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.

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.