Contributor Spotlight: Andrea Gregovich and Vladimir Kozlov

Vladimir Kozlov's story “1987” appears in HFR #49. His translator Andrea Gregovich asked him some questions in hopes of shedding some light on some of the cool Soviet-era nuances in the story.

Andrea: This is one of my favorite stories of yours because the young adolescent characters do so many of the things I did when I was in junior high. Just like them, I pierced extra holes in my ears with safety pins, shaved the sides of my head, wrote band names on my denim jacket with a permanent marker, and passed around controversial music like the Sex Pistols on bootleg cassettes. Are you as surprised as I am to discover some of these childhood parallels in our two countries? The United States and the Soviet Union were so different in the eighties, and yet I wonder – what might we have actually had in common?

Vladimir: Yes, I am quite surprised. But, on the other hand, it is sort of proof to me that political systems and ideology don’t mean that much to teenagers. There are much more important things in their lives, like their favorite music, youth rebellion and defiance of authority, and those things turn out to be universal. And although a day-to-day life of an American teenager in the 1980's was inevitably much different from that of a Soviet teenager of the same era, they had much more in common than anyone could think they would. The Soviet government could try to keep people behind the “iron curtain” as long as it could, but it couldn’t control people’s desires, interests and feelings.

Andrea: “1987” opens with a brawl downtown in the Belarusian city of Mogilev, in which the local tough guys take on a bunch of visiting punks who have, oddly enough, come to town to commemorate Hitler's birthday. Where would these guys have come from? Why did they choose Mogilev for their Hitler Day gathering? Besides getting into fights, how else would these guys have celebrated Hitler?

The 1980's was a very confused period for Soviet youths when it came to subcultures and their respective ideologies. For years, we were pretty much isolated from the rest of the world, we didn’t know much about who punks or hippies were, and when some information began to arrive with Gorbachev’s “openness” policies, it was in bits and pieces. Many got quite confused. Very few people understood who punks were and what their subculture was about, including some of those who called themselves “punks.” I’m not sure those guys who came to Mogilev to commemorate Hitler’s birthday were actually punks – they must have been just confused types who thought it was cool to be “punks” and celebrate Hitler and do whatever they could to piss off the authorities. Maybe they came from Leningrad or Moscow where authorities were already prepared to crack down on such a gathering. Why Mogilev? It was relatively close, train tickets were cheap at the time, so why not go to that provincial city and march on the central street, shouting “Sieg Heil” and extending arms in a Nazi salute? There were some Nazi gatherings in Moscow in the early 1980's. Very little is known about who took part and what it was about because the Soviet authorities were very secretive about things like that, which they viewed as “anti-Soviet” rallies. Quite recently, I came across an interesting theory explaining those Nazi activities in the 1980's. Under that theory, some youths saw the Soviet system lie about so many things that they believed it lied about Hitler and the whole Nazi thing, too, and in reality Hitler could have not been that bad. That’s how confused people got.

Andrea: Lenka, a nonconformist, confrontational character in this story, is diagnosed with what I've translated as “mental deviance”, and is committed to a mental institute. Is Lenka legitimately troubled, or was this psychiatric diagnosis invented as a way to deal with troublemakers? How long would a girl like Lenka have spent institutionalized in the Soviet Union in 1987, and what would her experience have been like?

Vladimir: I don’t see any “mental” problems in her. True, she is a troublemaker, she hates school and she hates her parents but she doesn’t suffer from anything that a mental institution could cure. Under the Soviet system, lots of people, including dissidents and protesters against the regime, were committed to mental institutions under various kinds of invented diagnoses. But what is especially sad about Lenka’s case is that her own parents thought she was troubled and sent her to the institution because they were unable to deal with her. Under the bad scenario she would have spent a few weeks institutionalized and that would have been pretty horrible. Under the good scenario, the doctors would have released her after a few days of checks, finding no real mental problems – she was quite young and apparently harmless.

Andrea: You're rather critical of the Soviet school system in this and other stories, as well as in your novel USSR. Even the “good” kids are skeptical about the value of grades, brazenly copy each other's work, and often spend their time in class passing around magazines and drawing pictures rather than paying attention to their lessons. The students in your stories are also constantly reminded that conforming to the collective is far more important than their development as individuals. Was there value in your own school experience beneath all the institutional bullshit? Or did you find, like many of your characters, that life offers more meaningful education than school?

Vladimir: I can absolutely identify with my characters’ skepticism about the Soviet school system in the 1980's. By then, the system, which had never been good, was just deteriorating. There were other things that made school seem pointless. Like, in the late Soviet era, education wasn’t really valued, people with university degrees had boring and uninteresting jobs and were paid less than blue-color workers. Plus, that bullshit about the Communist ideology, which teachers were supposed to feed to their students. But it was pretty clear that they didn’t believe in it themselves, it was all hypocrisy. The Soviet-era school system was meant to be a machine aimed at suppressing individuals and turning them into obedient citizens eager to do what they are told. But it didn’t work that way – at least, in the 1980's, when the Soviet empire was already in agony. The “good” kids hated the system because it was pointless and stupid, the “bad” kids hated it because it tried to coerce them to do things they didn’t want to. One other thing was the disparity between what students were expected to learn and what they actually learned. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to say that there was no value at all in my school experience. There was some specific knowledge in individual subjects that I gained and later used to enter university. But, certainly, what I learned in real life was much more meaningful and useful.
*

Andrea Gregovich is a writer and translator living in Anchorage, Alaska; Vladimir lives in Moscow and is a journalist, novelist, and cultural critic. Andrea's translation of Vladimir's story “Drill and Song Day” appeared in AGNI Review and Rasskazy: New Fiction From a New Russia, and she is almost finished translating his novel USSR.

Ralph Waldo Eggerson Stars in "Goodbye My Chickens, Goodbye."

The deadline for the photo competition is coming up fast, so we thought we'd give you all some inspiration. Ralph Waldo Eggerson agreed to model for us in an example of a photo you might come up with for the video for "Goodbye My Chickens, Goodbye" by Anne Earney. Of course, if you want to submit something other than photos (like drawings, flash images, or music clips) that would be extremely welcome.

Here's the deal. Send us any photograph that you feel relates to the story. Anything at all! We'll choose our favorites and string them together for a fabulous video worthy of killing a radio star. We'll gladly accept your photos through email (hfr@asu.edu). Be sure to include your name and address. The deadline is NOVEMBER 30th!

Aimee Bender in the (Piper) House!

The fabulous Aimee Bender will be on campus this week. These are events you won't want to miss. She'll be doing a free and open-to-the-public Q&A session this Wednesday the 30th at The Piper House at 1:00, and then a reading (also free, also open to the public) at 7:45 that night at The Lyceum Theater.

To whet your literary appetite, check out this great interview with Phoenix's New Times.

Rumor has it that there will be lemon cake for the eating. But no particular sadness, we're hoping. 

Tweeted Questions: Calling All Lit Mags

Tweeted questions just don't stop! (And we love it. More, please!) Continuing with our quest to answer any and all questions we get through Twitter, our discussion panel is taking on a question from fellow mag, Revolution House.

Do you have advice for new mags?

Specter, Mensah Demary   Don't start a literary magazine for any reason other than a love for literature and writers, as well as discovery (the best thrill, so far, is finding a fantastic story from a newcomer or, in some cases, from a vet who had the story rejected multiple times). Beyond the intrinsic qualifications, my advice is to begin. Don't be afraid. Learn as you go along because you will make mistakes, but nothing too detrimental.

Also, don't be cheap. Spend $10 and buy a domain name for your lit mag. Find a solid hosting service with reasonable monthly rates for dedicated server space. If you're going to invest your time, you might as well invest a little bit of money, too. It's the Internet; presentation is everything, and first impressions are fleeting.


Ninth Letter, Jodee Stanley   Get involved with the literary publishing community. Seriously. Go to AWP [Association of Writers & Writing Programs] and any other conferences/bookfairs/literary events you can get to. Follow your favorite lit mags and literary publishers on Facebook and Twitter; engage in conversation with other editors. Once you've published a couple of issues you can and absolutely should join CLMP [Council of Literary Magazines and Presses] so you can participate in ongoing dialogues with editors and publishers. The literary publishing community is welcoming and supportive, as well as being an unbeatable source of information of all kinds.


Black Fox, Racquel Henry   I'd agree with Jodee. Getting involved in the literary community is good advice. Engaging with other editors and publishers is not only enlightening, but supportive. I think it's important for us to support each other and support the writers that we publish.


Joyland Fiction, Brian Joseph Davis   Joyland is online, free, and is funded by grants and donations. Without traditional subscribers, we run hard into the central problem of literary journal entropy: your readers and supporters are the people you, more often than not, are going reject. We ourselves haven't quite licked that problem, but we're trying all the time to improve it. My general advice is to come up with a rejection policy that makes sense, is clear about response times or whether you respond at all. I do believe how you reject is as important as publishing good work.

One problem that afflicts literary journals every now and then is only publishing from an immediate circle, and we have solved that by having eight different regional editors. They do have total control over what they publish. I'm not saying follow our editorial mandates, but if there are lessons you could learn from us, they’re: trust your editors, and start publishing people you don't know as fast as possible.

Contact established authors you like and ask for writing, as well. Both Emily and I worked in publishing and journalism for years before Joyland so we had a few contacts, but we've also done a lot of outreach to complete strangers whose work we love and it's always amazing. No author is ever going to be offended by being asked for work. Conflicted, yes, but offended, no.


CutBank, Josh Fomon   Foremost, don't overextend what you are capable of doing. Start with something manageable so you can grow and subsequently produce more far-reaching goals as you learn to negotiate the amount of time the entire process takes. When beginning a journal, it's not a bad idea to try to solicit work because that gives you greater control over the content and vision of what you want your journal to be. Not enough can be said about social media; it's a great way to expose your journal to a lot of people.


Black Fox, Racquel Henry   One thing that never occurred to me was the idea of soliciting work. I must agree with Josh. That may not be such a bad idea. We've always asked for work from other writers on Twitter, Duotrope, etc., but the thought of actually seeking a writer out and directly asking for a piece never crossed our minds. I quite like that idea, and that may be something we try.


Colorado Review, Stephanie G’Schwind   My advice is to make sure that your partners in crime (and heaven help you if you try this alone) each have different strengths and areas of expertise. Maybe you and a couple others want to select the work to publish, to discover those new voices. Great! But then ideally, you'll have someone who's an organizer, someone who will create structures and schedules for dealing with submissions, editing, and production. You'll have someone who can copyedit, who loves the nuances of the em dash, the semicolon, and that sort of thing. And you'll have someone who can design and lay out the pages and get the issues to and from the printer. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the details. See if you can recruit some dedicated volunteers to help or perhaps start an internship. And finally, join CLMP; it’s a great community of editors, most of whom are more than willing to share their experience and advice with newcomers.


Black Fox, Racquel Henry   Make sure you do your research. Research was the key to our process. There are so many resources out there for literary magazines, but you'll never find them if you don't do your homework. Also, don't give up. Everyone told us that starting a literary magazine was hard work and that most of them fail. We did it anyway. There is nothing like struggling with something and then seeing it succeed in the end. Take the small victories and don't focus on what went wrong along the way. Last, don't do it unless you really love it. All of our editors love words and we are dedicated to continuing the fight to sustain good literature. It won't work unless it's a labor of love.


Barge Press, Shawn Maddey   You really need to take the time to hardcore examine yourself as a reader and/or writer. I honestly don't believe anybody can approach a big fat pile of submissions with the only goal being "I want to choose the very best pieces." What does that even mean? Everybody likes different things, for different reasons. The more vague and general your goals in reading and publishing are, the more dishonest you're being, and the less focused your editorial work will be. Only saying you publish the best work you can find is always a lie—everyone's got an agenda here, everyone's out to say their brand of literature is what's worth reading. Agenda is really not a nasty word; be bold, embrace agenda, and know exactly what yours is, because that's what will make you strong and that's how the conversation moves forward.

On a kind of similar note, don't be afraid to be a hard-ass. It may take a while, but rejections get a lot easier, the more you send them. Don't settle for anything less than exactly what you want. But know why you're rejecting and why you're accepting, most importantly. Doing all personal rejections in the beginning is a great thing and will make you a dramatically better reader. Bottom line is, you may be one of the nicest, gentlest humans on the planet, but if you're editing a mag, your goal is now to weed out the bad ones (and the good ones, too) and promote only the perfect ones. You don't hurt anybody's feelings with rejections, and, if you do, you're just doing the rest of us a service because they shouldn't be playing writer to begin with.

Never overlook the power of networking. Barge started with a core group of four people on the same page but with different skill sets to contribute. Hallie doing layouts, Christine editing and reading, me doing the same and kind of working as the "voice" and overseer of the organization, and Justin bringing the ideas and, very importantly, the network. Meet artists and designers—they will very often be down with what you're trying to do and they're a very active set of people. Make the right friends and you'll get a lot of awesome work done on the cheap or even free—plus now you've got even more people invested in your product who will help promote it.

Oh, and probably the best advice I can think of: if your drunk ideas are your best ideas, run with that. Just make sure you TAKE NOTES. Extensive, highly detailed notes.


Hayden's Ferry Review, Beth Staples   What's resonating a lot with me is what Stephanie said. It's helpful to have a diversity of talents on your staff. You of course have to love literature, but you also have to understand design, finances, social media, appealing to a readership, finances, managing subscriptions, technology and, oh yeah, finances. The problem Brian mentions is well-noted. The people you reject are, still and hopefully, your readers. That's a difficult negotiation. It's great to put out a wonderful magazine, but it's also important to recruit an audience for it. You'll find the number of people who SUBMIT versus the number of people who SUBSCRIBE is a troubling ratio. I think it's easy to underestimate the time and attention you have to put into issues besides finding the best work. Literary journal staffs are usually small, which means that everyone on board has to wear multiple hats, even ones that make their heads look stupid or feel uncomfortable. This metaphor is running away with me, but I hope you see what I mean.

Place in Poetry II

With David St. John

Yes, the desert cools off.

Growing up, I alternated holidays and vacation time between Chicago and Phoenix. Living just outside of Chicago fostered my innate curiosity for What’s going on over there. The city seemed so important. I could feel its importance; hear the expressway into the city humming at all hours just past the fence in my backyard. Recently, details such as this have wandered back to me, sort of tugging on my sleeve, asking me to remember. In response to a question posed last time: I’ve lived in Arizona for eight years, I have only recently worked up to the conversation with my childhood. 

In the spirit of comparing my results with other poets, I ventured to Los Angeles to meet with one whose work I admire and anticipate, David St. John. His poems present to me confrontations & evaluations of the speaker in the terms of what’s going on over there. Sometimes it is a relationship between two people, and others, a relationship between someone and perceived omens. Present in either case is it that innate curiosity.

David St. John shared with me anecdotes of his childhood, his relationship to the San Joaquin Valley, and his friendship with the poet Larry Levis. Though both poets grew up in this California landscape, they approached it differently in the poetry. St. John lived in Fresno’s suburban area, one inherently “less harsh and expansive” than Levis’ farmland. Levis loved going back to this landscape in his writing:

There’s a sense of something meditative about the landscape that he really loved. And what’s interesting to me: in his later work, it’s always there, but after he moved to Missouri, there’s a sense of it in Missouri.

And even when Levis lived in different states or spent time in Eastern Europe, there was still that attraction to the desolate San Joaquin Valley. St. John sought out this meditative landscape, but not in Fresno:

Even though it was the landscape in which I grew up, and it was a familiar landscape, the landscapes that I always wanted to talk about were more psychological and less physical. The terrain of my poems had to do with what was going on between two individuals, usually a man & a woman—a psychosexual landscape of what's at stake.

 

The context landscapes or the 'setting of the poems' were wildly various. I liked being able to create a sense of detachment in the speaker that mirrored the detachment they were confronting.

More psychological and less physical. St. John’s mention of the "context landscape" made me wonder how many poems prefer context landscape over actual landscape. Consider how poems locate the reader regardless of the setting’s actuality; a phenomenon that literary critic Lawrence Buell thinks we should pay attention to: "We need to recognize stylization’s capacity for what the poet-critic Francis Ponge calls adequation: verbalizations that are not replicas but equivalents of the world of objects, such that writing in some measure bridges the abyss that inevitably yawns between language & the object-world."¹ It's a testament to the locative power of the image in language.

Poets can create any desired context setting. Though even in the midst of created context, there seems to be a signal of some actual landscape (whether physical or psychological) drawing in a breath over the course of a poet’s body of work. These landscapes come forth and through a poet, wanting to be spoken for, and the when is no matter of the poet’s choice. It wasn't until the center section of his forthcoming book that St. John was able to locate poems in the San Joaquin Valley:

What happens in these landscapes—there's still a lot of psychosexual stuff happening, but they are very deliberately set within the context of this particular place.

And how strange it is to have returned the poems to this landscape after avoiding it & its perceived limitations. Though I wondered why, in his earlier work, St. John consciously utilized context landscapes as opposed to an influential home-landscape? 

I didn't want the reader to make assumptions. I also didn't want the reader to make assumptions that they were overtly autobiographical….I wanted to be able to displace the reader—more than I felt I could if the poems stayed in Fresno.

My question to this was what changed, what prompted this return? But this question inundates the asker with more questions. I believe we end up saying I don’t know, again. These places have their clock by which they know when to talk to us. They confront us—just as St. John’s speakers are confronted—in that liminal landscape of our art.

¹Buell, Lawrence. "Representing the Environment." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Laurence Coupe and Jonathan Bate. New York (N.Y.): Routledge, 2000. 177-81. Academic Complete. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Thanksgiving Has Arrived!

Thanksgiving, the day of thanks and copious amounts of wondrous food is almost upon us. So with that in mind I'd like to give my thanks to Stephen King. Yes, I know, not the normal statement one would hear while gathered around the table looking upon a roasted bird. But all references to food aside, I would like to give thanks to Mr. King for his sense of humor while searching for great short stories during his editorship of The Best American Short Stories 2007. And I am especially thankful that during his search he brings to light the difficulty in finding literary journals in a bookstore when he writes:

I walk past the best sellers, past trade paperbacks with titles like “Who Stole My Chicken?,” “The Get-Rich Secret” and “Be a Big Cheese Now,” past the mysteries, past the auto-repair manuals, past the remaindered coffee-table books (looking sad and thumbed-through with their red discount stickers). I arrive at the Wall of Magazines, which is next door to the children’s section, where story time is in full swing. I stare at the racks of magazines, and the magazines stare eagerly back. Celebrities in gowns and tuxes, models in low-rise jeans, luxury stereo equipment, talk-show hosts with can’t-miss diet plans — they all scream Buy me, buy me! Take me home and I’ll change your life!

I can grab The New Yorker and Harper’s while I’m still standing up, without going to my knees like a school janitor trying to scrape a particularly stubborn wad of gum off the gym floor. For the rest, I must assume exactly that position. I hope the young woman browsing Modern Bride won’t think I’m trying to look up her skirt. I hope the young man trying to decide between Starlog and Fangoria won’t step on me. I crawl along the lowest shelf, where neatness alone suggests few ever go. And here I find fresh treasure: not just Zoetrope and Tin House, but also Five Points and The Kenyon Review. No Glimmer Train, but there’s American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, even an Alaska Quarterly Review. I stagger to my feet and limp toward the checkout. The total cost of my six magazines runs to over $80. There are no discounts in the magazine section.

How many of us have done such things in search of short stories? I have. So let's all give thanks for the types of short stories that give the reader, as Mr. King says, "something that comes at me full-bore, like a big, hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the eject button in his F-111."

So before you sit down to enjoy the holiday, read Mr. King's article then pick up your favorite collection or journal and enjoy being taken to parts unknown with characters as real as your Great Aunt Beatrice, who brings the sweet potato pie to Thanksgiving, along with her annoying yappy little dog, Chester.

Book Review: She'd Waited Millennia

Minute by Minute, Life

She’d Waited Millennia, by Lizzie Hutton
New Issues Press, 2011.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner
Debrah.Lechner@gmail.com

Lizzie Hutton’s She’d Waited Millennia has a heartbeat. It measures both interior and exterior moments, the moments that create change and growth, the moments that we suffer through, and the long moments through which we can only wait. This poet considers life in its various ages and moments dispassionately, almost surgically, and she isn’t afraid to talk about identity in terms of lies and the decisions we make about what we choose to be true. In “Pollen, Cross-Pollen” Hutton recalls an incident in which a teacher implied the speaker thought the speaker had been molested by her father, and although it wasn’t true, the speaker didn’t correct the teacher:

I think it was rather that I wanted, fairly idly,
to see how it felt, like the princess, to let
an untruth float like pollen in that afternoon’s sun.

Those were the days of testing who I was with others.
I hadn’t yet ambered to my present self-involvement,
my intricate devices of justification

The insight Hutton has into these moments of unfinalized individualization is a valuable emotional and intellectual experience. Perhaps I appreciate even more the fine technique that enhances her lyricism, particularly in “Rose Gold and Poppies.” In the poem, she interweaves two passages in time: one that happened when she was 28, and one when she was 35. At 28, she’s speaking of the manufacturing of a beloved ring of rose gold. At 35, she’s describing a slaughterhouse, which is an ironically pastoral interlude with her child who is playing with a new generation of piglets.

Even so, the sloping pebbled road was beautiful
at night. The wallpaper designs were rolled
in repeating frames. I couldn’t tell, though, if

Their squeals were greedy grunts or pained―then
machine-sliced and cut to size, formed into rings
and put to harden―even wondered if it was themselves

They ever ate―like cannoli shells on slender tubes,
my-finger-shaped. Oh stacks of small mid-whistle mouths
lustrous with emotion.

This is the kind of play with language that only poetry offers, and when a poem can be lyrical, narrative, completely comprehended and at the same time rearrange the world entirely, it pleases the literary mind in a deeply satisfying way―and perhaps creates new neural pathways.

“Rose Gold and Poppies,” this one poem, is more than enough reason to add She’d Waited Millennia to your collection, and you can obtain it at the usual venues, including online.

Tweeted Questions: What's the Role of Small Press?

This summer, we got a question on Twitter about the role of small press. (Really, what's the point of them, anyway? KIDDING.) And while we've taken our sweet time answering this question, we also invoked the help of several editors from various literary magazines and had a thorough discussion about the role, place, and function of small presses and literary magazines. So grab yourself a mug of something hot, and settle in. Many thanks to butnsr12, who prompted this discussion by asking:

What role does the small press fill other than as a stepping-stone to the 'big times'?

Specter, Mensah Demary   Small presses are, in my mind, independent of "the big time." They publish the books the large houses no longer want, if they wanted them at all. They're more daring in what they publish (as well as who), and because of their size, they're swifter to adapt to changes in technology. They may be more open for experimentation, for working closely with the author to bring about his/her vision. Maybe small presses fill that gap, that space where the publisher and the writer work together on a project.

Still, I can't discount the large houses because they still publish worthwhile books. I like to think that some are still trying to "fight the good fight," which is the continued growth and promotion of the literary arts. That said, I try to stay away from the idea that small presses are "altruistic" and large houses are "malevolent." The goal is to publish the writer, to feed the ever-hungry (and perhaps fickle) reader.

Ninth Letter, Jodee Stanley   Small presses and literary journals are where contemporary literature grows and evolves. Let's be honest, the "big times" (NY book publishers, slick magazines) are by their very nature forced to consider the market and the bottom line. That's why so many magazines stopped publishing fiction—they (and/or their advertisers) felt that it wasn't attracting enough readers to make it worth the pages it took up. Big houses may want to keep literary authors on their lists, but in the face of budget cuts, the authors whose books sell the least will be the first dropped, regardless of how important the writing they do may be to the literary conversation. Small presses and literary journals don't have these issues—this community's main concern is keeping literature alive. New trends are born here, new schools of poetry, new ways of writing narrative and expressing truths. Writers who want to be part of this dialogue, and readers who want to follow it will always look to independent publishers and journals for the really exciting stuff.

Black Fox, Racquel Henry   I have to agree with Jodee on this one. Small presses are mainly concerned with keeping literature alive. Small presses are not afraid to publish a piece that takes risks. The larger houses are more concerned with publishing work that sells. It's just that priorities are different. The book that goes against the grain is more of a priority for a small press.

Joyland Fiction, Brian Joseph Davis   That dynamic might have had some traction in the '90s—and the small presses hate being considered "the farm teams" by the way—but it's just not true now. If you want to write a certain kind of writing, maybe something really bold, or writing for other writers, then the small press is a destination, not a consolation prize or stepping stone. The small—and large—publishers that are still doing well are the ones that have always acted as community hubs for specific kinds of writing and books. If they can continue to do that, especially with all the tools that make it really easy now, then they'll continue to do fine.

CutBank, Josh Fomon   Small presses aren't the big time? Kidding. But I'm going to defer to Kate Rutledge Jaffe, our former Editor in Chief, on this question: "I think small presses are incredible avenues for new writers looking to gain an audience, a place for readers to find inspiration, a fun way to discover new work and to watch as established writers take big, rewarding risks. Small presses and literary magazines also serve as a paper (and increasingly an online) community of bold writers determined to reach an audience with their work. And the curatorial aspect cannot be glossed over; each small press has a unique vision and eye for work, and publishes works that complement each other and the overall identity of the press. Find a small press whose aesthetic aligns with your own and you'll have found a friend, someone to introduce you to incredible, surprising work you might have otherwise missed."

Colorado Review, Stephanie G’Schwind   I often think of each issue of Colorado Review as a snapshot of a conversation—a conversation about what's happening right now in poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. This is what people are working on and trying out, what they're thinking about, what they're obsessed with. And I hope that it sparks further conversation—for the both the readers and the writers. And while it’s been true for us that agents pay attention to what we publish and often contact us about writers we’ve featured (presumably to invite them to the “big time”), we’ll always be a place for writers to get started, and come home to.

Black Fox, Racquel Henry   We think small presses play a very important role in the deliverance of good literature. There are so many talented writers out there; we simply offer enough places for those writers to be heard. Small presses sometimes enlighten people on what they're missing—they break the rules. In a way, small presses keep the literary world on its toes. They sometimes shock, invoke happiness, sadness, anger, etc. Also, no matter the size of the contribution, small presses are responsible for continuing the tradition of reading for pleasure. Because of small presses, people still DO read literary magazines.

Barge Press, Shawn Maddey   Not sure what "big times" is, but I would guess that if "big time" is your goal, you should probably just shoot for that and skip all of this nonsense. You can get published in a hundred lit mags, put out a billion chapbooks, and it might earn you some cred, or it might not. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and just say that there probably aren't too many mags out there thinking they've got the next Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates on their hands. There's simply way too many writers and way too much going on in the small press world for that to really hold much water anymore, not to mention, where the mainstream is concerned, a declining interest in the literary forms and styles small presses tend to present... that's why none of us can afford to pay. Besides, my idea of the function of the small press is dramatically cooler than all that.

By submitting to and publishing in small presses, as an author, you're becoming part of a community. But that community isn't necessarily about stepping-stones and self-promotion—though if you can use it that way, all the more power to you! That community is all about discussion and interrelation. If writing is simply writing and you're looking for legitimation to get an agent or major book deal, then the actual market of journals would be very small and limited to a few highly established guys with high print numbers who would be making profits off of the fantastic collections of literature they've put together, people clamoring to see the next big thing. Maybe, to some degree, this was the case in the past, like pre-2000s, and even more dramatically pre-1970s. Any other endeavor would just be futile, the whole thing would just be a big minor league system for the top dogs to pick from; the little guys wouldn't even have a chance, or a purpose.

So why, oh, why do we publish? Just like why, oh, why do we write. Like any writer (and most of us who are editing and publishing are also writers), we have something to say, and, increasingly, the ability and outlets to say it. The only other option is that all content is created equal—that the "best work" is the best work, without room for debate. In that case, why bother? I can't decide what, objectively, the best work is any better than the next person can, and certainly couldn't afford a print run of 10,000 the way others can. Pointless. The truth is, there is no such thing as any kind of concrete and objective truth to any aesthetic. The truth is, this world is made up of many voices, very few of them trying to strike it rich, most of them just doing it for the love of the game. That's what really makes it special and fun—you really just gotta fucking love it.

Hayden's Ferry Review, Beth Staples   This question is a tough one because I find the general sentiment behind it problematic. I recently heard the author Reif Larsen speak, and he said (I wrote it down, so this is verbatim), "I think writers forget why they write: to keep writing." I think too often people focus on some kind of outcome: I'll write a story to get it published in a journal, I'll get published in a journal so I can get an agent, I'll get an agent so I can be famous... I think literary journals exist, in part, to support writers. Is that not an end in itself? The continuation of the art, the support of the artist? And then to find an audience of dedicated readers and bring them to exciting work. We're part of an exciting and vibrant community, and we contribute to that community in all sorts of ways: by creating conversation, by getting excited about literature, by letting writers know that people "out there" care that they're writing. Whether they get a six-figure book deal is, to me, beside the point.

Barge Press, Shawn Maddey   Everyone seems to be pretty much in lock-step with each other, right down to the laughable notion of comparing us to the big-time... not that the comparison itself is idiotic or laughable, just that we're all in so deep in this that it's humbling—we've all had to confront that we are not the “big time” and won't and can't be. But I don't find it insulting so much, as if we're the minor leagues, but still, I just see it as a thought that probably rings true for a lot of people, and one that ought to be dispelled. The clearer the line is between the concept of major publishing houses and the small presses, the better off the small presses are (especially in an era where people are craving the off-beat, the local, the organic, non-industrial products that are carefully crafted rather than merely produced, assembly-line style.)

Community is a definite recurring theme here, and seems something we've all latched on to as one of the defining factors, philosophically, that separates us from the large houses. It is important, for sure, to be part of the community of writers, but, given what we are, I think it's even more important to promote literature as part of the community of artists in general and, more than anything else, the individual communities we live in. Merely appealing to the community of writers is narrow-minded and begs for stagnation and irrelevance—two things which don't do a very good job of promoting our art.

This didn't up, but I don't think we should ever shy away from intellectual confrontation and debate. I recently had a run-in with an editor who was not so chill, from a mag I won't name. To him, print was the only legitimate form of literature, and he seemed almost scornful that his mag was going half-digital. I tried to argue the benefit of digital publishing, but I think he wrote me off as either an idiot or a drunk, because he was not very amenable to my salient logical gymnastics. Where there was an opportunity to have a legitimate philosophical debate, he simply turned his nose at me, rather than defending his point of view. This guy is, thank fucking god, an exception to the rule—everyone else I've interacted with has been the salt of the earth: warm, welcoming, and fun. The moral is: Don't be a stuck-up prude. Stand by your beliefs, yes, but embrace the opportunity to defend them, or at least discuss them. Literature always has to be something people can relate to, and nobody relates to self-absorbed wieners. Not to mention, being a self-absorbed wiener does absolutely nothing to advance the art form.

News Around the Net

The National Book Award winners have been announced. Congrats to all.

Authors who've never written a dud. As long as we're on the topic of complete subjectivity.

Good news, the missing books from the raid at Occupy Wall Street have been found. They were not thrown away. Also you get a tweet from the mayor of New York. I might be the last person under 80 who still doesn't know Twitter-speak.

Speaking of Twitter, how about Salman Rushdie venting his frustration about Facebook on Twitter, anyone interested in that? And for anyone who's wondering, no, Salman Rushdie did not become a 14 year old girl overnight.

So look whose book is The Rumpus's poetry book club selection for November. ASU's own.

Here some writers (including Junot Diaz and Philip Pullman) share their book collecting habits and show their libraries. And we get their top 10 books.

Unusual Call for Submissions

OccuPoetry is seeking poetry about economic justice/injustice, greed, protest, activism, and opportunity. Submissions need not be limited to Wall Street's greed nor US-based poets; we consider the Occupy Movement a world-wide movement for a more just world. OccuPoetry accepts formal and free-verse, mail art, and collage poetry. Details and submission guidelines here.

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery." The online literary magazine qarrtsiluni, now in its 7th year of operation, has just issued a call for submissions to an imitation-themed issue. The deadline is November 30. Details here.

Writer Advice's latest submission opportunity regards a moment in time that altered your world forever. Share 50 to 500 words of prose or up to 24 lines of poetry. It can be as small as picking up the telephone or as big as a hurricane. It can be as global as the impact of 9-11 or as personal as the discovery that your perfect baby has a chronic disease. It can be the start or end of a job or the time you responded to a Craigslist ad and found love. What moment altered your world forever? Submit to Lgood67334@comcast.net. DUE: December 10, 2011.

A unique opportunity brought to you by Unstuck's premiere release! To celebrate the upcoming release of the first issue, they're holding a fee-free contest with some unusual prizes. This is a micro-lit contest (miniature stories, miniature essays, and poems). Entry fee: $0, natch, although the contest is OPEN ONLY TO THEIR TWITTER FOLLOWERS. Link to UnstuckMag's twitter here. Last day entries will be accepted: December 31, 2011. Details here.

Each month SWITCHBACK provides a prompt and asks writers to send their best work inspired by that prompt. The winning entry as decided by their editors is then featured on SWITCHBACK. The November prompt is: "Nobody ever knows anything for a fact." Details here.

Photo Contest!

Hello All!

You may remember our plea from a few weeks back asking for photos for our next HFR video project. We've decided to hold a photo contest! Those whose photos are chosen for the video will receive a copy of the new HFR #49!!

For this video project, we've decided on "Goodbye, My Chickens, Goodbye" by Anne Earney, in HFR #48. Here's the deal. Send us any photograph that you feel relates to the story. Anything at all! We'll choose our favorites and string them together for a fabulous video worthy of killing a radio star. We'll gladly accept your photos through email (hfr@asu.edu). Be sure to include your name and address. The deadline is NOVEMBER 30th!

Book Review: The Uncertainty Principle

A Certain Kind of Poetry

The Uncertainty Principle, by Mark Kraushaar
The Waywiser Press, 2011.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner

Sweet Holy [______ ] (your choice of divine—but completely politically correct—descriptor here) Kraushaar’s poems rock. I’m going to drop the some of the standard poetic analysis here, not because Kraushaar’s work doesn’t live up to it—it certainly does—but because it is so organic, has such spontaneity, such a gut-punch of recognition, that I feel freed to do so. While I’m in the grip of this strong sense of permission, I’m going to use it to use a few words that some poets might consider anathema when applied to their work: effortless, narrative, characterization, and fun.

The narrative quality of this poetry and the convincing characterization of the many portraits this poet paints creates an effortless reading experience, and that causes an impact that strikes with maximum speed and potency. It’s a little like taking a drug intravenously rather than swallowing it. And it’s fun to read aloud; it’s poetry that is meant to be shared.

Although the poems are fun to read aloud that does not mean that the subject matter is not serious. It is. The emotion evoked is sometimes throat-closing, and the forms used are varied, well-conceived and essential to each poem. Here is one poem quoted in its entirety, Chris St. George:

My best friend said once,
my best friend said in ninth grade homeroom
to that rigidly grinning Mr. Sonny Sewell whose
flat-topped head seemed cemented to his
yard-wide shoulders, Coach – because
Mr. Sewell preferred to be “Coach”
in or out of class – Coach, my friend said
to this big-bottomed, thick-legged lug who’d clap
once before pulling down our world-map,
who’d clap once before speaking, who’d clap
once before sitting or standing or starting
study hall or football or civics,
Coach, my best friend said,
first wetting his lips,
then raising his hand and then standing
and leaning forward and knitting his brow,
Coach, he said to this Mr. Sonny Sewell who swore
he’d slap any boy he caught crying in his locker room,
Coach, my friend said, this brilliant and lovely
and lonely kid whose mother drank Clorox
and died in her kitchen, Coach,
my friend said, who ten years later,
to find God, after trying everything else,
jumped in front of a semi in Richmond Virginia,
Coach, my friend said, first clearing his throat,
and then raising his hand and suddenly standing, Coach,
he said, in football, in the game of football,
why is there so much pushing?

This poem flows like water over rocks, pooling and deepening, finally diving into itself; in the last line it comes up for air with a moment that was at one time humor, still is humor, but now is also an apex of love, rage, and loss. I’ll never forget this poem.

And I’ll be reading it out loud to a few more selected people.

The Uncertainty Principle won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in 2010. Mark Kraushaar has another book of poetry in print, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, which is available at booksellers now. The Uncertainty Principle will be released January 28, 2012 and is available for pre-order through Amazon.com.

Notes from NJ — Hi Beth (# 5)

Chuck Tripi has lived a life of poetry and study since a medical catastrophe suddenly ended his flying career in 1998. After his poem "Crack-Up" was published in HFR's 47th issue, he struck up a correspondence with Managing Editor Beth Staples. His epistolary perspective on writing and the writing life has been so valuable to Beth, she wanted to share some of his notes here. He writes from Sussex County. See all of Chuck's letters here.
*

Hi Beth,

I had a chance while healing at the dawn of the mind-body era to sit with an eminent psychiatrist for several sessions at a deep discount. His greeting was lovely—ah, he said, you have finally come to me.

First you must stretch, and you must buy a book (he garbles the title, he garbles the author). I cannot give it to you; you must get it for yourself.

I couldn’t understand a word through his heavy accent in the unfamiliar setting and had to ask several times that he repeat himself, until he practically screamed at me, Stretching, by Bob Anderson, go buy that book now, learn how to stretch.

In my room at the Hyatt at the DFW airport, I was listening to some classical music on the radio, doing my brand-new stretching routine and, I swear to God, I started having visions. I couldn’t wait to tell my new guru!

It means you are out of balance, he practically screamed, go stretch more now!

Isn’t this a way to write well—to stretch, to have a vision, teeter a little, write it down, return to our senses; write it down again?

And vision turns to work, and work turns to drudgery, and everyone gets lost sometimes.

In our last session, for a reason still unplumbed, he gave me a fifty minute monologue on how to get what I want. To say the truth, it seemed a little too goal-oriented for my taste.

When he was through, I made my single utterance—but Doctor, How do I know what I want? He busted a gut, laughing so hard that his eyes disappeared into the wrinkles of his face—Ah hah hah, my friend, you nevah do, you nevah do!

I have received advice that a poem will announce where it wants to go, that even its form will unfold relatively uncoaxed. That is the tricky word of it all, isn’t it—relatively?

I do not want my diary read. Thus, there is a partnership between my poems and me.

I tell them where I want them to go. Sometimes I am right; sometimes they listen.

Best,
CKT

Book Review: Mechanical Fireflies

Knowing the Unknown

Mechanical Fireflies, by Doug Ramspeck.
The Waywiser Press, 2011.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner
debrah.lechner@gmail.com

Doug Ramspeck has authored four books of poetry, and his first book, Black Tupelo County, won the John Ciardi Prize. As a blurb on the back of Mechanical Fireflies mentions, his voice is polished, perfected.

It is also fresh and vital. The light and shadow in this poetry, the natural world and the world that the mind delineates, are renewed in this verse. They are distinct and newly apprehended. From "Aporia":

And so the inexplicable:
the river a drop
cloth collecting moon

spillage, some un-
wrapping of night
among the hickories:

this sweet unknowing,
the shadow
that cannot tell itself

from current.
Or then a turning
and unturning,

an imagined stark divide
between inside
and outside,

as though we open
` our palms that capture
light that seeps from

our own bodies, some implicit
discipline of self-
deception.

This expressed “unknowing” defines what may not last but returns and what is found that is recognized by what has been lost. It’s a flickering revelation, difficult to seize, potent and lovely, and a pure pleasure to find presented to readers in this collection. For working poets, Mechanical Fireflies will be refreshing and inspirational.

Amazon.com is offering three of Doug Ramspeck’s poetry collections: Mechanical Fireflies,
Black Tupelo County and Possum Nocturne. Quantities are limited.

Unusual Call for Submissions

The deadline for Flyway magazine's annual contest "Notes From the Field" is NOVEMBER 4th, so send them your place- or environment-based prose! They're interested in anything up to 3,500 words that involves one's place or environment, as well as imagination, of course. Work can be submitted online, and the winner will be awarded $200 and publication in Flyway. To submit, or for more information, visit their website.

The Ramsfield Press is holding a Holiday Writing Contest! Write a short piece about a year end holiday celebration. It can be Christmas, Thanksgiving, Chaunakkah, Kwanza, New Year's, the Soltice, or whatever holiday you celebrate. The length should be between 1,000 and 2,500 words. Guidelines and submission details here. All entries must be received by December 19, 2011.

There's a call for submissions for an anthology of humorous tech support stories. The editors seek quality non-fiction accounts of bizarre requests, inane questions, and pitiful pleas for help untangling technology. Entries should be between 500 and 1500 words. The anthology will be published in e-book format, and authors may appear anonymously if so desired. Preference will be given to stories involving face-to-face tech support rather than support given over the phone. To submit a story for consideration, email your entry as a MS Word, RTF, or Open Office document to usererror@nicomachus.net (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail). Submission deadline is January 31, 2012.

Lastly, Five Stop Story's November competition! The theme is "Rivalry" and it's free to enter. The competition is open to adults aged 16 and over and the closing date is 30th November. They're looking for stories of 1,000 - 3,000 words. All winning stories will be published on their iPhone and iPad app, which can be downloaded from itunes. Find out more about it here. The overall winner will also receive a book of short stories.

This Week in Literary History: Bring Out the Saints and Crane

Now that the fun of Halloween has passed us by, let’s welcome in All Saints Day, which is generally thought of as a Catholic holiday. However, in Poland it’s a national holiday, where people go to cemeteries to place flowers and candles on graves so that the departed can find their way in the darkness. Also, November 1^st is the beginning of the Day of the Dead celebrations, which culminates with All Souls Day on November 2^nd. And we can’t stop there, because Stephen Crane, born in 1871, shares this day as well.

Crane was best known for The Red Badge of Courage, which became a regular feature in a newspaper syndicate. And of course there's also “The Open Boat,” but the work I enjoy most is Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. I love his gritty portrayal of a family trapped in poverty. And despite its brutality and harshness, one can’t help but want Maggie to succeed even though her ultimate death is a foregone conclusion. It was a social commentary, which showed the power of literature as a means to create a social discourse about life in a tenement during Crane’s time. What’s also interesting is that Crane couldn’t find a publisher for Maggie due to the scandalous content, and he had to self-publish his first novel.

So in honor of Crane and this auspicious day, let’s revisit HFR #21 Fall/Winter 1997 for Jean Harfenist’s “The Provider.” This is the story of Jack Anderson, the hardware salesman, who is lost in his life knowing that he's the provider for his family but resenting it, and his one joy is singing with the barbershop quartet. “Jack felt free when he was singing. That was it: free. As long as he was singing, no one expected anything else; he was good enough. Marion and the kids acted like a jury the rest of the time, studying everything he did, judging him.”

Next, pick up the latest issue of Crab Orchard Review, Volume 16, Number 1 Winter/Spring 2011, and read “Rise” by L. Annette Binder. This is the story of Ethan, who—with his car—hit a girl wearing “a yellow dress and there were flowers on the skirt. He saw these things. The flowers and her lace socks and the book bag she swung in the air. Her older sister was a few steps behind. She was close enough to see but powerless to change things. The girl flew over his hood.”

Book Review: Entering the House of Awe

Artifacts of Passion

Entering the House of Awe, by Susanna Childress
New Issues, 2011.
Poetry.
Review by Debrah Lechner
Debrah.Lechner@gmail.com

Entering the House of Awe is the poetry of passion, of impatience, of an unabated hunger to experience, to understand, to possess the ephemeral. It is all of this, and it is self-aware, wry, and witty as well.

From "The Necessary Dark":

I send the letter, in the corner a stamp
like the eye of a fish, promising something

neither of us know how to say. I send the rain, the cracked
green shell of a tortoise . . .

I send to your empty mouth a whistle

on the end of a string, my last true place, silence plaited
in the gristle of the spine and the tendons of the arms raised waist-high

hollowed out as if to hold you, yes, even this I send.

Immediately following this gorgeous poem is another of equal beauty, which I am particularly happy to include in this review because it complements and quite precisely illustrates the “artifact” theme for issue #49 of Hayden’s Ferry Review. The name of the poem itself is delightful: "Instructions for the Twitterpated, Nightengaled, and Sore in Love."

Begin by throwing something away: the microwave,
for example. This will be easier after the crimson hibiscus
fall from where you hung them to dry, their huge corolla spilled
like dark tortillas and you own ticking pulse

won’t stop you from sinking to the floor with a heady,
comprehensive loss, those flowers you hung up by the broom
stunningly ruined, their long legs snapped like the legs
of a praying mantis. After this, sweep your arm

across the cupboards and fill a canvas sack with the butter pickles
and wheat germ nobody bothered to open, the prize-winning box
of cereal, the spindled cheese grate. Whatever you do, do not
toss the egg shells, which, after having broken each open

you returned to the carton like a dozen viscous sockets
that might yet sing. Run your fingers over their fractured edges
and don’t be surprised if you’ve never touched
such a thing, speckled with the memory of locust,

millet, wind, now crooked halves of yolky hollow,
cupped grottos of sound you’ve become deaf to . . .

And so it goes, one beauty after another in varying poetic forms. Readers will necessarily have their favorites, but all of these poems offer deeply detailed sensual pleasures.

Susanna Childress has published another book of poetry that would make an excellent companion to this volume, Jagged with Love, which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. Both are at this time available at Amazon.com and from most other booksellers.