The newest issue of Little Patuxent Review is going live on June 5, 2022. It will be available in paper and digital formats. In addition–and I am so happy about this!–this fine journal is holding a virtual launch, also on Sunday, June 5 (from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time) with some of the poets, fiction, and non-fiction readers each offering a five-minute sample of their work. It is free to attend the Zoom Launch event for this issue, but registration is requested. To register, click HERE.
I will be reading two of my own poems: “The Craft of Poetry” (published earlier this spring by Blue Unicorn) and a quartet sonnet sequence for my Uncle David called “My Godfather” (published in this recent issue of Little Patuxent Review.)
Based in Maryland and drawing its name from its nearby river, Little Patuxent Review has been publishing thought-provoking and well-crafted work since 2006. In whichever way works for you, I hope you can spend a little time enjoying the contents of the newest issue!
Sculpture “Poetree” by Danish “forest artist” Jorn Ronnau, 1996
From the incredible cover to the last short poem (mine!), this latest issue of Blue Unicorn is full of surprises, painful truths, and consolations of the best kind. The cover image takes us to the British Isles and showcases a sculpture created from an oak trunk rooted in Windsor Great Park, England–a place of which I have never before heard but is now on my wish-to-visit list. I am so taken with this image, and especially by the way the sculpture looms over the human, with its polished limbs soaring skyward, its unseen roots anchoring it firmly, and the earth itself as the meeting ground.
Editor John Hart notes in his introduction that the preponderance of poems in this issue take on the wintery and natural subject of death. As a poet whose first (late-blooming) collection is titled Still Life with Poppies: Elegies, I understand the need to explore loss, the deep consolation that comes from reading or writing something that gives voice to this universal human experience. Richard Wilbur famously called this time of year, “the elegy season,” and there is a strong correspondence to the season we are in, especially this year in the midst of a global pandemic, and thoughts about endings, including our own mortality.
Yet, where there is life, there is need to explore and celebrate. To celebrate Tim’s birthday this month, we were able to travel (safely, in a quarantined manner) to nearby Lanesboro where I wrote the title poem for that first book, as well as the place where I took the cover image. While there, I revisited the site of that photograph and took a new one.
If you look closely, under the fallen oak leaves, you see that something is still blooming, even after snow and frost.
I see that the apparent death is only a transition to the renewal that spring will engender.
My own poem in this issue of Blue Unicorn focuses this aspect of winter, cultivating patience while waiting for the season of new life spring from seed and established roots. It is inspired by my friend Beth–writer, reader, ruminator, environmentalist, and traveler–who has visited Ireland and Scotland several times. Not long ago, she taught me a new word, “hibernaculum” which comes from zoology and means, I understand now, means a kind of winter nest.
You can read work by Beth at her own website or in this Winona Media guest appearance from 2013 in a post titled “Celebrating the Diversity of Independent Book Stores”–be sure to scroll all the way to the end for Beth’s essay on Irish book seller Des Kenny.
Whatever you are currently coming to terms with or letting go of, I wish you also thoughts of rumination, hibernation, and contemplation of eventual renewal, individually and for all of us who share existence for a time on this uncertain but spectacularly beautiful planet.
On Saturday, the February issue of Blue Unicorn arrived at our house.
Blue Unicorn: A Tri-quarterly of Poetry is a selective journal edited by Ruth G. Iodice and John Hart, based in San Raphael, California now entering its fifth decade of publication. It is organized as a non-profit, with yearly subscriptions available, as well as individual copies.
This most recent issue has a broad array of fine and interesting work. There are translations of epigrams by the Roman poet, Martial, by two different poet-translators (Brent Southgate and George Held); a translation of a poem by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (“Woman Going Blind” translated by Donald Mace Williams); and a riff called “French Interlude: Rondeau on Themes from Aragon” by Mark J. Mitchell.)
Most of the forty-five poems included in this issue are contemporary poems in English. These poems range widely in terms of subject matter, form, and tone. You’ll find terza rima from the point of view of the species of tall grass that anchors the U.S. heartland and is under great stress from environmental factors (“Big Bluestem” by John W. Steele), a bold poem with incantatory force (“The Apple, William Tell, and Emily Dickinson” by John P. Kristofeo), and a valedictory poem saluting the lasting impact and value of one of my favorite poets, Richard Wilbur, who died this year (“A Distant Aubade: The Poems of Richard Wilbur Considered and Praised” by William A. Holt).
My own poem, “Clue,” was sparked by one of those lazy domestic moments some years back when Julia and I decided to play the classic board game, Clue. We talked over how to play the game, and then Julia asked a key question, “Yes, but who died?” So we scrutinized the printed rules and found out that the victim is always the host, Mr. Body. In the way of questions, one answered leads to a host of others, and that small moment long ago gave rise to my own poem.
Each poem in this issue of Blue Unicorn stands alone, but together they are an Ali Baba’s cave of poetic gems, and I am really happy to have my own poem in their lustrous company.
