6.16.2014

"At the Native American Film Festival" by Jenny Cropp

Click the image to read the full text of the poem, or purchase it here.

The Poet: 
Jenny Yang Cropp is the author of one chapbook,Hanging the Moon (RockSaw Press). Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Ecotone, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. She grew up mainly in Oklahoma, received her M.F.A in creative writing from Minnesota State University-Mankato, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of South Dakota.
The Poem: 
This poem is divided in two, like its speaker. First there are the things that don’t fit, her peculiar marks of otherness. What follows, though, isn’t a simple discovery of belonging – it’s the illusion of belonging in which the speaker eagerly participates. The ache of it is palpable in the abrupt change in tone; matter-of-fact acceptance is quickly replaced by the wishful idea of being “her daughter.” In fact, the idea of being the Comanche woman’s child overtakes the speaker so fully that she says, “I think of the blue/ born on her daughter’s back” instead of “on [my] back.” It makes the last line – “I am part of something whole” – ring a little hollow, revealing the longing that coexists with acceptance.
The Design: 
Title & Name: 27pt & 24pt Engravers Gothic small capitals 
Body: 14pt American Typewriter 
American Typewriter is uniformly heavy with lots of squiggle in its lowercase g, curvy lower f, t, a… like a “mass of dark veins… bruise-like” on the page. Engravers Gothic provides the title with a marquee quality, announcing what’s playing at the film fest. Together with the poet’s name it forms three sides of a box, tilted, since the speaker is between worlds and not likely to fit into any single place.
online ISSN: 2651-3801

6.09.2014

Two Haiku by Ben Moeller-Gaa

Click on an image to read the full text of the poems, or purchase them here.




The Poet:
Ben Moeller-Gaa is the author of two haiku chapbooks, Wasp Shadows (Folded Word Press 2014) and Blowing on a Hot Soup Spoon (poor metaphor 2014). His haiku, essays and book reviews have appeared in over 25 journals worldwide including Acorn, Modern Haiku, A Hundred Gourds, Frogpond, Shamrock and World Haiku Review as well as in several anthologies such as Haiku 21, the Red Moon Press's yearly "Best of English Language Haiku" anthologies (2011, 2012, 2013) and The Haiku Foundation's Mobile Haiku App.
The Poem:
When Matsuo Basho wrote, “Even in Kyoto/ hearing the cuckoo’s cry/ I long for Kyoto” (tr. Robert Haas) he was both celebrating his present moment and mourning it as it passed. Ben Moeller-Gaa celebrates two such moments: the moon’s reflection on the water is the essence of a calm summer’s evening; the flight of the goldfinch is the energy of spring. Like the cuckoos that sing in Kyoto every year, the koi and the goldfinch have a fleeting beauty all their own. They can be revisited, but each new encounter will differ from our memory – what has become an idea about summer evenings or spring – and remind us that nothing stays the same.
The Design:
Title & Name: 30pt & 22pt Engravers Gothic
Body: 20pt Chalkduster
These two haiku are at once the same and opposite. Rather than reflect their differences with separate typefaces, Chalkduster, with its airy, brush like strokes, represents their common feature: impermanence. All moments pass; all chalkboards and sidewalks get washed clean. The mirror arrangement requires the reader to choose a dominant point of view even as the other remains in sight. Setting the title and poet’s name on a circle make this a coin to be tossed.
online ISSN: 2651-3801

6.02.2014

"Variation, Without Chickens" by Devon Miller-Duggan

Click on the image to read the full text of the poem, or purchase it here.


The Poet:
Devon Miller-Duggan's first collection, Pinning the Bird to the Wall, was published in 2008 by Tres Chicas Books. A chapbook of off-kilter poems about angels was just published in September by Finishing Line Press. She teaches Creative Writing at The University of Delaware.
The Poem:
It’s a tricky thing, writing homage. Stray too close to the original and you’re ripping off your hero. Venture too far afield and your readers won’t make the connection. With this poem Miller-Duggan pulls it off because she riffs on sound where William Carlos Williams riffed on image. Each stanza swells to a crescendo by varying the combinations of r, w, d and s sounds; each stanza break lets the sound “glaze” “the spaces… in between.” The overall effect is a series of quick summer storms that swirl around the “red wheel/ barrow” of the source material. Indeed, “something must fall away – feathers, the sky,/ Much that flowers” for Williams’ poem to be born. The poet has imagined those lost details and made them her own.
The Design:
Title & Name: 24pt & 18pt Bodoni reverse italic
Body: 14pt Bodoni roman, italic & small capitals
So much of literature depends on what went before it; even when we’re not building on the past we’re breaking from it. A classic book typeface like Bodoni offers a long history but it also looks good doing things it’s designer never intended, like small capitals and reversed italic. The various styles are deployed to underscore the poem’s nods to WCW’s famous piece while maintaining a harmonious, modern integrity.
online ISSN: 2651-3801