A new poem by alumnus Jeremy Bass (poetry, ’10) appears online in Vinyl Poetry:
Passenger
Will rain fall we don’t know
only a few drops seem willing to answer.
High clouds the hulls of unseen ships
parked their dented blue enamel over our heads
each rib of cloud an arched gunnel
longer than the highway we drove on
…
Continue reading at Vinyl Poetry.
A new poem by alumnus Tommye Blount (poetry, ’13) appears in Vinyl Poetry:
The House
I. Willi Ninja, Mother of the House of Ninja
(1961—2006)
Bitch, give me a body
and I will show you how it works.
Break it down
like the math of my hands—
have you seen my hands?—
first, a blade, then a compact,
now, a mirror. What you see
is a legend on the map.
…
Continue reading at Vinyl Poetry online.
Why are these people smiling? Because they had so much fun at the 2013 conference!
We are pleased to announce that the 2014 Alumni Conference will be held at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA from June 28 to July 5. Those of you who have never attended a conference before have probably already heard it: Come! You’ll be welcomed! Well, it’s true, because you already belong here. Lots of recent grads have come in the last few years; reach out to someone you know who attended to check it out. Maybe recruit a buddy or two to share a ride (or teach a course or sit on a panel). We hope to have more information on prices, etc., in the next few weeks, so keep your eye on the blog or check in with wwcmfa.org from time to time.
Photo credit: Marcia Pelletiere.
A new story by alumnus Scott Nadelson (fiction, ’11) appears online in Four Way Review:
Could Be Worse
For a week in the middle of March, Paul Haberman felt increasingly out of sorts. Not much appetite, lousy sleep. In meetings he’d find himself absently chewing a knuckle. When the phone rang after nine at night, he braced for calamity. The wind blew hard against his bedroom window, and he imagined his neighbor’s oak tipping onto the roof. Lying in bed, with Cynthia huffing peacefully beside him, he asked himself what could be the matter and then did his best to answer. Maybe he’d been working too hard. Maybe he was troubled by the state of the world. Maybe by the fact that his stepchildren were growing up too fast. Or maybe it had been two months since he’d taken his car to the Baron. As soon as it grew light enough outside, he picked up the phone and dialed.
“Dr. H!” the Baron shouted on the other end of the line. “Why’s it been so long?”
“Lost track of time,” Paul said.
“You, maybe. But not that big beauty of yours. She needs a man who’s regular.”
“Any chance I can bring it—her—tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, huh? Pretty busy, doc. But for your sweet lady, sure.”
A new poem by alumna and current Beebe Fellow Colleen Abel (poetry, ’04) is published online at Four Way Review:
Self Portrait As Teenage Boy Beating Swan
Sometimes you have enough–
the cob, the pen twining
their necks to hearts,
all that fidelity.
The dank pond by the council
flats, like it’s bloody Windermere.
You only wanted to wreck
that love-shape they were making.
After, you sat, sad Zeus, and held
the one you’d caught,
stroking its feathered throat
as if to make it sing.
New work by alumna and former winner of the Levis Stipend in Fiction Lisa Van Orman Hadley (fiction, ’09) is featured online at The Collagist:
The summer before my sophomore year of high school, he teaches me how to make a Reuben. We assemble ingredients, get them ready so we can add each one as quickly as possible because we must eat the sandwich while it is still hot and the top of the bread is crispy. I learn his tricks: drain the sauerkraut well (“nothing worse than a soggy sandwich”), use just the right amount of butter on the outsides of the bread, choose the very best Thousand Island dressing you can find because it makes or breaks the sandwich.
When we talk, it is only about the sandwiches.
Reubens have become our art form; he cooks while I drain and assemble. For a while in the summer we eat a Reuben together every day at noon.
My mother is alarmed by this. She plugs her nose at the smell of the sauerkraut, her face wrinkles in disgust at the corned beef. Her taste is not distinguished enough for such things.
By my senior year we are making our own bread and pickling our own cabbage. We corn our own beef. We find recipes for Thousand Island dressing in gourmet recipe books and we add our own secret ingredients, making it even better. Read more
An interview with Marian Szczepanski (fiction, ’97), in which she discusses her book, Playing St. Barbara, and her time in the Warren Wilson MFA Program, appears online at Late Last Night Books. Author and interviewer Terra Ziporyn writes:
Novelist Marian Szczepanski and I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in the summer of 1993. We recently reconnected through a mutual Facebook friend who had just reviewed Marian’s new (and first!) novel, Playing St. Barbara. Marian was gracious enough to catch me up on the missing twenty years, including how she came to write this historical novel chronicling the brutal lives and enduring spirit of Depression-era immigrant coal-mining families in southwestern Pennsylvania.
TZ: When I first met you at Bread Loaf, you were working on young adult fiction. When and why did you shift form the young adult world to the world of historical fiction?
MS: At Bread Loaf, I had just started what turned out to be a coming-of-age novel for adult readers. At the time, YA lit was read almost exclusively by preteens. Hunger Games and Twilightwere years in the future. My first novel dealt with a variety of adult themes and contained scenes that would have gotten it onto the Banned Books list for school libraries in short order. When I first pitched it as a coming-of-age story to an agent, he was interested, but wanted me to tone it down and market it as YA lit. I decided against it and continued to pitch it as an adult novel. When I got the idea for the novel that became Playing St. Barbara, it appealed to me because I’d never written anything set in a time period different than my own. With each book, I like to do something different, add a few new gadgets to my writer’s toolbox. I’d done a coming-of-age novel, followed by one with a metaphysical theme. Writing something historically based struck me as a worthy challenge, and it more than lived up to that expectation!
A story entitled “Milk,” by alumnus Edward Porter (fiction, ’07), appears online in Beetroot:
The man explains the world for the benefit of his wife and daughter as yellow-winged vireos chase each other through the open stanchions of the garden restaurant, scolding and cawing in imitation. It’s still the cool of the early morning: the Central American sun hasn’t gotten over the leathery green cocoplums yet. Nystrom stares at his coffee in misery. His mind had been a merciful blank this morning, almost as if time and distance had finally started to do their work. Then the pundit showed up.
Alumnus Nathan McClain (poetry, ’13) is featured online in Muzzle Magazine‘s “30 Poets in Their 30s.” One of the editors at Muzzle writes:
Nathan McClain is probably the poet on the list with whose current work I’m most familiar. He is a great supporter of other poets’ work, including mine, and our friendship emerged from our ongoing conversations about poetry.
The quality I find most admirable in Nathan’s poems is how he manages to create abiding, sustained ache. His speaker never grandstands, and never indulges in self-pity – on the contrary, his discursive interrogatives often implicate him in his own sadness. Nathan accomplishes this using understated language, a quiet voice that knows sorrow well, and accepts it. Few poets have the courage to enter that place and stay there – I think of Larry Levis as one, and Carl Phillips, often – but it’s fundamental to good writing: to look and speak clearly, even when it comes to pain. Please enjoy.
*
Houdini
Who would’ve known you’d grow so afraid of stillness,
enclosed spaces, that you’d no longer remember a time you weren’t
subtracting seconds from your life, as if each breath were held?
If you had the strength to pluck your lucky quarter
from behind your wife’s ear, would you have? Would she still laugh?
A teakettle boils on the stove, its steam enough
to unlock your lungs. Your wife reads from Robinson Crusoe,
whom you cannot help but dream of, enveloped
by endless miles of ocean. Outside, paper skeletons are strung
up on every house in your neighborhood. You hear a boy
skipping up and down the block, begging his mother,
for Halloween, Mom, can I please be a ghost, please?
Read more online.
A poem by alumna Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) appears online in Orion Magazine:
Electrification
The dark didn’t scare her.
It’s this way days
have grown long, like distances
between them of an evening.
It used to be they gathered
at the fire, had to draw near.
Maybe her husband played music,
but there was nothing more
to do until dawn. Since he’s been
working at the sawmill, and cut
the stand of wild cherry, she can see
town glowing in the valley, hear
the saws sing, but not him.
He doesn’t come home
until the coals are cold.
She eats in the kitchen while she cooks,
and reads the news, leaning into
the stove hood for its light.
The boy wants to get to town too.
Quick, eats what she hands him,
standing under the porch bulb,
while moths fly against it
and drop singed around them.
Then her son steps out
into the night.
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