Tag Archives: Naugatuck River Review

NAUGATUCK RIVER REVIEW Publishes My Poem, “A Valentine” in the Summer/Fall 2022 Issue

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Cloud Heart Above 114 Winona Street

This week, the newest issue of Naugatuck River Review: A Journal of Narrative Poetry that Sings landed in my mail box!

I was immediately drawn to this cover art, a collage by Caitlin Rafferty of Foxboro, Massachusetts, called “Badinage.” I think of this word as meaning a kind of teasing repartee, sort of a Spencer-Tracy back-and-forth. At first, I thought the title of the piece referred to the fragments of text echoing the birch trees and table legs, a kind of conversation between trees, wood, and paper, perhaps. Then, when I read the about the other elements, where I expected to see “yarn” instead I read “embroidery thread.” Aha! The scale is smaller than I had realized–the whole piece only 10″ by 8″ and is even small than standard sheet of paper. This wit is actually a perfect objective correlative for the contents of this journal of narrative poetry, since each of the 62 poems by as many poets builds up an entire world within the miniature scale of a short poem.

As I write this, I am reflecting on the contents. I have read every one. All were skillful and made me think. Many, I know, are poems that I shall return to time and again. None were by poets already known to me. It was difficult to select only a few to call out, but I shall limit my spotlight to just six, less than 10 percent!

“Kalia” is by Roderick Bates of Vermont. It deftly draws the gentle exchange of world views between the speaker’s freshman roommate, a young Hindu man, and his mother, a proseltyzing Christian.

“The Stone Woman on the Seawall” by Texas poet Amanda Auchter gives eloquent voice to a sculpture memorializing the devastating hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900. The poem has added resonance due to our world’s accelerating extreme weather in 2022.

“You Were Skittish” by Lorraine Jeffery, a poet from Michigan, a poem about the connections and gulfs between humans and other animals, made me gasp and then tear up at its unexpected ending.

“Union Square” by Don Hogle, accomplished poet and dedicated traveler, holds a bittersweet image in its last lines that I don’t think I will ever forget.

“After Bishop” by Natalya Sukhonos, a poet and educator born in Odessa, Ukraine who grew up and currently lives in the United States. In this free-verse poem, Sukhonos alludes to and echos the elegaic mood of Elizabeth Bishop’s celebrated villanelle about loss, “One Art,” but makes the formal and personal landscapes all her own.

My favorite? If pushed to choose, I would go for “Reclaiming Your Inner Emily Dickinson” by Barbara Unger, recognizing my own rueful-joyful emotions regarding recent quarantine mandates. Ungar, an accomplished poet, translator, and teacher, gets the tone exactly right in this advice that speaks compellingly to my introverted nature.

I think that this issue of Naugatuck River Review is one in which the reader can safely and happily judge the book by its cover.

Homemade Valentine 2018

LESLIE

Naugatuck River Review Publishes My Poem “The Widow Orders a Mai-Tai at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel”

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I was so happy when Naugatuck River Review accepted my poem “The Widow Orders a Mai-Tai at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.” This journal specializes in narrative poetry. Their website defines their sense of what makes a “narrative poem.” They seek “poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story” within a compressed set of lines. They also seek a “strong emotional core and rich language.” In this issue, a collection of sixty poems by sixty diverse poets, this is, indeed, what I discovered. I was especially moved by–and inspired by–a Shakespearean sonnet called “Why I like metal detecting” by Di Slaney, a British poet, who creates a strong narrator within fourteen lines and uses the traditional turn to stunning effect. On the facing page, the poem by Geo. Staley of Portland, Oregon, called “Banking at 6 and 7”, was not in a conventional form, but it, too, used the last twenty syllables or so to invert expectations, and, in the case of this reader, caused tears of the best kind. Do take a look at this magazine, now in its 13th year, (copies can be ordered through the link above) if you are looking for a short poem with real narrative punch.

The majority of my work in poetry arises from my lived experience. Perhaps I could say it comes from the stories I tell about my own life, my own thoughts about the world. “The Widow Orders a Mai-Tai at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel”, however, (and the series it is part of) are pure fiction, with a central character who sprang full-blown onto the page. The only point of contact between life and art is that I did spend a memorable morning eating breakfast on the verandah of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel–a real-life location from the Roaring Twenties–on Waikiki Beach. I was happy to be there, not as a widow, but in the company of my husband, Tim.

This issue of Naugatuck River Review has helped me understand, in the most pleasurable way, what narrative poetry is and does (and clearly, it does not have to be fiction, as it happened to be in my case, to be a narrative!)

Happy reading and writing! Leslie