Pensive, published twice a year by Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service (CSDS) at Northeastern University in Boston, is currently accepting submissions for its fifth issue. The deadline is May 15, 2023. If you would like to read this issue, you maybe read it online or download a pdf. file at no charge.
There are dozens of wonderful poems here, as well as sublime fiction (including “The Dervish in a Red Skirt” by Fiyola Hoosen-Steele), and the visual art is amazing (I am especially taken with the cover image, a mixed media piece called “Exile II” by Silvina Mizrahi, and the painting, “Ghost Bison,” by Serge Lecomte.)
Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts is a young publication with a strong and nourishing, cross-cultural point of view. I am so pleased that my own poem, “Echoing Damocles,” (page 154) was chosen to be in this company!
I am so happy that this beautiful new issue of MockingHeart Review includes my own poem, “Planet Burning.” Based a childhood memory, this poem refracts that memory through my current concern about unnatural/human-induced climate change. I feel that it is perfectly showcased in this issue of one of my favorite online journals, one filled with work that filled up my winter day with artistry and idealism.
Among the featured poems of Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, I am very drawn to “Healing Spell” and suspect that I shall return to read it often. I am not surprised to learn from her notes that she is a yoga student as well as poet. And I am grateful for her artist’s notes for helping me to understand the back story for her poem, “Saving the Farm.”
Kathryn de Leon’s poem, beautifuly slantwise Covid wisdom, “Whiskey and Chocolates” made laugh and nod my head. Jean Janicke’s poignantly and hysterically funny poem, “Evaluate Your Passion,” brought new focus for me to thinking about changing eyesight. Eric Christopher Uphoff, “The Furnace Stays Lit,” surprised me with delight. Finally the beautifully rendered images of Amy Marques–visual poetry & erasure poetry–made me think about how words and all they summon swim in and out of consciousness. To see her work, look at the tab for featured art work.
You will have your own favorites, of course, and I would love to hear which of these poems speak to you.
It has arrived! The newest issue of The Orchards Poetry Journal is here, just in time to bring color, cheer, and interest to darkening winter days.
I am particularly happy to have included in this issue a poem I wrote on April 13, 2022 in honor of my sister’s birthday and my contribution that day to the celebration of National Poetry Month. This poem Karla, inspired by her art, is titled “Stalking Beauty.” It is found on page 121. The poem is fourteen lines, not a sonnet but a variation that I call a “sonnet-like object,” and is a tribute to Karla’s work as a photographer.
This issue–the longest I have seen yet, packed with interesting work, and available on paper in both hard and soft cover, as well as online or in a pdf–offers plenty of indoor diversion for snowy days and evenings. I have enjoyed seeing new work by some familiar names, including fellow Minnesotan Susan McLean (“Takedown” on page 24) and longtime friend Sally Nacker (“Lantern Light” on page 38) from Connecticut and discovering some favorite poems by poets new to me, such as the poem “Photograph” on page 141 by Thomas DeFreitas, a Massachusetts poet, and the masterful sonnet with a marvelous twist on a modern topic, “Selfie,” (on page 88) by Jane V. Blanchard who lives and writes in Georgia.
I hope that you will find something in this issue to brighten your day, no matter how grey or filled with chores is might be! LESLIE
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!
I didn’t encounter William Butler Yeats‘s poetry until the year after I was graduated from university. At first, I didn’t like it. Decades on, however, I cannot imagine my life without his work and without his example of steady workmanship despite the persistent ups of downs of personal and communal life. Like some of the other poems I have shared this month, this poem is one that I spent time committing to memory.
The Wild Swans at Coole
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
William Butler Yeats
In searching out a photo of Irish swans, I couldn’t resist sharing the image above that I stumbled upon.
Background on My Poem, “Swan Song”:
I know that Yeats has set the bar very high–stratospherically high–in not one but two magnificent poems deploying the force of swan imagery and mythology. (The autumnal elegaic one above, in all its calm and stately melancholy, contrasts markedly with his sonnet “Leda and the Swan.”) Nonetheless, there is always room closer to earth for another swan poem. This very wet spring, Tim, Julia, and I have seen a surprising number of swans along the Interstate resting on the ephemeral ponds created by snow melt and rain. My poem for today reflects these sightings.
