This past summer, Third Wednesday Magazine began posting mini readings by poets affiliated with the magazine on their brand new YouTube Channel. Yesterday, David Jibson, Third Wednesday’s editor, and I taped a segment in which I was able to read several poems from my published collections. The whole recording is about twelve minutes long.
To watch other short readings by TWM poets, go to the magazine’s YouTube Channel. Currently there are readings posted by TWM editor emeritus Lawrence Thomas and by Buff Bradley, Paul Bernstein, and Nancy Jo Allen. More will be added in the future.
A big “Thank You!” to Third Wednesday Magazine for everything they do to support readers of poetry (and fiction!), as well as visual and literary artists like me!
I am so pleased theONE ART: A Journal of Poetryhas published my poem, “The Amaryllis.” This poem is based on a very vivid memory of my time in Lake Charles, Louisiana nearly a lifetime ago. This online journal is one I check often, discovering new favorite poems and poets whose work I have not previously known. Take a few minutes to scroll down their archives to make your own particular discoveries of new voices and visions. (Recent favorites of mine include “My Late Husband Speaks to Me in Flute” by Faith Shearin and “In Darkness” by Ted Kooser.)
Note: One Art posts a new poem most days, so you might need to scroll down a bit, to October 17, 2021 to locate the poem. (Scroll slowly so you can read the newest poems by other poets!)
Last spring, when a poet friend, Sally Nacker, told me about the online publication, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, brainchild of poet Mark Danowsky, I was reading the biography of Elizabeth Bishop by Thomas Travisano. (I posted a bit about this biography, Love Unknown, in April.) Bishop’s splendid poem, “One Art”, has been on my refrigerator, where I see it several times every day, for a long time now.
(Last week, The New York Times honored it with a close-up and succinct analysis: “19 Lines That Turn Anguish Into Art” by Dwight Garner and Parul Sehgal.)
In May, I made my first submission to ONE ART, and was delighted when I learned that Mark had accepted my poem, “I Wanted to Be a Painter”, for publication on June 22, 2021–today! I have always yearned for the visual arts, doing my best with quilting and photography, but (though dabbling) never gaining much skill with the brush myself. (Indeed, even quotidian painting tasks can cause crises of confidence for a time, as my partially painted basement stairs project, started last June, stands witness at the moment!) I wrote this poem last fall, coincidentally (or not) when Tim and I were staying in the Art Loft apartment in Lanesboro, Minnesota, (above the local Arts Guild), the same apartment where I first stayed with my friend, Ann Lacy in 2015, and where I took my cover photograph for my first collection of poems, and then, the next foggy morning, wrote the final poem (and title poem). (Below is a photograph I look from the Art Loft window that July.)
And ONE ART itself celebrates the interconnectedness of all the arts (perhaps their common root) on its home page with a superb banner photograph of an Esso station. Not only is the imaging compelling in and of itself, it recalls, with a clean twist, one of the poems of Elizabeth Bishop that I love most, “Filling Station,” from the “Elsewhere” section of her 1965 collection, Questions of Travel. The interconnectedness of the arts (and their entanglement in all of life) is much on my mind this week as I finished reading Rebecca West’s marvelous 1965 novel (autobiographical fiction of her childhood) titled The Fountain Overflows, and it has prompted me to send off for a copy of her 1928 collection of essays on art The Strange Necessity.
As I look back over my own photographs, I find few of filling stations, but I did take this one up on the North Shore when there on a trip with my friend, Jan, some years back, outside a restaurant (a different kind of filling station).
North Dakota Quarterly, Volume 88 1/2 (Summer 2021)
You can find the Table of Contents for this issue (and ways to order a copy or a subscription) HERE!) And in addition to the literary art inside, you can learn the backstory about the cover design.
This long-lived journal also has made the archives of its early decades available online for download (in four batches, covering the years 1910 to 2007–incredible riches.)
Happy Reading! LESLIE
(Photograph by Karla Schultz)(Photograph by Karla Schultz)(Photograph by Karla Schultz)(Photograph by Leslie Schultz)(Photograph by Leslie Schultz)
It is almost sweet corn season, here in southern Minnesota, and I am so pleased that now I can share with you a poem I wrote last summer, based on a true, split-second encounter with sweet corn and a hummingbird.
This isn’t news but it bears repeating: I am continually impressed by how Third Wednesday supports writers, artists, students, and readers. Not only is this journal filled with imaginative work, these editors–working literary and graphic artists themselves–are always seeking new was to help contributors connect with audiences and with each other. In the past few years, they have started a Poem of the Week feature on their blog (subscriptions are free); they have made issues available for free download in PDF format (the print format is available for a modest $8 on Amazon); and, most recently, they have begun hosting Zoom Launch Readings for contributors as each new issue is published, allowing us to put names and voices to work on the page and to connect at a deeper level that is often possible with international journals.
The new issue can be read online HERE. It can be ordered in printed format HERE. And, of course, subscriptions for four issues a year are welcome at the Third Wednesday website. If you are a poet, graphic artist, or fiction writer, I urge you to take a look at their submission guidelines–the deadline for the upcoming issue is August 15, 2021. Fiction writers, please note that this is also the deadline for the 2021 George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction contest!
