Arava Review is Accepting Submissions

First, I would like to thank Tova Gardner, a fellow poet whom I met at Vermont Studio, for sharing her new literary journal link with me.  Tova is a talented poet, and I was going to write an introduction for her, but hers is so much better:

Tova Gardner is a young Israeli poet. She has twice received Artist Grants from Vermont Studio Center where she studied with poet Kevin Young and will study with poet and Poetry Editor of Lilith Magazine, Marge Piercy. Her poems have appeared in Global Tapestry, Obsessed With Pipework, Dislocate Literary Journal, California Quarterly and Poeticamagazine. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.

If you have work in the areas of fiction, poetry, visual art, and fact, please send your submissions to the Arava Review.

War-a poem of beautiful imagery

I love this poem. It is by a poet named Semezdin Mehmedinovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

War

and nothing is going on–

I go into town to beg for cigarettes

I’ve always known your scent

but you’ve never been closer–

sometimes when it’s cold in the morning you

put my underwear on by mistake

in ten years we haven’t been together as much

as we have these five months–

now you’ve got my sweater on all day

your joy

at the packets of humanitarian aid

makes me happy and sad at the same time

and I ask myself:  where on earth do

you find us coffee every night?

There isn’t a single pane of glass left in our windows

and there’s just no way to get rid

of the lagging flies

translated from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay.

Left Eye Losing Sight

John Olivares Espinoza is a friend of mine, and he sent me his new book, The Date Fruit Elegies.  Today, I read “Left Eye Losing Sight”, and I truly admired his writing gifts and talents.  It inspired me to get back online.  I have been offline due to illness.

I love this poem, and I hope that you enoy it as much as I do:

As the sight in my left eye

Worsens each year,

The other gets sharper.

My right eye

Tells the other,

Do not fret

I’ll watch over you

Like a little brother

***

When I shut my right eye

The world loses all detail:

People become traces

Of themselves, souls of what

Once fitted flesh;

Ghosts whose

World I have entered

Without earning my death

***

I had an uncle

Who had gone

Completely blind

By the time he was fifty.

The first and only

Time I met him

I was eleven

And asked,

What do you see

When you’re blind?

Nothing, he answered back

Do you see black?

He said, Not even that.

***

My grandfather slept with a revolver

                                      Under his pillow.

Once, he unloaded it,

                Held the rounds like a set of teeth.

He handed the pistol to my young brother

And he inspected

                   Each curve

As if it were a woman’s sleeping body

Before my brother handed me the gun

The barrel glared right at me–

I stared into its one black eye

And flinched.

***
Shut one eye as you read

Or hear this.

What do you see out of the sealed eye?

Now imagine it in both eyes.

Now do you understand my uncle?

–John Olivares Espinoza Pages 40-41 from The Date Fruit Elegies

The Date Fruit Elegies by John O. Espinoza is published and available

You can learn more about the book at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/
The order form can be found at:
http://john-olivares-espinoza.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/datefruitflyer2.pdf

Surrealist Poetry

I tried to convert my PDF notes on Surrealist Poetry to Word, but it was rife with errors and symbols.

Hope you don’t mind the PDF version.  Also listed in the notes are Surrealist-inspired and Surrealist Poets.

surrealism2

The Villanelle

Strand and Boland page 5

1. Poem with 19 lines

2. 5 Stanzas Each has 3 lines; the last stanza has 4 lines

3. The first line of Stanza 1 is repeated as the last Line 3 of Stanzas 2 and 4

4. The third line of Stanza 1 is repeated as the last line of Stanzas 3 and 5

5. Refrain lines of 3 and 4 are the last two lines of the poem

6. Rhyme scheme is aba. Rhymes are repeated according to the refrains.