The Hermit Poet

We are pleased to announce that Issue 12 is now online and ready to be read!  Great poems, great reviews, and a great conversation between first book poets.

Like the boy in this issue’s cover photo by Jon Kersey, we find ourselves in this issue straddling two worlds, peering into the waters to see what lies ahead and beneath. We begin with a bullet train, end with a road trip, and encounter the beautiful, the bright, the dark, and the emphemeral along the way.

In this issue’s poems, we are also pleased to feature great reviews of Ivy Alvarez’s Mortal and Karen Harryman’s Auto Mechanic’s Daughter, as well as the first half of a conversation between two first book poets, Ivy Alvarez and Lee Herrick. Jon Kersey’s photography adds yet another dimension to this first issue of 2008.

Check out the end of this email for some important announcements regarding the 2007 Oboh Prize winners, the 2006 print anthology, and our table at the upcoming AWP book fair in NYC.

Read it here:  www.boxcarpoetry.com

In this issue:

Poetry

• Cristiana Baik: “Dear Nozomi, I will arrive to the destination first”
• Rachel Bunting: “Lot’s Daughters”
• Clark Chatlain: “Flathead Lake”
• Frankie Drayus: “Dispatch”
• Brent Fisk: “When Adam Falls from Sleep”
• Donna Huneke: “On Sundays she sets the sun”
• John Johnson: “Light Sleeper”
• Laura Powers: “Dying Like Eurydice in Idaho’s Backcountry”
• Brian Simoneau: “Funeral With Cherry Blossoms Falling”
• Charles Springer: “Roadies”

Reviews

• Ivy Alvarez’s Mortal ~ Craig Santos Perez
• Karen Harryman’s Auto Mechanic’s Daughter ~ Kate Durbin

Conversation

• Ivy Alvarez & Lee Herrick in Conversation Part 1

Photography

• Jon Kersey (2 images)

(The next issue of Boxcar Poetry Review is almost done, so here’s some recent good news while you wait).

We are pleased to announce that three poems from Boxcar Poetry Review have been selected for Sundress Press’s Best of the Net 2007 Anthology:

• “Forget” by Tamiko Beyer (Issue 7 – Mar 2007)
• “Marrying the Violence” by Marty McConnell (Issue 4 – Sept 2006)
• “How We’re Moved” by Heather Salus (Issue 6 – Jan 2007)

Congratulations to these poets on this accomplishment!  Poet Chad Davidson served as final judge.  Evidently only 20 poems were chosen out of all the poems published online between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007.  I’d consider 3/20 a pretty remarkable showing for our journal!

If you’ve been meaning to send work in to Boxcar Poetry Review, the best time to do it is now.  I’m working on the January issue (which will go up later this week – a little delayed) and would like to add a couple more really strong poems to the mix.   What I don’t use this issue will be closely considered for the next issue.  Given the relatively light homework load for classes this week, I will have a very fast response time.   So give us a try.

Visit Boxcar Poetry Review at www.boxcarpoetry.com

Submit poems by email to boxcarpoetry@gmail.com

It’s late, but it’s out and available for sale through Lulu.com (and shortly through Amazon and other online vendors).  I’m also bringing copies with me to sell at AWP.

Boxcar Poetry Review 2006 Anthology. 100 pages.

Edited by Neil Aitken, this anthology features work from 54 poets including Mary Alexandra Agner, Arlene Ang, Christopher Buckley, Jared Carter, Michael Catherwood, George David Clark, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Anne Haines, Alexander Long, Rachel Mallino, Marty McConnell, Barbara Jane Reyes, Patrick Rosal, Erin Elizabeth Smith, and many more published in Boxcar Poetry Review during 2006.

http://www.lulu.com/content/1749273

I am pleased to announce that my first book manuscript The Lost Country of Sight has just won the Philip Levine Prize!

Thank you CSU Fresno, Anhinga Press, and the readers and judges for the Philip Levine Prize! I’m going to be busy for a bit sending out withdrawal notices to all the other competitions — but that’s the kind of busy work I don’t mind.

This manuscript has grown and evolved so much over the past year — I am proud of what it has become and now, as it gets ready to enter the world on its own two feet, I am excited for where it will go. I’m grateful as well that I was able to share so much of this book with my father while he was alive and that the poems I wrote after his passing have also found their place within its pages. For all its journeying through loss, darkness, sorrow, love, and returning, it’s ultimately something I think he would be proud of as well.

Edit:  Thank you all for your many kind comments and messages!  Best wishes with your own writing and publishing efforts — hoping that this is a great year for you as well.

What’s good? Well DMQ Review just notified me that they’ve nominated my poem “Letter Fifty” for the Pushcart Prize — that’s my second Pushcart nomination this year, my third ever. Pretty cool. What’s cooler? “Letter Fifty” is from my Letters to the Unknown Wife project — that means I’ve now had work from all three of my manuscript projects nominated.

Anyway, I survived what seems to have been my busiest week so far. I completed my abstracts, gave my presentation (despite a major technological failure on my part), wrote 2 response posts for different classes, sent out book manuscripts to 4 more book contests, made final selections for our Pushcart nominations for Boxcar Poetry Review and sent those out, and narrowed down my topics for my two papers for this coming week and the next.

Go me. The rest of the weekend was spent in veg mode while I recovered. Tomorrow I begin drafting my papers and conducting more research on the spots that are, well, spotty.

Neck deep? I’m drowning. It’s proving to be a stressful week of papers, responses, abstracts, presentations, and poetry. Coupled with a frustrating two-week+ bout of writer’s block, I’m more than a little stressed out.

Despite this (or perhaps because of this), I spent about half the day getting my book manuscript ready (trimming a poem or two, reprinting the whole thing, getting copies done, etc) and mailing it out to another 4 contests. I’m glad I cut the poem I did — I’d been thinking for some time that it was a bit on the weak side, but didn’t realize how weak it was until I re-read the whole manuscript last night. Good riddance. Some minor title changes. A couple relineations. Overall, it’s close to what I sent out last month — but the changes are important and hopefully push the manuscript from being “publishable” into being “published.”

Still on the plate for tonight:

1. Response to a Sedgwick essay on Shame
2. Response to Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair”
3. Precis of my upcoming paper on The Function of Intertextuality in Alphaville (specifically Borges and Orwell — since Eluard has been done to death)
4. New poem (or recently finished poem, if the muse continues her strike)

Still more for tomorrow… ack. I want to be done with this semester and get back to my own reading/viewing lists.

Ok — back to work.

Just in — an email from Re Dactions to let me know that they’ve nominated my poem “comment” for the Pushcart Prize!

“comment” is from my current manuscript project, “Babbage’s Dream” which revolves around the themes of isolation and beauty in the world of computers and computer programmers. Re Dactions was actually the first (and so far only) journal to pick up these new poems. It’s good to know that someone is reading and enjoying these poems.

You can read it on my website here

More of the computer poems are out in circulation now, so hopefully some of them will be finding homes soon.

Speaking of homes — my mother has successfully sold her place in Penticton and will be moving to a new condo in Abbottsford. She’ll be closer to my sister’s family, so she can take care of the grandkid more often. I think it’s a good move. Abbottsford has an airport and is close to the US border as well. It’s not far from Vancouver (maybe 45 minutes) and seems like a good central location.

I’ll be flying “home” for Christmas and spending about 10 days there. It should be good — but different.

Just a quick announcement that Boxcar Poetry Review – Issue 11 is now up.

You can check it out here: www.boxcarpoetry.com

In this issue:

Poetry

• Kimberly Abruzzo: “The red-water station”
• Helene Alchanzar: “Meaning Light”
• Ruth Doan: “All They Didn’t Take”
• Jéanpaul Ferro: “On Your Mark, Get Set, Ready…”
• Jennifer Gravley: “Fortune, Santa Monica”
• Graham Hillard: “The Lyric Moment”
• Rathanak Michael Keo: “Last Kiss”
• Robert McDonald: “Dear November”
• Tomas Q. Morin: “Cadillac Cathedral, U.S. 66”
• James Owens: “Is”
• Donna Vorreyer: “Of Dark, Of Light”
• Joe Wilkins: “Voice of the Father”
• Amanda Yskamp: “Not Home”

Artwork
Geoff Sanderson

Interviews & Conversations
Interview with Alex Lemon ~ Miguel Murphy

Reviews & Responses
Geoffrey Brock’s Weighing Light & Joe Millar’s Autobiomythography & Gallery ~ Gregg Mosson

I’m really quite impressed with the work we’ve brought together for this issue. Kudos to Eduardo for lining up another great interview.

I’m back — it’s been a busy few weeks — right now we’re in the mid-term season at USC. But since we’re grad students, we don’t have mid-terms, just assignments, projects, and presentations. All of which have been distracting me from blogging on a more regular schedule.

A few news items:

1. Finished working on a website for fellow poet & friend Joseph O. Legaspi. You can check it out at www.josepholegaspi.com. His first book, Imago, just came out in the bookstores this week
2. Gave a presentation in my Renaissance Lit class on Witchcraft in Macbeth — really a look at the role and function of witches (as well as how “witch” is constructed in the play). We referred back to the previous week’s readings of King James’ Demonologie and Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft, as well as comparing elements with Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Also made use of Keith Thomas’ excellent overview of the period, Religion and the Decline of Magic. I was particularly interested in how the language of witchcraft finds its way into the descriptions and portrayals of many of the characters. On closer examination, it seems the Wyrd Sisters are a bit of a ruse — the real witches might well be Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, and Macduff.
3. Wrote a new poem Tuesday morning for the Babbage manuscript (which actually may be going through a name change — I’m now thinking that it should be a bit more inclusive and not so fixated on Babbage as a figure). In any case, the new poem is “array” and joins “recursion”, “enumeration”, and “copy” as the latest additions to the project.
4. Sent out poetry submissions to another 5 journals. Slowly getting back into the swing of things. Also need to get more manuscript packets together to send out to the presses & contests at the end of the month.

I’m also starting my reading and research for a paper on Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965). Part of my reading will include Paul Eluard’s The Capital of Pain — a text referred to in the film, but supposedly the passages read from the book in the film, aren’t actually Eluard’s poetry — something made up instead by Godard. Anyway, I’m interested in getting to the root of the issue as well as addressing other issues within the film text.

Right now taking a break. Need to get back to reading for my Lit Crit theory class. We’ve got Claude Levi-Strauss and friends this week.