Poetry as Recreation: an Interview with Bruce Boston In a career spanning more than five decades, Bruce Boston has published speculative poetry that, while rooted in vivid images, reflects constant energy and recreation. Many of his poems and stories, from his debut 1969 collection, XXO, to the more recent Brief Encounters with My Third Eye: Selected Short Poems 1975-2016 (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2016) and Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets (Mind's Eye Publications, 2022) have worked off previous concepts and ideas, leading towards ekphrastic elements. Boston caught up with The Ekphrastic Review for a short interview to discuss his work and provide some samples of his poetry. Matthew Sorrento: Your interests as a poet and fiction writer seem very broad. I assume you are interested in all types of poetry. Did you try any specific approaches at the beginning of your career? Bruce Boston: I think like most beginning writers I tried to emulate the writers I enjoyed and admired most. And yes, my interests were broad. In poetry ranging from Pound and Dylan Thomas to Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson. I would often transpose such influences into a speculative context. For example, my poem "In the Short Seasons of a Long Year without You" was inspired by Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife." My poem "Riders of the Night" by Stevenson's "Windy Night": In the Short Seasons of a Long Year Without You A sudden summer of greenhouse density, watching five satellites and a captured score of jagged meteors jostle for position in the syrupy night. An instantaneous fall that flashes spun gold for the barest moment, then withers a planet overnight and leaves the landscape spare and barren as my limbs abed without you. A fast frame winter of frozen lakes and ice strewn seas, with cold so sharp it hammers out a dwelling place within my bones. When you stepped through the shifting portals of the star gate, you flickered and vanished more quickly than the changing seasons. You promised to return before the red pods burst and the winds of spring ochred the dawn skies with their pollination. Yet already the days burn blue again, the thickening nights are dense with moisture, and I feel the rush of autumn’s gold death soon swift and sure upon the land. In the short seasons of a long year without you, your image and promise falter within my mind. Perhaps it is time to try on a new life, some different clime, a time to cede the lies and reasons of our love as you have let them lie. In the short seasons of a long year without you, the maw of the star gate waits, a thousand worlds beyond, another passion spent behind, this sheet of broken lines I leave for you to find. Spirits of the Night When the night is dark and stars fill the sky, And the air is cold, the moon full and high, Riders pass on by who move like the wind, Carrying the soul of all that has been, And they keep riding to the dawn. When we are asleep and warm in our beds, Spirits of the night move through our heads, Images and forms the unconscious breeds, Fashioned from the depth of unholy needs, And we keep dreaming until dawn. When the sun is high and light fills the air, Shadows of the night are lost in the glare. Deep in our minds there still run those streams, Currents dark and swift just like in our dreams, And they keep flowing past the dawn. Spirits of the night, keep our trail bright, Guide us from the darkness, light our way. We are children now, and forever more, Cast down in the rush of history’s play, Living as we can from dark to dawn. However, there were also many fiction writers who use a poetic voice in their prose that influenced my poetry. To name just a few: Lawrence Durrell, Nabokov, Thomas Wolfe, Angela Carter, Robert E. Howard. Matthew Sorrento: I assume that some of your ideas would not work best in poetry, and ended up as fiction, and vice versa. Has this been common in your career, and do you recall any early works of yours that came about this way? Bruce Boston: One can look at the range of expressions available to creative writers in two ways. As distinct categories with clear divisions: poem, prose poem, flash fiction, short story, novelette, novella, novel. Or as a continuum in which length and depth are extrapolations and evolutions from shorter expressions. A musical analogy would be Listz’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, which takes on symphonic proportions and evolved from simple gypsy folk melodies. In my own work, I tend to view creative writing most often as a continuum. I’ve had poems evolve into flash fictions or short stories. My fantasy “Tales of the Dead Wizard” exists as both a poem and a short story, and has been published in both forms. The prime example from my own work regards the poem “In the Garden of the State,” which was published in the 1980s. The poem depicts a state in which the powers-that-be attempt to shape its citizens as bonsai gardeners shape their trees, in this case “pruning” their personalities by means of “the surgical implantation of biochips/injection of neurochemical inhibitors/the traditionally proven application/of stimulus-response indoctrination.” This poem, more than two decades later, eventually evolved into my dystopian sf novel The Guardener’s Tale (Sam’s Dot, 2007), which tells the story of a state psychologist-guardian who attempts to reprogram three interrelated criminals into citizens who will fit into society’s laws and norms. Thus the question of which form works best for a particular idea depends on the nature and depth of the ideas you are trying to express. Matthew Sorrento: Your work is very image-based. Do you see yourself as this type of writer? Bruce Boston: I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “this type of writer.” If you are talking strictly in terms of craft, i.e., using images to draw a reader into a poem and hold their interest, my answer is yes. The clear and smooth flow of language, along with vivid and appropriate imagery, are two tools of craft that can help accomplish this. However, if you are referring to Imagism, the school of poetic thought founded by Ezra Pound and others, shortly before World War I, I’d have to say “only sometimes.” I’m wary of schools of thought and manifestos that attempt to define artistic forms and lay down rules for their practice. My own reading and influences, and consequently my writing, are too eclectic to embrace any signal method. That said, I would agree that many of my poems adhere to the basic principles of Imagism as stated in Poetry (March, 1913): 1. Direct treatment of the "thing." whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome. Yet many of them do not. Though I generally write in free verse, employing what I consider the musical phrases in language, I’ve also written and published my share of rhymed and metered poems, including a few sonnets. (the metronome). I generally use economy of language (no word that does not contribute), but I’ve also written poems that are spontaneous explosions of language and image, stream of consciousness, that no doubt contain many extraneous words, as in this poem. And though I have some sense of it, I’m not completely sure what direct treatment of the "thing” means. In the poem just mentioned, as well as most of my surreal poems, I think that readers would be hard pressed to actually say what the “thing” is, so I must not be treating it very directly. Matthew Sorrento: You have worked in ekphrasis occasionally. Would you say that the approach shows up naturally, or do you make it a deliberate exercise? Bruce Boston: I only tried it as an exercise once. The poem was published, but it was not a very good poem. One might learn something about craft by doing an exercise, but the best poems are a product of both craft and inspiration. When Rod Serling was asked: “Where do you get your ideas (inspiration)?” he responded: “Ideas are everywhere. They’re in the air.” I agree with Serling. One can find inspiration anywhere. An overheard conversation. A walk in the park. An encounter with an old friend. The way sunlight strikes a particular object. Ekphrastic poetry differs from this kind of inspiration in that it is a second-level inspiration. You are being inspired by someone else’s inspiration rather than something in the everyday world around you. The problem with the term as it is generally applied today is that it is too narrow and only seems to apply to visual art. There are all kinds of second-level inspirations. What if I am listening to a piece of music or reading a novel and I am inspired to write a poem? These would be second-level inspirations and there is no terms for them that I’m aware of. Also, ekphrastic seems to generally apply only to a description of a painting. I wrote a poem “Two Nightstands Attacking a Cello” that was inspired by Dali’s A Bed and Two Bedside Tables Ferociously Attacking a Cello. However, this does not describe the painting in anyway but extrapolates from part of the situation it portrays. So I’m not sure whether the following can be dubbed ekphrastic or not. Two Nightstands Attacking a Cello It doesn't stand a chance. Their solid wood panels and sharp edges beating its delicately formed and hand polished shell. Their vicious drawers with brass handles gouging at its neck, striking and raking its tender strings, forcing it to cry out in a discordant roar. Afterward the nefarious pair return to their stations by the sides of the bed, once again motionless, seemingly innocent as any object of inanimate furniture, marred by little more than a scratch or two as evidence of their abandon, their brutal and unprovoked assault. Aching in every fiber of its fragile being, the cello retreats to the corner of the room, suffering in silence, nursing its many wounds. Yet when it summons the courage to speak, it discovers that the resonance of its voice has been transformed through this ordeal of pain and humiliation. The true dulcet tones and melancholy overtones too long hidden in the hollow of its chest have emerged unbidden. Astounded by the depth of this doleful epiphany, mute and wooden as the day they were made, the nightstands listen with strained indifference and all the pent fury of rectilinear forms. Further, my collection Surrealities was inspired by surrealism as a whole (its paintings, writings, and philosophy). All the poems therein are definitely second-level inspirations, inspired by the creations of others, but I’m not sure whether this could be called an ekphrastic collection or not. ** Bruce Boston’s dystopian novel The Guardener's Tale, a Bram Stoker Award finalist, is now available in a Kindle edition. Visit bruceboston.com / Facebook. Matthew Sorrento is co-editor of Film International and teaches film studies at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ, United States. He is co-editor of Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon, and his collection David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (co-edited with David Ryan) was published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in December 2021.
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Don't miss this special Saturday morning delight- a literary romp through fashion in fiction, poetry and art history, with Kate Copeland. Lorette will show some striking images of fashion in art through history, and Kate will take us into literature to show some fascinating examples of what clothes can mean. Dress You Up, Zoom Workshop with Kate Copeland
CA$35.00
Join us on Zoom on Saturday, March 9 from 10 am to noon eastern standard time, for a survey and discussion about fashion and its underlying subtexts and meanings that make their way into our poetry and stories. Ekphrastic editor Kate Copeland will take us on a fashionable tour of art and clothing, with time to write our own artistic exploration of appearances. Weaving through personal and cultural meanings we attach to clothing, Kate will touch on poetry, research, linguistics, and Anne Sexton's iconic red reading dress. Lorette will show us a brief survey of fashion in art history. Virginia Woolf would sign off her invitation with "bring no clothes," but we invite you to dress up or bring your favourite garment, to inspire your own poem or story. Collateral The old neighbourhood is gentrified, fully electrified. Hot messages require larger and better signage. It takes three strong men to deliver this one. Jumbled wiring and over three hundred tiny bulbs trucked in from the Village. Guaranteed to light up the night. For her shift at the diner, she’ll be Gladys. On Sunday she’ll be Rose for the boys smoking behind the rectory. Her account at the corner store is under the name Conway. She’s been on her own for a while and likes to keep people guessing. She carries two smooth stones in her pocket and a small crucifix to keep her hands company. She remains quiet about her past. It’s none of anyone’s business. Cherie Hunter Day Cherie Hunter Day lives in the San Francisco Bay Area among some thirsty redwoods. Her work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, Rust & Moth, Unbroken, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction anthologies. Her most recent collection, A House Meant Only for Summer (Red Moon Press, 2023), features haibun and tanka prose. When not writing poetry and micro prose, or making collages, she is outside cleaning up after the aforementioned redwoods. It has been quite some time since we have had a contest at The Ekphrastic Review!
We are pleased to announce Tickled Pink. ** Tickled Pink Write poetry or stories in any form or genre on any of the artworks in the ebook. Word limit is 1000 words, including title. Write as many pieces as you wish, and submit one to eight pieces in a single email. Purchase of ebook is $10 CAD (approximately $7.35 USD.) No entry fees beyond this. This collection is lovingly curated to inspire and show you a range of visual art. Your support is a tremendous help to The Ekphrastic Review. But if you cannot afford the cost, let us know and we will send you a copy. Send submissions with PINK in the subject line to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Deadline: June 30, 2024 Use a single Word document for all of your entries. Include a brief bio in your email. Simsubs are fine, just let us know right away if someone else beats us to it. We will withdraw it from the contest. Selected works will be published in a special showcase at The Ekphrastic Review. While we usually consider previously published works, these works must be unpublished, inspired by these specific artworks, and written especially for this contest. One piece will be chosen as the first place winner and awarded $100 CAD by PayPal. Selections and winner will be announced sometime in August 2024. There is no right or wrong approach, style, theme, or method. Play, experiment, contemplate and create. Traditional ekphrasis is welcome of course, but your work does not have to be “about” the artwork. We want to see how many different ways an artwork can inspire your imagination. Go with your muse! We can’t wait to see your work! What the Moon Said In the world that you live in it is said that I rise and fall with time. This is untrue. I am here, in my world, all of the time. Sometimes my Sister Earth shelters me from our Mother Sun. Sometimes I shelter Her, but I am here all of the time, and I have witnessed unusual events in your world. They happen when the dark begins its overnight passage, when my Mother, my Sister and I rest from our collective labours and grant one wish to each living thing on Sister Earth, on one of my full Moon nights. On this particular twilight a cancer-ridden wife lies next to her cancer-ridden husband. Hospice waits outside the bedroom. The wife says: “I want to dance again in my ruby red shoes with you. I want to be pretty again. I want you to want me again.” The husband says: “I want to dance again in my favourite blue suit with you. I want to be handsome again. I want you to want me again.” And so it was granted. The pretty white swan in her ruby red shoes and the handsome bear in his favourite blue suit found each other as they had the first time, waltzing the night away in a blue moonlit meadow, lush with moist aromas. Dancing, swooning, caressing, waiting for the arrival of a different sun. No Earth, no Moon. only Light. Stork Rein Stork Rein: "I had the fortune of being taught by a fabulous high school English teacher who brought The Waste Land to class for reading and analysis. My poetry neurons began firing then and have yet to be stilled. I count among my influences Tony Hoaglund, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ada Limon, and Nick Flynn. My poems have been published in Remington Review, Mono Magazine, and The Citadel. I live in the alpine community of Mount Shasta, CA, where I practice the art of the long marriage with my wife Erika, while assembling a cookbook of recipes for couples." A Penny's Worth From the time she was an infant, the auburn that crowned her had been an affront to piety. It was the amber of ale overflowing the barrel, the scarlet of the strutting rooster’s comb, the escaped flame that devoured the thatch. Her mother had scraped it back daily from her forehead, tamed it with spit and soapsuds, locked it tight in maiden’s braids. Words had been her forbidden joy. She’d kneaded dough, flicking furtive glances over her brother’s shoulder as he sat, hunched and resentful, quill scratching like a bewildered chicken. She’d echoed the letters in her head as he stammered their names, memorized the clumsy shapes he made. In her mind, she unblotted them, gave them wings, imagined flying with them to other skies. She etched them in the flour with a fingertip, then quickly smoothed them away when her father loomed. Too late. The slap rattled her teeth. The only reading she was permitted were the names in the family bible. Their faded trails were like the leavings of undernourished black snails: tracks from a grim-lipped past to colourless inevitability. Rainbow words shouted from posters in the town; she flew like a hummingbird to their sweet promises of far away. Threw off her apron one day, loosened her braids, and raced after the gilded carriages and the great draft horses in their red-plumed bridles, her ears closed to her father’s bellows, her brother’s jeers, her mother’s righteous snifflings—more for the loss of a light hand with pastry, if truth be told, than a daughter. “Penelope” she’d been named. Its primness had sat awkwardly on her, a lace collar on a falcon. Now she learned to dance in tasseled silk and spangles. “Penny Bright” they called her, as she somersaulted like a spun copper coin. “Heads!” the crowds would roar. “Tails!” a few would snigger, their eyes small with desire. One day, amid the shower of farthings and ha’pennies, a gold sovereign fell, wrapped in a perfumed note laced with promises like spun sugar. Country-trusting still, she met him, loved him, followed him to the room in the spoiled city, beside the reeking river. In return for her body he gave her words; praised the graceful lines of her hand as it struggled with the pen, the new-fashioned steel nib gleaming in the candle-light. As her novelty tarnished, he came to her less and less. The coins on the dresser rang with contempt as they fell. A breeze crept through the torn window-lace and ruffled the letter wedged in the mirror frame. Her name on it was a wraith’s whisper; still, it had flown to her, found her- just three words inside from her newly-widowed sister-in-law: “He’s gone. Come.” She snatched the paper from the frame, rubbed her forefinger around the rim of the ink-bottle, and overwrote the eight letters with five. No timid snails’ wanderings these: bold and dark, they stormed across the envelope’s sky-blue, filling it from horizon to horizon. His cane and glove lay on the floor where he’d dropped them in his hurry to return to the frilled drawing room of respectability. She picked up the glove and swept the coins into it. They barely filled one finger. Let the wind be her coiffeur; her hairbrush would serve another purpose. She swung it and smashed the window pane. Fish-stinking air poured in, the whiff of salt in its heart still striving. And from far off, the promise of different air, leaf- and clover-laden. Beads dripped from her broken necklace like orphaned tears as she strode outside to where the fishers were labouring. “Penny Farthing” they’d hoot when she walked by, the sum they figured of her worth, the price they wished they had. They had turned at the sound of breaking glass. Their mouths opened to taunt her, then they saw her eyes and the cane gripped in her fist, and were silent. The polished oak felt smooth and strong. It would beat off thugs, help her over slimed steps. It would write “farewell” in the mud. Donna Shanley Donna Shanley studied literature and languages at Simon Fraser University, and then (of course!) wild orangutans in Borneo. She lives and writes in Vancouver, B.C., where she can see mountains and sometimes, a half-inch of ocean. Her flash and micro-fiction has appeared in a number of magazines, including Vestal Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Milk Candy Review, and The Citron Review. Instructions From a Leaf on Dying It’s easier than you think and gentler. Return your borrowed solidness back from where it came, unafraid. Let your colours blaze with late-stage splendour, then fade. Hold nothing back. Did you forget, for a moment that there was a time before and a time after? We are the brief in between. Already, you have bridged yourself across this time, as you were tasked. You have done well. Arriving at this other side implies no wrong turn. We are seasonal beings and forever is not a season. Assume a treetop view. Loosen. Loosen. Let go. Don’t you know it’s beauty all the way down? K.E. McCoy K.E. McCoy’s poetry has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Speckled Trout Review, Riverbed Review, Eunoia Review, Willows Wept Review and other outlets. She is a past Pushcart Prize nominee and second place winner of the 2023 Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest. She is the niece of the photographer whose art inspired this poem. Larry Hartford has worked as a professional photographer for over 40 years. He currently lives on a 10 acre farm in the Skagit Valley of Washington and continues to create images. Night Children primeval twilight cultivates diverse spirits tiger stripes orphans Aravalli Range wolf packs foster feral girls and boys abandoned city dwellers embraced by canid surrogates that nuzzle orphaned babes, comfort flailing arms, warm bare feet, sing hairless naïve pups asleep wild jungle youngsters walk upon four limbs like paws knees and elbows scarred innocents untamed howl at the moon join furry brethren wailing, growling, celebrating until early dawn’s symphony hushes the lupine choir which shifts its attention to nurturing foundlings… tutoring young Mowglis to hunt and play spiritual Lycans welcome the lunar allure crave transformation Sterling Warner A Washington-based author, poet, educator, and Pushcart Nominee, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such literary magazines, journals, and anthologies as the Danse Macabre, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s volumes of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, “Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (2023) and Abraxas (2024)--as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, and enjoys fishing and boating along the Hood Canal. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa holy Mary. mother of God. strung up in a Polish monastery, wounds tracking like tears of blood. who disfigured you? who do we blame? that rampaging mob of bandits and brigands, like army ants, heads bulging, antennae bent, monstrous mandibles-- dissenters who mutilated the face of a woman in love with her people? or did that second band of vandals, armed with brushes, paints and suspicious intentions, cause a greater harm? sloughing off damage, they gave you noble features: a sharp nose, thin lips and a voice, we imagine, too high, too demanding. transfixed, now an image of an image, twice removed. still, we strive to live lives imitating art, looking back at you in silence, the silence of stone statues and monastery walls, the silence of the devout at prayer, of stars less bright and of candlelight, the silence of eyes and looks no one hears. silver frame, silver shroud, a visage irremediably marred by scars-- we search your face, effaced, and still we look for love. John Davis John Davis is a Canadian living in the US. He spent ten years in Toronto as a graduate student and assistant professor in Political Theory at the University of Toronto. His best memories, however, occurred in the (same) seven years at the Open Studio, working with Don Holman and Otis Tamasauskas. He also spent time with other artists and art historians. Several years of his graduate student time was devoted to Art and Politics, as a tentative thesis. He often writes poetry in response to art. Judith Returns to Bethulia Judith is nonplussed and dressed to the hilt: plushly plumed velvet hat, milky white skin draped in loops of gold, neck guarded with inlaid jewels. Her bodice is snug and shoulders bare, sleeves embroidered wrapped in cords, a hint of skirt with pleats blood red. Judith’s slender fingers wrap cold-forged steel: finely etched, iron guard, blade unclean with pinkish hints from passing through. Her other hand grips General Holofernes’ severed head by umber hair; brows surprised, drooping eyes dimmed, ever silent mouth agape. His unshaven neck was left unguarded, seduced by Judean wine. Judith returns home to Bethulia besieged—heads held high, all relieved. James Morehead James Morehead is Poet Laureate of Dublin, California, host of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, and has published several collections of poetry including canvas, portraits of red and gray and The Plague Doctor. James' poem "tethered" was transformed into an award-winning hand drawn animated short film; "gallery" was set to music for baritone and piano, and his poems have appeared in the Ignatian Literary Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, 2nd Place - Oprelle Oxbow Poetry Contest 2022, Citron Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Cathexis Northwest Press, and other publications. |
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Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
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