Mother of You I am the goddess of lasagna, says my son. I think about this as I layer the marinara and ricotta over sheets of noodle, hopeful I’m able to live up to his praise. I don’t know what makes me look up, peripheral vision, perhaps some womb-like instinct, the pull between two places in proximity - But the forms are there in the open, white-chested dancers, tawny, sloping necks, intent on food. I leave … [Read more...]
Philip Levine and solace (and me)
I just heard the news that Philip Levine has left this earth. The work he left behind is something we can find solace in when we miss his voice. So many great poems. I have fond memories of Phil Levine because he is a contributor to Solace in So Many Words, and we had a lot of correspondence about which poems of his to use. I felt like I knew him a little, that I could call him Phil. That's how he signed his emails: “Be well, Phil.” In spring 2007 I had an idea for an … [Read more...]
News on contributors (Desilets, Rodley, Mahan, McConnell, Kirk) notes on rejection
Hello sweeties. Hope you don't have the winter blues and that you are getting enough vitamin D. On January 16 there was a story on NPR by Jason Comely about embracing rejection ("By Making a Game out of Rejection, A Man Conquers Fear"). For a while there I was going to write a post about it, how writers have to embrace rejection. I was trying to think of it in terms of the Pareto principle, the mathematical principle known as the 80-20 rule, but I couldn’t get it … [Read more...]
Deep freeze
This week the weather is miserably cold in Chicago. Schools and businesses are closed. Anyone who can hibernate is hibernating. I am happy to feature photographs by a new contributor: Kevin Nance. If you recognize his name, it may be because you read his reviews in the Chicago Tribune, or his contributions to Poets & Writers and other publications. That's how I knew him. But then through posts on FB and Linked-in, I saw his photographs and admired them. Now I follow … [Read more...]
Hug it out
Today I am happy to post "The Kiss-Me-Quick," a story by Rochelle Distelheim, which I first fell for when it appeared in the Visiting Hours anthology put out by Press 53. I'm happy to say that Rochelle and I are in the same writing group so I have had the privilege of reading her work for some years now. It's been enough years that I have read her novel Jerusalem As a Second Language, witnessed how it was crafted to win the 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative … [Read more...]
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