Friday, July 26, 2019

Brian Beatty On Kenneth Patchen

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Kenneth Patchen

Your declared war
on war all but killed you,
I’m afraid.

Your oft professed love
of love didn’t save you either.
Or so I fear. 

California, wherever it is, 
always sounds far away. 

I hear some people find it 
peaceful there.

You don’t say?

You don’t say.

– Brian Beatty


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NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Tobi Alfier - Journals really do “Build Themselves”


Have you ever gotten a rejection, and you look at what you submitted and it was great? It happens to me all the time, and it makes me so frustrated. Five poems that I’m really proud of with a great big “we’re gonna pass this time, but please consider us again”? Why would I consider you again if you hate my poems?

After publishing a journal for eleven years, I can tell you that you may have sent in a terrific submission, that meets all the guidelines and aesthetics for the journal, but  your wonderful poems do not work with, or was too much like the work that’s already been accepted—so there’s no place for you.

It’s the oddest thing. And it happens all the time.

SPRR website
In January of 2009 we published the first issue of San Pedro River Review (SPRR). We accepted and rejected work daily as we read submissions. At the end of the one-month window, we found that almost the whole journal was about birds and death.

That taught us not to accept or decline work as we received it, rather wait a week or so and start accepting on a rolling basis. We had, and still have, a short waiting period for submitters because our window is only a month long. We don’t “hold work hostage” for very long. Even still, issue after issue we find a general “theme” to the work we receive, and one or two A+ poems that just don’t fit easily.

We used to ask if we could hold those A+ poems until the next issue, but now that we have a theme every other issue, we can’t do that (and that’s why sometimes a journal will decline a great submission. It’s to release your work back to you so it can be submitted elsewhere. For those of you who are insecure, like I am, this truly is not about the quality of your work).

I have talked to other publishers and the same is true for them. If they get 100 great poems about horses, they may not feel like they can take your one poem about seeing the Statue of David at the Accademia. It’s not your fault, they just don’t have the time to find the perfect place for it. This is assuming your work meets the aesthetics and standards of the journal. For this post, we’re going to assume it does.

Click here to enlarge
At SPRR, we spend a lot of time making sure we put all poems into a logical place so that we have an arc that is pleasing to our contributors, that will make them proud to see their poems and make readers want to read more, and more, and more. Sometimes it’s hard but almost every issue we get at least one thank you for the poem order.

NOTE: Cholla Needles, my wonderful host, publishes their journal in a very different way. For those of you who don’t know, first of all please read the Cholla Needles website. Every month, six pages of creative work are published by ten writers. Each writer has a “mini-chapbook” printed. Each group of six pages is titled. As an editor, Rich is looking for a selection of material that both speaks from the depths of an author and communicates to an audience.

Some things some Journals do that I do not personally appreciate:

  1. Reject a great submission and not explain why. They don’t have time for specifics. “We love your poetry but it didn’t fit” would be fine

  1. Reject you and send you a card for how to get a subscription. That’s kind of ballsy, in my opinion

    click to enlarge
    (injection from Rich: When I first started publishing in 1973, every author read the magazine before submitting to it. It wasn’t a “requirement”. We were taught to do that by the writing books and magazines of the time. It simply made sense. Why send work to a magazine full of work you don’t appreciate? Plus, it was an investment of time and cash to send work in and send a SASE in return. Writers looked for magazines as a home & family to grow with. That spirit of family (find old issues of Wormwood, Seven Stars, Vagabond, etc) has been lost in many magazines, but I sense authors who are serious still crave that. I am obviously old-fashioned, but it only makes sense to support the magazines that support you. And yes, I realize the psyche of writers has changed a lot, and they are taught differently by the new intelligencia. Two cents turned into a sermon, sorry. Back to Tobi:)

  1. Hold your work for a year and then reject it. In all fairness, sometimes a university publication has classes for making the journals, and they take a year

  1. Send a rejection on day six of a six-month window and say it’s because the work doesn’t fit. It's day six!!! How do they even know? They need to revise their rejection letters or have more than one (in my opinion)

  1. Most submissions are done online now, but some are still by mail. I did not appreciate waiting in line at the Post Office to pay 75 cents postage due because of extra ads shoved in, only to find it was a rejection

  1. One time I did a submission, then left to drive to my parent’s house. I got a rejection while I was still on the freeway. Was it even read? Who knows?

This issue, SPRR does have a lot of horse, death, and arroyo poems. We don’t have a Statue of David at the Accademia (that’s my poem below), but where the heck are we going to place the A+ poem about caviar? And some other poems that deserve to be published? You’ll just have to see.  At SPRR, we remain committed not to publish ourselves, and to partner with poets who trust us to make a journal they can be proud of. We want that too!! And I’m honored to write this post each week, and submit work to Rich—who has the same feelings and respect for writers that we do.

God Speed

Turn around love,
and with my eyes
let me silence
the pen and ink
sketch of you.
It is time.

The hospital floor is cold
and we are so tired.
you unbraid the blanket
from around your throat
and encase us both,

a living chuppah
as we watch your
elegant breaths,
as you begin
to make things right,
love and mercy.

We talk about small
things, in words
almost weightless,
about the weather,
and how the Harvest
album used to make
us want to cry.

How rounding the corner
at the Accademia
made us feel like
we were touching
God, and we were,

how the legs carved
by Michelangelo were
your legs, your thighs,
and how he must have
known your ancestors.

Yes love, it is time.
Turn around.
Hold my hand
so you will always
remember me, lips
kissing you into my body,
I will never forget you.

Previously published in Bellowing Ark



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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Saturday, July 20, 2019

Poetry reading! July 21st 7-9 PM



We are partying over the release of the 31st issue of Cholla Needles!


On July 21st, from 5-7 PM at Space Cowboy Books, Rose Baldwin and Peter Jastermsky will be our featured readers. They each have books out out worth coming to hear from. We are also celebrating the arrival of issue 31!!! Any member of the community who wishes to be part of this celebration is encouraged to bring a poem to share! We celebrate our love of poetry of all kinds as a community! See you at Space Cowboy Books. We all look forward to hearing your work!



Click here to buy $11.99


Brian Beatty On James & Franz Wright

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to James (1927-1980) & Franz Wright (1953-2015)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

James & Franz Wright

The son flees
his father like a river 

with Ohio in the rearview mirror
at the same time it hides 

up ahead on the horizon 
beyond a line of trees.

– Brian Beatty


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Learn more about James Wright:









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Learn more about Franz Wright:








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click here for more on this book
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NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Tobi Alier - Editing Prose Poems

Today is “Tobi’s Opinion Saturday”. Today is “Publisher Hat Saturday”.  I hope this gives you some ideas and reminders, and please remember—comments below are always welcome.

You know that I eat/ breathe/ sleep/ live a few things 24/7: family, candy, and poetry mostly. Most of the time I’m writing or submitting, but I do also wear a publisher’s hat. Today that’s what I’m wearing (first time since February 23rd). The following is my opinion only. I hope it helps you. It is not the only way to do things, but in my opinion, it’s the most efficient way. It will keep both you, and your publisher from running for the fireball whiskey rather than the atomic fireballs. So let’s start.

On November 16, 2018 I wrote about prose poems vs. fiction. The same is true about both—they are written margin to margin. They may have paragraphs, and fiction paragraphs may have the first line indented, but there are generally no indents in prose poems. And there are no line breaks.

When you write and submit a prose poem, you do so on normal 8 ½ by 11 page sizes. When a publisher puts this into their journal, or formats it for your book, it will be on 5 ½ x 8 ½, or 6 x 9 pages. The font will be the same or similar as when you wrote it, but the width will be half the size.

What does that mean for your poem? The margins are still the same width, but the writing space is smaller.

What does that mean for you as the writer? Your lines will be shorter, and your poem will be longer.

***

Let me digress for a moment. Publishers are going to have their name on your book too. They want it to be a beautiful representation of your work, and something you are both proud of. They want your friends, family, colleagues, etc. to want to buy it. They want libraries to carry it. They have no reason to sabotage your book. They are your allies.

***

Most times your publisher will send you either a pdf to review, a hard-copy proof, or both. Your responsibility is to:

  1. Be prompt in responding

  1. Review every single word and line of the proof

  1. Update your acknowledgments for any newly published work

  1. Make sure the last line of each poem has a period at the end (make sure the last line is the last line)

  1. Obviously if you have a word here and there that you want to change, change it. But this is not the time to be doing major re-writes.  Swap out one poem and you could potentially change the Acknowledgments, Table of Contents (if you have them), AND the poem. Major changes take time. If you’re setting up readings, AND making big changes to your manuscript, you may be putting your publisher in an awkward spot

  1. Remember, any time you have prose poems, you will have lines that end on an article. You will have lines that end with adverbs and prepositions. That’s just the way it is. Prose poems are margin to margin. You must throw away everything you’ve learned about line breaks or you will make both you, and your publisher crazy

  1. If you have jacket blurbs on your back cover, proof them. Trust me on this

  1. Punctuation, typos, and extra spaces. Open quotes with no closed quotes. That’s what you should look for. Depending on the font used, extra spaces can be very hard to see

  1. Unless your publisher specifically asks, do not review the proof and send a whole new document. Send your publisher a document file that lists the changes as follows:

    1. The Happy Dance, page 12. Third line down. “tails” should be “tales”

    1. About the Author, page 32. Line two, change “He” to “She”. Line four, extra space between “several” and “prizes”

Be as specific as you can, and as concise as you can.

  1. Keep a copy of what you send. If you get another pdf or hard-copy proof, check to make sure all the changes were made. You never know what may have happened smack in the middle of making the changes. Your publisher may have had computer problems and something didn’t get saved. I’d recheck everything again—not because I don’t trust my publishers, but because I don’t trust that I caught everything the first time through

The goal? Beautiful books and a long, no-stress relationship with all your publishers.  It’s worth it.

Tasha Learns the Language of Women

The first of any month rain or shine, there’s the rent, taunting like every bully she ever knew. A meager alimony, no child support, and as many scarves sold at the tourist market near the airport…bread, salt, tea, milk and rent. She has a view of the church as she sits at her booth, small-talks the tourists, tries to look taken care of—like this were a hobby—as she prays for just one more guilty husband or bored wife who loves the colors from the bargain bin, loves her handiwork, buys something that folds small so she can bring a bit of sweet home to Tasha.

She will not beg. She will not whore. She will not martyr herself for a better life for Tasha; the girl will learn by example, she will know how to love. She will learn to knit to spend time with her mother, to learn the crass, hysterically private and bonding language of the women in the market booths, the wily but sincere language aimed at the buyers…she will watch the calendar every month, not for her soon to come woman-time, but for the knock on the door, for whether they’ll have cake with the soup that stretches for days, for a luminous smile of relief on her mother’s once-lovely face, the radio turned to something other than somber.

Previously published in Suisun Valley Review, 2018


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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Saturday, July 13, 2019

Brian Beatty On Bill Knott

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Bill Knott (1940-2014)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Bill Knott

Anonymity is the name
of this poetry game.

Thanks for the warning
after it was all the same.

– Brian Beatty


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Brian's most recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana. Don't miss Brian's columns on the great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Friday, July 12, 2019

Tobi Alfier - Susan Tepper, A Good Literary Citizen


Time is on Your Side – Yes it is!!!

Let’s not talk about work, or listmaking, deadlines, doctor’s appointments, or insomnia.  Let’s talk about being a good literary citizen. I’d like to introduce you to someone who exemplifies this in a wonderful way.

Meet Susan Tepper, here with her dog Otis. Susan is a poet and fiction writer. She currently has a new book of fiction out, entitled “What Drives Men”. The Amazon description is “Susan Tepper's new novel is a picaresque romp. A Gulf War vet battling PTSD is tricked into chauffeuring millionaire country music legend Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark to Colorado. Everything goes wrong. Tepper expertly skewers a vast collection of characters on a wildly entertaining road trip from hell.”

Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said What Drives Men is classic Tepper: lean, smart, ironic, rich in subtext, and darkly resonant.”  How totally cool to have your writing style be “classic” you. And to have something described as that, in a good way!

As we ALL have to do, Susan is marketing the heck out of her book. The first week she put different pictures of “thank you cookies” on Facebook. Now she’s starting to post thank you’s for reviews that are going up on Amazon. If you have a new book up, and you’re not sure what you should do, watch Susan’s page. It’s a master class.

In addition to marketing her new book, Susan’s daily life includes workmen all over her house, and running back and forth into the city to pick up Otis. This would be enough to have anyone yell “Uncle”.



There’s more!

A few weeks ago (March 24th) I wrote about The Gibson Poems by Simon Perchik. This is a book of 216 poems published by Cholla Needles. Si writes every day in cafes and restaurants in New York. Susan is great friends with Si, and when there’s something about him he should see, she makes sure to pass it on to him.  Si is 95 years old. He doesn’t have social media because he’s busy writing!! I know he appreciates that Susan keeps him in the loop. That’s time she’s taking away from her own book, and she does it with a smile.

There’s more!

April 19th I wrote about Sanity Among the Wildflowers the first chapbook I made in 2005. Back in those days, I would buy 100 copies from a local press and when they were gone, they were gone. Rich from Cholla Needles graciously reprinted it, which gave me a chance to edit all twenty poems, get an ISBN, and theoretically market it, although compared to Susan, I shouldn’t even say I marketed it at all. Rich put it in the Joshua Tree independent bookstores and I am thankful for that. Someday I’ll tell you an editing story about this book. For now, let me just say that if someone offers to edit a book for you, make sure they know what they should be looking for (I ended up writing “damn it, it’s a hard lesson” by hand, on a hundred copies of the book)!

Sanity Among the Wildflowers

My lover’s teeth are gray from lies.
Spitting the poison out has darkened
them around the edges.
Her smile reminds me to be wary.
I remember a doctor smiling
as he holds a shot behind his back—
that is how it feels today.

Our neighbors destroyed
a row of cypress trees
between our properties.  I
am helpless in the blinding 
sunlight and cannot ignore she is
untruthful. Her thoughts are a mosaic
I cannot parse, and so it goes.

I am an uncomplicated man,
I am not a hero.
I spread a blanket in the field,
ease into her journals.
There is no epiphany—I know
I will never make her happy.
Only temporarily, as an orphan waits
anxiously along the edge
of a darkened train station
for rescue, she waits with me.

She squeezes an orange,
her hand shakes. How long
will this farce be played out?
It is very quiet in our house, civil
to the casual eye, never joyful.
Her teeth are gray from lies.

So many lies.

Susan not only bought the chapbook, she took the time to read it, and put a review on my Facebook page, a Facebook review group she’s in, and on Amazon. She wrote almost 300 words! She wrote “There are certain poets who can pull their guts out onto the page.” No one has ever said that about my writing. She wrote “This book is a prime example of the beauty that exists in the everyday pains and pleasures we humans endure.” I’m just little old Tobi, who’s still as insecure as she was at the eighth grade dance! I never thought I’ve been a prime example of anything! I walked a little taller that day, for sure.

There’s more!

Mine is not the only book Susan has reviewed. She reviewed four books in June alone, including mine. And they are full-on reviews, no “half-assed I don’t have time reviews” at all.

Susan and I are on different coasts and I am embarrassed to say I never think about the time difference. Every time I emailed her, especially when I was writing about Simon Perchik, she was nothing but kind. I can imagine what it’s like to have your house crawling with workmen, yet she always had time for me. And remember, this was while marketing her own book, which should have been the most important thing.

She has reminded me that even if you’re not asked, if you take the time to read a book, take the time to put a review on Amazon. That will mean a lot.

I am very thankful for Susan Tepper, her bright smile and her kind ways, and I really wanted you to meet her too. I think we all go through periods of insecurity with our writing. She made me feel proud of mine, and for that I will always be grateful.

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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Saturday, July 6, 2019

Brian Beatty on Ruth Stone

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Ruth Stone (1915-2011)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Ruth Stone

Less well known was the old woman
who died in a shoe.

Of the loneliness of the mountain.
Before the smell, nobody knew.

Grown children one at a time
had pursued their bliss with such fury

doors flew off hinges to let in
like a cold dog this sadder, truer air. 

Worried neighbors kept their distance
for rhyme and for reasons of their own.

– Brian Beatty


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Brian's most recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana. Don't miss Brian's columns on the great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Friday, July 5, 2019

Tobi Alfier - Consider what Poetic is


It’s a holiday week. Some people are taking extra time off. You may be using that extra time to write. You may think it’ll be a great idea to write a poem about your Fourth of July party but please consider that it’s difficult to write poems in the first-person, especially if they’re true accounts. 

Many times first-person poems end up sounding like memoirs, or stories. They are not poetic.

Any writing that starts with you in bed, listening to your husband or wife snore is probably going to sound more like a story than a poem.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write it. It means that it’s time for you to explore short fiction or flash fiction.

Any writing where you describe getting in line to eat, and what you ate is probably going to sound like a Neighborhood Watch meeting. Call it a story. Add ants, add all the little kids collecting tadpoles in the creek,
Jimmy drinking too much beer and burning the hamburgers, and too many grownups in the bounce house. Maybe this is where your daughter met your future son-in-law. Maybe you all saw a movie being filmed and some of you got to be extras. It’s a story now, so do whatever you want.

I am 99% a poet. When I start a poem, sometimes it feels wrong with stanzas, so I try it as a prose poem. If the language isn’t very poetic (there are a lot of articles and complete sentences, and it just isn’t pretty), I consider if it works as fiction. If that’s the choice you make, it gives you a lot of opportunities. You can make it longer. You can tell a story. You can include more dialog, and add more characters. It doesn’t have to be true, but it doesn’t have to be poetic.

I have an eleven-hundred word piece of flash fiction in the current issue of Better Than Starbucks. It’s called “The $640 Dinner Date” Even the title isn’t poetic. There was no way this was ever going to be a poem, but I wanted to write it. Flash fiction it is. Did I do all things I’m supposed to do – hang the plot like coat hangers on a clothesline and fully develop the characters? I am embarrassed to say I did not. I just had a story I wanted to tell, and I told it.

Regarding the difference between flash fiction and short fiction, a lot depends on the journal. Some journals say that flash fiction is 500 or 750 words or less. For some journals it depends where they have room. But no matter how many words you write, there will be a place for you if you write it the best way you can. Take a class if you can find one. I took a class at UCLA Extension called “Fiction for Absolute Beginners”. Unfortunately I turned every assignment into a poem. If I had paid more attention, I’d be a better fiction writer today.

Consider this poem:

Applewood Bridge in August

We stand on the bridge
in scarletting twilight,
watch the river.
It moves the way
you say my hair
looks on the pillow
and I have to believe
that is true and beautiful.

I tell you about
my fifth-grade boyfriend
who held my hand
on this very same spot.
Window-pane checked
shirt, bought and buttoned
to the chin by his mother,
chest pocket burgeoning
with skimming stones,
so many years ago.

I still remember his
spit and slicked hair,
that stupid black comb
all the boys carried,
and his sharp elbows.

You are so much more,

yet I describe you so privately.

We write notes to each other
sealed in separate jars,
dropped quietly
into the darkened water.
I write mine with
invisible ink – no one else
deserves
to know what I know.

Previously published in Rufous Salon – Lush, Sweden

Are the words poetic? Are the stanzas appropriate? Is this a first-person poem that works? I hope so, they liked it in Sweden.

I’m never going to be a novelist. I’m never going to write short stories. The only place I’m going to learn about plot and character is at craft talks at writer’s workshops. The most important thing is to have choices, and you have choices. If you want to write something in the first-person, and it’s sounding like a column in the local newspaper instead of a poem, short-fiction it!

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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.