round-up: 7/14
a prompt, a resource, quotations, book recommendations, etc.
Happy Thursday, all. Hope you’re staying safe from the newest COVID strain—or resting, if you’re sick!
Here’s what I have for you today:
Housekeeping
Call to action
Shoutouts
Resources
What I’m reading
Quotations
In review
Tweets
Housekeeping:
I have a poem out (a ghazal!) in Cincinnati Review.
Which brings us right into today’s call to action:
Write a ghazal.
A ghazal (pronounciation: “guzzle”) consists of
syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). (x)
Historically, the form was stricter (x) but, in present day, the rules are more lax:
The first couplet will have the same end-word in both lines
The couplets that follow will have the same end-word in the second line only
Of course, you’re welcome to use the more formal historical form or take liberties where you’d like. In that way, the form is like a sonnet: you get to choose which rules to follow & which rules to break.
Here are some more examples of ghazals:
Good luck!
Shoutouts:
Big thank you to these Twitter peeps who are so nice to me.
What I’m reading:
Blue in Green, Chiyuma Elliott (2/5 stars)
Quotations:
Every time I see myself
written I am again eleven & Naomi Shihab Nye
is telling me to make a fist. Look, Naomi. I am
squeezing. Naomi, you know I wanted to die even
then & then, for a brief moment, I didn’t.
-Courtney Felle, “Self-Portrait in My Defense”
One by one, each morning glory
burst on the tips of our tongues—
-Steffi Drewes
Given seed or stone, a little luck and a handsaw,
we can straighten our breath before the break of dawn.
-Steffi Drewes
Teach me sweet pond scum or sandpipers threading dune grass
-Steffi Drewes
Her gravity gives way / To sky
-Steffi Drewes
How is it / that I am headstrong yet hollow
-Steffi Drewes
I fell into another continent / like the sun rewound.
-Katie Schmid
What solace
could I take from you, exiled like me,
language-lonely?
-Katie Schmid
Along 55, entire fields full of no one.
Grain silos I’ve written a romance for.
Telephone wires I craved.
-Katie Schmid
The trampoline is the most treacherous fun their homes are capable of. So they fling themselves onto it, again and again, until they have forgotten what it means to be a boy. And again, until they are winged creatures. And still more.
-Katie Schmid
The smell of smoke lodged in my nostrils, the wine-tart
of his mouth.
-Norma Liliana Valdez
All I wanted
was to wear my hair down. To feel something like wildfire.
-Norma Liliana Valdez
I couldn’t understand a word. But night
was not about words. All that mattered
was the howling of my insides,
the brief glorious fire
of his hands.
-Norma Liliana Valdez
Shadows lifted
from the streets, late February turning our hunger
into plums, ripe in our palms.
-Norma Liliana Valdez
When our lips did not touch
the moon broke like rain clouds.
-Norma Liliana Valdez
The psych on duty in triage
Asks me if I want to die, and I say
Not at the moment, no, but stay
Tuned.
-Camonghne Felix
I know now what
thickened the breath, what blackened the
wound.
-Camonghne Felix
I want to step out of my language.
-Camonghne Felix
I shrink to belong.
-Camonghne Felix
How I would
like to believe in passion again,
wind churning through our bodies.
Calf muscles seizing.
-Steve Bellin-Oka
My thigh still burns with the stain your hand left behind.
-Steve Bellin-Oka
My body still craving to be broken into
like a window; yours the rock that smashes.
-Steve Bellin-Oka
Fire / is a taste, acetate on the tongue.
-Steve Bellin-Oka
If you tend to read/enjoy the quotations I share here
and live in the US, I hope you’ll consider buying 5 books for $30 on my website. These purchases enable me to pay The West Review contributors & thus give back to other writers where I can.
Resources:
YES! Magazine @yesmagazine: “Bodies,” the theme for our Winter issue, will explore the ways our bodies, in both the literal & metaphorical sense, can provide avenues for resistance, healing, community cohesion, and societal transformation. Send us your leads and pitches by Aug. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2022/07/06/call-for-submissions-bodies
In review:
In case you missed it, earlier this week, I gave a quick instructional on writing strong cover letters:
Tweets:
Final notes:
If you purchase any physical product(s) from my store this week, I’ll send you a free gift.
& stay healthy, sane, & keep looking out for each other—