

Shakespeare and celebrity impressions all in one. Sign me up.

Sometimes, a writer's most famous book is not their best book.

Book Review: The Nervous Filaments by David Dodd Lee

The Nervous Filaments, by David Dodd Lee.
Four Way Books, Tribeca, 2010.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner
Debrah.Lechner@gmail.com

Who needs Vermeer?

All that standing around in filtered light with no job.

A hundred days later

egg salad with pepper on white bread

These are the first lines of “Wildlife,” one of the poems in David Dodd Lee’s The Nervous Filaments. Who hasn’t known, or been, the individual described in these few spare lines? Lee’s view of personal relationships is not in any aspect sentimental, but it can be melancholy and tender, as in these lines from “Romantic.”

You
and the weather inside you

the graham crackers the blue jay flips and eats

after all that’s your head in the window

looking out

through rain
through snow

lonely lonely

One of the new jobs we have is dating

In the intelligence, wit, and urgent imagery that David Dodd Lee employs, there is a great deal of pure sensory impact to enjoy, but the portraiture and meditation on what human relationships mean, their transitory nature and permanent impact, is what stands out for me. Very few writers capture that moment where the ephemeral moment and the perpetual experience meet, and that packs a wallop of an emotional blow, however carefully the tone is kept objective, even removed and wry. Perhaps it’s all the more powerful for that. Again, from “Romantic:”

driving with Kim

the way the flakes dimpled
the surface of the cups of our hot chocolate

they shredded the moon again she said about the falling snow

David Dodd Lee is the author of six books of poetry, and is also a fiction writer. He is the publisher of Half Moon Bay chapbooks. Many of his poems can be found online, and your copy of The Nervous Filaments can be found on Amazon here, as well as with other vendors.

Tweeted Questions: Answers Revealed! (Part I)

Recently, we asked our Twitter followers to tweet some questions to us, and herewith are a few of them answered. Keep the questions coming, and we'll make a point of answering them every so often. For those of you who've already asked, we'll have more answers up soon!

Two questions from our pal EthanChatagnier:

1) If I've received an encouraging rejection from a mag, how long should I note that in my future cover letters?

To be honest, Ethan, I've never considered this before. But my gut is saying there's no statute of limitations. You might say something like, "Thanks for being encouraging about my work in the past..." if it's been a while. But I think it's always fair to mention. Here at HFR, we get thousands of submissions. We'd like to give personal feedback or some kind of encouragement to everyone, but it's just not feasible. Any time you get feedback or encouraging words, an editor has gone out of his/her way to make sure you submit again. Even if your next two, three (or 40?) stories/poems don't make the cut, that editor saw something noteworthy and accomplished about what you sent, and that's a point of distinction. To my mind, that's always worth a mention.

2) I know most editors frown on story summaries in a cover letter. Do they want one sentence on what the story is about?

I don't. I think we frown on these because we want your story to speak for itself. If you feel like you have to tell me what it's about, then I'm worried you're afraid I won't "get" it. And if that fear is there, maybe the story isn't ready to be submitted. Since we've moved the HFR submission process online, we actually don't ask for a cover letter at all. The submission manager has a "comments" section that many submitters use for that purpose, but our readers are instructed not to look at the comments before reading the work. We don't want publications or biographical information or any other commentary to interfere with our reading of the work itself.

A here's one from bravenewlady: How do you determine your staff & editors? democracy? dynasty? divination?

We've got an amiable oligarchy here. I (Beth Staples) am the Managing Editor for HFR, the only permanent (and paid) staff member, and I control--well--mostly everything. Each year I choose six new genre editors who are all MFA candidates at Arizona State--two for poetry, two for fiction, two for our international section, and one for art. These editors have paid their dues reading submissions for the first two years of their study here.

Our reading staff is a little more open, but also monitored by me. Our bottom tier of readers is comprised of interns and community volunteers. Our next tier of readers is more experienced: former editors, MFA students and alumni, volunteers with some previous reading experience. Put all these people together, and the process looks like this:

1) A submission comes in, and is reviewed quickly by our "first looks" editor, who gives the submission a priority level (1-4) based on a reading of the first few pages (prose) or first poem (poetry). This is not a fool-proof process, but it does help us get to the most exciting work more quickly. This editor has been reading for HFR for YEARS.

2) I assign Priority 1-submissions immediately to the genre editors.

3) The other submissions I assign to a first-level reader, who reads them (in priority order), makes comments, and gives the submission a "yes" or a "no."

4) I then assign the submission to a second-level reader, who does the same.

5) A submission with two "yes" votes goes to the genre editors. A submission with two "no" votes gets declined with one of four different rejection letters. A submission with one of each vote goes to a third reader (another second-tier reader) to break the tie.

That was a bit of a digression, huh? But hopefully a helpful peek at the process. For people who want to act as volunteer readers, I ask that they send me an email (beth.staples@asu.edu) saying why they're qualified, and then I'll assign some sample submissions for review. After I've taken a look at their comments, I'll let them know if they can come on board.

So, divination, I guess.

Thanks for your questions! Find our Twitter feed here and ask away!

News Around the Net

Some people are not fans of storing the majority of their library on a Kindle. I am not a fan of moving heavy things that take up half my apartment and end up smelling bad after a few years. We'll agree to disagree.

If you're running low on books to read, here are a bunch to look forward to in the coming months, courtesy of The Millions.

A handwritten manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel, The Watsons, surprised at auction on Thursday, going for $1.6 million. That's three of four times what it was expected to go for, and roughly $1.6 million more than I could have paid for it.

Guess who turns 60 on Saturday? Holden Caufield!

Where writers like to write.

Book Review: Rust Fish by Maya Jewell Zeller

Rust Fish, by Maya Jewell Zeller.
Lost Horse Press, Sandpoint, Iowa, 2010.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner
Debrah.Lechner@gmail.com

Maya Jewell Zeller was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and this is the scene that sets most of the poems in Rust Fish. Zeller’s version of the Pacific Northwest is an interior landscape, and a story of childhood, of the real creating the imaginary, and the imaginary in turn transforming the real. It is an ecological cycle of transubstantiation.

Here is the entire poem “When Wishing Up.”

I see that summer’s tar side
Of rafters drip. That hot,
and just this river’s keeping cool.
I’m on my back, this barn’s hay soft
and sharp at once. Like fourteen.
Plum blossoms. I want to be leafed
with you, new green
around our wrists

each day. But then the gray of August sat,
fat as sparrows along tin eaves, their claws
curled tight like sharp fern fronds. I spoke.
I speak. Only the smelt repeat my rasp, their dark
mouths shining awake from alders
strewn white and black against the far clay bank.

Fish, whether of flesh or of metal, whether swimming or rusting, are never far from the heart of these poems. The acceptance and instruction of the natural world portends and finally fulfills the acceptance of self as a part of it, providing a bridge to the bewildering world of our own species.

This is a volume of poetry created by a seeker, and what she finds is a pleasure for her readers.

Maya Jewell Zeller’s poetry can be found in many publications and online, and she has won awards from The Florida Review and Crab Orchard Review. You can purchase this volume at many venues, but Amazon only has three copies left. Acquire one of them here.

HFR Photographer's SFMOMA Exhibit

Photographer Jacob Aue Sobol, from HFR's current issue, is having his work exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from July 2-October 16th. The exhibition features photographs from his "Sabine Series."

More details (courtesy of SFMOMA):

Face of our Time presents the work of five photographers who share an interest in making pictures that capture what the world looks like. They observe the sometimes-volatile civil and political transformations facing society, recording history as it unfolds over time. Goldberg gives voice to the experiences of refugees in socially and economically devastated African countries. Schwartz studies the effects of globalization across central Asia's ancient Silk Route. Muholi provides a visual identity for the queer black population so often marginalized in her native South Africa. Aue Sobol combines observations of the rural hunting culture in a remote Arctic village with intimate portraits of his girlfriend, Sabine. And Misrach photographs the graffiti left behind in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

For additional information, visit SFMOMA's website. If you're in the bay area, check out the work of one of HFR's own!

Unusual Calls for Submissions

We want to see the Los Angeles breastfeeding landscape represented. We encourage diverse participation from all across the spectrum - nursing mothers, partners and families of nursing mothers, health professionals, lactivists, anyone who can remember and verbalize their experience being breastfed! Your experience can be past, current or future. The more voices, the more experiences, the more truths, the more stories - the better! Pieces to be shared at an open mic night (Thursday, August 4, 2011 at www.vientoyaguacoffeehouse.com) celebrating World Breastfeeding Week 2011 (www.worldbreastfeedingweek.org).

We are pleased to announce Trust & Treachery: Tales of Power, Intrigue, and Violence. Power struggles, politics, posturing: whether it's parliament, the royal family, a coven, or your homeowner's association, power breeds distrust, intrigue, and violence... We want your awesomest stories! The Trust & Treachery anthology, is now open for submissions. Check out the details and the kick-ass cover design at: http://treachery.mlcrawford.com/.

PLUCK!: The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture is looking for voices of color from the thirteen states touched by the Appalachian Region (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) and work with a strong sense of place that addresses the writer's unique experience in this brook of the African Diaspora. Please submit work (Poetry: Up to five previously unpublished poems, Photography: Up to five attached photos at 300 dpi or better, Essays: Creative non-fiction or academic essay of up to 1500 words) in an attachment of .doc or .rtf format (.jpg for images) and a bio of no more than fifty words to pluckjournal@gmail.com. Multiple submissions accepted. Please advise if your submission is accepted elsewhere. Submissions accepted until August 29, 2011.

We are currently accepting submissions for the eighth annual print issue of Fairy Tale Review, The Grey Issue, to be Guest Edited by Alissa Nutting. This is a themed issue, dedicated to Lost Girls & Boys. We're interested in writing that visits and turns on tropes of children and young adults, girls and boys, becoming lost (whether figuratively or literally) in fairy tales and in the contemporary literature that reinterprets or is informed by fairy tales. This includes characters who are separated from parents, who are stuck inside an animal's stomach, who are faced with bewildering choices, who are running away to or from who-knows-where, who are confused in the forest-lost in any sense, and in any form of writing. Please send poetry, fiction, essays, drama, creative nonfiction, comics, illustration, etc. The submission period is open until we announce it is closed, likely around July 31st. We will consider only previously unpublished work and new translations. Please submit work to thegreyissue@gmail.com as word, .doc, .rtf, or .pdf files.

For an upcoming issue, Creative Nonfiction (www.creativenonfiction.org) is seeking new essays about true crime--detailed reports of premeditation, follow-through and aftermath, whether gleaned from police blotters or the news, passed down as small-town legend or family lore, or committed in cold blood. We want true stories of petty theft, identity theft, embezzlement or first-degree murder; of jaywalking, selling (or maybe buying) drugs or assault; of crimes and punishments and unsolved mysteries. Think "The Devil in the White City" (Larson), "In Cold Blood" (Capote) and "Iphigenia in Forest Hills" (Malcolm); or "Half a Life" (Strauss), "Lucky (Sebold) and "The Night of the Gun" (Carr). If it's against the law and someone--maybe even you!--did it anyway, we want to know all about it. We're looking for well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice. Essays can be serious, humorous or somewhere in between. Creative Nonfiction editors will award $1000 for Best Essay. Essays must be unpublished, 4,000 words maximum, and postmarked by September 30, 2011.

Themed heroic fiction contest: CHALLENGE! STEALTH. Rogue Blade Entertainment's 2nd annual writing competition fundraiser (http://www.roguebladesentertainment.com/2011/06/challenge-stealth-officially-opens/). Stories should be based upon the cover art and title of the anthology, should be between 3,000 and 9,000 words, should be submitted via email as RTF files to challenge@roguebladesentertainment.com, will cost $10.00 per submission and paid via PayPal invoice, and will be judged upon 2 criteria: how well each delivers quality heroic adventure, and how well each uses the cover art and book title for inspiration. The Top 12 winners will be published in the CHALLENGE! STEALTH anthology, and the Top 3 winners will receive cash prizes of $75/50/25. Additional information found: http://www.roguebladesentertainment.com/products/rb-presents/rb-presents-anthologies/challenge-anthologies/.

Contributor Spotlight: Holly Simonsen

This Animal Weight: Body as Landscape, Landscape as Body

When one enters what is referred to as “metaphorical space,” the spontaneous interplay of language can occur. I work under the thesis that ecologically disrupted environments offer access points in which to experience language. This metaphorical space is the space of the body, the space of trance, the space of violence, and the space of poetry. As a poet, my intention is to work backwards, into the elemental sources of language: lines become fragments, words tear at the seams, glyphs are incised into the sand and are washed away with the first wave. For the past three years, I have been working in exclusive ecopoetic collaboration with my native landscape, the Great Salt Lake. Dying (drying) for thousands of years, the remnants of the ancient Lake Bonneville are, comparatively, a puddle. The Lake itself is composite -- a diminishing body, more salt than water, more active than the desolate salt flats indicate, profoundly comforting, terrifying, and lonesome.

To outsiders, it may seem obvious that one from Salt Lake City would fall in love with the Great Salt Lake; however, this, too, is part of its allure. The Lake is in plain sight. Each evening, from the top of my street, I can watch the sun drop right into the water. Despite being a short 16 miles from the city-center, the Lake remains largely invisible to most Salt Lake City residents. In fact, many native Utahans have never even visited. Upon learning of my work, most respond with at least some degree of horror, “It stinks there!” or “It’s a filthy cesspool.”

Alfred Lambourne, the man whom I consider to be my poetic predecessor, attempted to homestead the Lake’s Gunnison Island in 1890. He is the only person who claims to have lived at the Lake “for love alone.” He lasted a short eleven months. His failures are recorded in his account, Pictures of an Inland Sea, the opening lines of which read, “No sooner did the sails of the departing yacht vanish and leave me with my thoughts alone, than I felt, and with a strange sinking of the heart, how more intense indeed, how deeper than all imagining, is the wildness and desolation of the savage poem around me.” This passage has become an oft-repeated mantra for me, only I change Lamborne’s around to inside, “the wildness and desolation of the savage poem inside me.” At the Lake I have been shot at, arrested for trespassing, caught in a blizzard, and capsized by waves; however, none of these experiences are “it.” Whatever this wild precipice I am drawn to is, continues to elude explanation. Perhaps it is nothing more than a poet’s obsession.

The Lake is a mirror. It simultaneously holds me and hollows me. It preserves and destroys. I too become invisible, wild. I am pronghorn antelope, coyote, pelican, eared grebe, brine shrimp, and red algae. The language I uncover there takes me to the places where my earliest impulses still quicken. I am both corporeal and transcendent, simultaneously silenced and aware. My body is landscape, the landscape is body, and both are containers for poetry.
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Holly Simonsen also works off the page with installation art and performance poetry. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in several literary journals, including Copper Nickel, Ecotone, and NANO-Fiction. She teaches English at Westminster College. Her poems, "two resting blackbirds" and "Shed" appear in HFR #48.