Poetry Tips: Positive Peer Pressure

You are never too old to experience “peer pressure” if you ask me. As poets, if you feel a friend has talent, you should encourage them to continue writing. If they write for pleasure but ask your advice, gently guide them forward. Poetry is a community and we should make it as positive and encouraging a community as we can. This week, seek out friends who can give you an honest and tactful critique or offer the same to your friends. You just may strengthen your relationship and improve your own poetry as a result.


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Alaska Quarterly Review Open Submissions

You may send up to 20 pages of poetry (they prefer not to read light verse) between August 15th and May 15th with a cover letter addressed to Poetry Editor and your contact information via snail mail to:
Alaska Quarterly Review
University of Alaska Anchorage
3211 Providence Drive (ESH 208)
Anchorage, AK 99508

For further details go to:
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/aqr/guidelines.cfm

Good luck to all who submit, please drop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178409
“We Old Dudes” by Joan Murray

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21939
“Fusiturricula Lullaby”
by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more open submissions…

Durable Goods Microzine

Durable Goods is a microzine which is so micro that I cannot really even feature an individual issue. You will definitely need to check out their blog to learn more and I am going to share just one poem per issue as forwarded to me by Alternating Current:


Durable Goods Issue 20:

Maybe I Expected Something More Profound

operating rooms are bitter cold
and those black slab tables are stiff

sounds dissolve into liquid metal
when the nurse lets me know
the knockout drugs are in

I say two words and they reverb like
a robot pulling its own wires:
“hummingbird hamburger:

some other robot voice laughs
and I’m gone

I mistook dying for two very distinct places

first—

a zen temple with a black sand
octagon buried to my waist
and midgets shuttling me tiny plastic
cups of cold green tea

then—

the attic of a bent old Victorian
tied down to a cement mattress
squat teenage nurses holding gas
masks
over my face, oxygen hyper-blasted
down my throat
and dinosaur jr. wafting from
somewhere
lower in the house

by: Shawn Misener

I enjoyed this poem because of the strange delusions experienced from the anesthetics. I’ve never had to experience such a thing but I’ve heard tales, and Shawn Misener turned it into entertaining poetry.



Durable Goods Issue 24:

Spineless
She wears my vertebrae
hanging from her wrist—
each one collected as a charm.

They drum against each other
like hollow wind chimes
as her hips rock pneumatic
down Hollywood Boulevard.

She steps on stars
in those nasty boots

and wonders
out loud –
when I’ll grow a spine

By: Jason Hardung

This poem is a new take on “wrapped around your finger,” don’t you think? I really like the description of the vertebrae drumming together around this woman’s wrist as she wonders when the poet will grow a spine. He has one, the problem is that she’s got it wrapped around her wrist. Very interesting take on things, I like it.


If you enjoyed this micro-sample, please consider a subscription. It is a mere $12 US or $14 International for a 2011 subscription of 22 issues, for more details please use the link below:

http://durablegoodsmicrozine.blogspot.com/


Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Ink Haven

Annie Kerr posts regularly about her poetic endeavors, shares beautiful photographs and blogs about the beauty of the landscape around her. Check it out at:

http://inkhaven.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured journal…