Thursday, April 26, 2012

Anti Open Submissions

I have copied-and-pasted straight from the website for you:
Submission Guidelines


Send 3-7 original, unpublished poems as a single attachment (Word .doc or RTF) to antipoetry@anti-poetry.com. Either in the file or the body of the e-mail, include a cover letter with your name, contact information, a contributor-note biography of 50 words or less, and a statement of 50 words or less on what you’re against in poetry. This statement can be general or specific to your submitted poems, serious or tongue in cheek, broad or ridiculously minute. It needs to be something you want to appear on your page if we accept your work. Poems will be considered for both issue and featured writer slots.

The Fine Print
We are open for submission throughout the year, with occasional short breaks that will be posted here. Be sure you’re a reader of contemporary poetry. We love simultaneous submissions as long as you notify us if a poem is accepted elsewhere. We consider translations if you can provide the original version as well (and we will consider exceptions for good reasons). We ask for first serial rights, and copyright remains with the author. Anything that has appeared in an online or print journal is previously published. Posting drafts to an online workshop or blog is not previously published provided they’re removed prior to submission. Anything the editor can Google is previously published. Please do not send work more than once per six months unless we request otherwise. Please send a file attachment as requested above, not a link to a saved file. Don’t ever send revisions of work still under consideration. Revisions to work already accepted are at the discretion of the editor. Please feel free to query if you do not hear back from us within two months. If your first impulse reading these guidelines was to ask if we pay, we are likely not the place for you.
To learn more about Anti and to explore their website and poems, go to:
http://anti-poetry.com/guidelines/

Good luck to all who enter, please drop in again next week…

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://juked.com/2012/04/youknowwhat.asp
You Know What by Dennis James Sweeney

http://anti-poetry.com/hainesan1/
Love Song of the Starving Chick By Anne Haines

Thanks for clicking in, please drop in tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Nick Courtright's Punchline

Nick Courtright’s collection of poems, Punchline, has been published by Gold Wake Press and is a riveting read. Nick Courtright was born in Ohio and currently lives and teaches in Austin, Texas and is also the interviews editor for the Austinest. His work has appeared in journals including The Southern Review, the Boston Review, and his chapbook, Elegy, has been published by Blue Hour Press. Punchline is a philosophical collection of poems that reaches into the large and the small, from the universe down to the atom. It is a living, breathing collection and I am happy to share a few poems with you:

Freedom Evolves

You at outside the old house and there

Learned of paint
and shelter and the meaning of roofs

when they reveal their feelings about being

shield against the rain, a protector.

.


Now the sky is a wide cloth above

and the moment outside
has become me. It will rain so hard

the whole idea of wet will change—

we are all being waited for, we are all the analogy.

.

You believe in free will

and then one day so does

one atom of the gum-covered underbelly
of a forty year old desk

and who is affecting who?

.

Maybe that one atom is responsible
for the whole room around it

as a human is for the galaxy, the awful galaxy.

In that case, slow down,

little everything.

I think this is a beautiful poem. Mr. Courtright introduces us to the concept of shelter by way of an old house and then the meaning of shelter against an open sky which becomes a wide cloth which is another version of shelter. Then we come to free will and our choice to be in that open sky and how free will may be within a single atom. That single atom can effect the entire galaxy, something so small against something so large. In this poem we get to contemplate the stars and the sky that we seek shelter from and how small things have an impact on larger things.



Wake

The room is full of flowers,

the flowers are on the wallpaper,

they subsume the walls into flowerness,

there is a person watching the flowers,

I watch the flowers.



Tomorrow, thank you for existing.



So many people are waiting in line, so many people

for all eternity waiting,
so many waiting people.

In this poem I can picture the poet sitting and observing the room around him at a funeral home. The flowers from loved ones blur into flowers on the wallpaper, the thought of tomorrow with the deceased absent and the words “thank you” strike me. Especially when the next and final three lines are about people waiting, perhaps waiting to join the deceased in the afterlife. Here the wake inspires the poet to observe his surroundings and contemplate the idea of people waiting their turn to view the deceased one last time or perhaps waiting their turn.


Connection

The seawater sloshes relentlessly
against the green pier, calling God under its breath, God,

God, God,

and nothing changes.


I have a feeling
if I moved
even a bit—

if I could move—

it would be like the loose thread on an old argyle sweater

which, pulled, sends
the sweater

spiraling into non-existence.

The poet observes his surroundings and imagines changing, shifting, the universe. I love poems like these because I can picture myself lost in thought, too, listening to the ocean waves and thinking about life, death, and the universe. This poem does and creates a backdrop for us to imagine ourselves in, a view of the green pier and the water sloshing in such a way that it seems to be talking. This is another beautiful poem.


If you enjoyed this sample you may purchase a copy of Punchline for $12.95 through Barnes and Noble and published by Gold Wake Press go to:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/punchline-nick-courtright/1104063553?cm_mmc=affiliates-_-linkshare-_-tnl5hpstwnw-_-10%3a1&ean=9780983700128

To learn more about Nick Courtright please visit his website at:
http://nickcourtright.com/about/

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

Monday, April 23, 2012

Shark Forum Blog

This blog encompasses art and poetry reviews, two of my favorite things. Stunning visuals abound, in addition to features on music, design, and more so check it out at: http://www.sharkforum.org/blog.html Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…