Misfit Blog

It's Official

2010-06-22T18:17:00.001-07:00

MisFit is happy to announce that new work from these fine poets will be appearing in Issue 1: Josie Sigler, Rachel Malis, and Lois Harrod.

More later!

Hiatus

2010-04-01T18:45:00.001-07:00

No, MisFit isn't shutting down before it's even put out it's first issue. (Haters.) But it's home base is moving, thanks to a quick-notice deployment to Afghanistan of the founding editor's husband. We will be picking back up with our production schedule and web offerings in a month.

Look for MisFit Issue 1 toward the end of May! It's already full of great art and poems. We're still taking submissions, but email responses will be slow if any until the new office is set up.

Thanks all--we'll be seeing you when we get the cover art done and can show it off!

Interview with a Short Form: Frank Giampietro and the Spandrel

2010-02-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

When I was poetry editor of Hayden's Ferry Review issue #42, one of our contributors used a very interesting short form. I asked Frank Giampietro to answer some questions for the MisFit Blog about the short form he invented, the spandrel.

MB: Frank, you invented a form you named the Spandrel and had several examples published in Hayden's Ferry Review issue #42. Could you describe that form for us?

FG: The word spandrel comes from architecture and describes the left-over part of the structure itself. The space under the stairway is a great example of one.

Spandrels in architecture are pieces of the structure you see but don't often notice. A spandrel is usually not functional, but occasionally one is put to good use. For example, Harry Potter lived in the spandrel made from the stairs in the home of his muggle guardians. So, naturally, when I read about the implications of this thing called a spandrel in architecture, how it is marginal but necessary, often beautiful in its own right but secondary to the beauty of the thing it is in service to, and that it can be useful or useless, I thought about how this structure might manifest itself in poetry.

Here is what I came up with: In order to be a poet one must be constantly having spandrel thoughts, thoughts that are extra to the poems themselves but are often both beautiful and necessary to the making of the poem or at least to the poetic life. By naming these poetic snippets spandrels I give them context and this allows them to exist as poems, all on their own.

MB: What do you find interesting about this form?

FG: The spandrel as poetic form is most interesting to me because it gives me a home for what I would, before discovering the form, have had to discard. I think of the adage about how when editing you have to kill your darlings. Spandrels are those darlings. I don't have to kill them anymore. I can just send them off to the spandrel orphan home where they are being read, cared for, and are very happy now, thanks very much.

MB: What benefits did this form bring to your writing?

FG: It's another way of honoring my thinking on a moment to moment basis. Knowing that there is a form like the spandrel makes me less dismissive of random poetic thoughts or images or voices that enter my head as I drive the kids to school or string the Christmas lights. Anything I can do to nurture myself in this way is good stuff.

MB: What were some of the challenges of the form, in addition, obviously, to the short form.

FG: Since they're not haiku, but they are as short as haiku, people don't always know how to process them even when I provide an explanation.

MB: Have you written any other Spandrels since those poems you placed in HFR?

FG: Yes. I've written quite a few of them and am presently engaged in making a very limited edition art book out of several of them with Denise Bookwalter, a professor and terrific artist who teaches book arts here at FSU (Florida State University). Our idea is to integrate spandrels into a book that is itself a spandrel. We've been working with a lazer cutter. It's fun.

MB: What other short forms have you tried, and of them, which is your favorite and why?

FG: I've always liked haiku and have used it as a teaching tool for years. I think spandrels are different from haiku in that they don't necessarily have a sense of closure like haiku and can rely on voice as much or even more than image.

UPDATE: Frank has posted some examples of his spandrels here!
Frank Giampietro is the author of Begin Anywhere, available from Alice James Books. he is also the editor of two online poetry projects, La Fovea and Poems By Heart.

Short Poems We Like: Ezra Pound

2010-02-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

"In a Station of the Metro," has to be one of the shortest poems I've ever enjoyed. It's basically a place and two metaphors.

In the Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Because the poem is only two lines, the title acts as a third line, and also is critical to form the first concrete image that the two lines of the poem use as their base on which to layer meaning and metaphor.

The first line of the poem transforms the image of the metro into one of a sea of ghostly, white or translucent faces, the second line introduces the final conflict, a transformation of the faces into an image of nature that is so divorced from the very modern, industrial underground train station.

In this conflict of image builds the opportunity of great emotional insight: even modern man is natural and beautiful at the height of his technological achievements, in a concrete hermetic bubble that has no room for organic trees and flowers. And yet at the same time, the image is one of transience and fragility, of flower petals that are rain-slicked, and this brings the feeling too at once of freshness and of the petals that are scattered even by a light storm.

Imagist poetry, sometimes pretty bad-ass.

Can you write a three line imagist poem? Take a scene that moved you, describe its literal location. Then the first metaphor, or element of the scene that appeals to you as metaphoric. Finally, think of the opposite emotion, opposite surroundings, opposite scene. Compare them. You have a three line poem full of conflict and most likely, ripe with emotional windfall.

Notes from Pound on the experience of writing the poem.

Long Poems We Like: M Miriam Herrerra

2010-01-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

"Elegy for an Angelito" on page seven of Albatross #19 by M. Miriam Herrerra

It's difficult for me to describe how much, and why, I love this poem. The bodiliness, the muscular transformation of body to image back to body, the intimacy of the narrative, the texture of the shifting tone, moving from self-mocking to heartbroken to hopeful, not as a spectrum but a jamble of conflicting emotional movements. How desire lays in the same bed as loss, how nature is a thief that steals back what it gives. How the language is clear and completely accessable and filled with music and wit.

"Elegy for Angelito" is a great example of how a poem working in lyric sections can work over the course of several pages while maintaining interest, even though the whole of the narrative takes place in the first sections. The emotional work of the poem is to deal with the fallout of the narrative--and over the course of five pages, Herrera teases out the different strands of loss and loveliness available to her.

Long Poems We Like: from Mary Oliver's American Primitive

2010-01-25T04:34:00.000-08:00

Following a trend I'm seeing in books I'm reading, Mary Oliver's American Primitive has several long poems tucked in among the shorter lyrics!

"The Lost Children" first published in Three Rivers Poetry Journal
"Ghosts" first published in National Forum

"Humpbacks" first published in Country Journal
"Little Sister Pond"
"Music" first published in Prairie Schooner
"The Gardens" first published in The Georgia Review

As you can see, these long poems were luckier than most to be published in journals. But they are by Mary Oliver.

Some elements of these long poems make them great:

narrative: a missing child, cross-cultural kidnapping and adoption, the discovery/exploitation of the Southern Plains, a whale-sighting trip, a day-hike, a seduction. Nobody could really call these narrative poems, they function on the lyric level. But framing these lyrics is action--the miles walked between the different scenes. And in many of these, the larger framework of the narrative connects the lyric to an expansiveness of scope: the lyrics get to comment on huge topics and make radical assertions about them: poems like "The Lost Children," which telescopes out from one child to children's role in the cultural conflict of the American plains as settlers displaced Native Americans, to the nature of losing loved ones and the response from those who lose them.
lyric intensity: an example from "Whale Song" shows these poems work, and work wonderfully, in the traditional lyric mode, in fact, it could almost be an ode in the final movement:

"Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,

its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones

toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire"

The full text of this poem is available several places online, although unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere it hadn't been centered (yuck) so I won't link to it.

Long Poems We Like: Terrance Hayes

2010-01-22T06:27:00.000-08:00

Looking for a good example of a long poem MisFit editors love? Check out a recent post on long poem resource blog Side-Dish.

The Role of the Narrative in Long Poems

2010-01-11T13:30:00.000-08:00

It makes sense that a form arising from the epic poem would have a strong connection to narrative. In a form that attempts to capture all the intensity of the lyric and extend that intensity over pages, what room is there in the contemporary long poem (or longish poem, the more than 60 line poem) for narrative?

I'm going to suggest that in some way or other, a long poem depends on narrative to make it function.

Think about it, we're talking about a poem where the reader has to turn the page more than twice. What can sustain the interest of the reader in a lyrical moment for more than a moment? A long lyric poem seems, when you think about it, to be a poem that is just too long.

When multiple moments are connected to each other, this implies narrative. A beginning, a middle, and end. There is some logic that ties the multiple scenes together. This is the nature of narrative and is implicit in length.

How explicit does narrative have to be to support the interest of the reader past the first few moments? Some of the most famous of long poems, including the traditional book-length poems, are autobiographies or biographies. The narrative is pretty explicit.

But the important thing is to have an idea of time passing within the frame of the poem, and to have markers in the poem that allow the reader to figure out which lines belong with which distinct lyric moment in a chain of moments. Sections are helpful, and maybe the simplest way to seperate out these episodes of lyric intensity.

Do a number of lyrics connected together make a long poem? No. Sometimes they just make a collection. I recently wrote about chapbooks and how they appeal to the "concept book." Do 14 poems about the same topic constitute parts of a long poem? Most people would say no. They belong together as part of the same work, order is probably important on some level, but if you could move the sections around and have the same basic effect, there is no narrative arc in the work. No beginning, middle, and end. Many collections will have a narrative arc that connects and orders the lyric moments. Does that make it a long poem?

No. A long poem is a poem where the individual pieces may stand alone, but not in their full glory and importance. Like a scene from a movie, it might be interesting, but the fact that more is going on is implicit in the scene itself. You know something came before, something comes after. And satisfaction is delayed until you know what.

That's what needs to go on in a long poem for it to be successful. The reader can't be satisfied with one page, with one part standing in for the experience of the whole poem. The reader must feel compelled to turn the page again and again. And this compulsion is created by the desire to know what happens. So something has to happen. Something must be hinted at or implied and then revealed. That's narrative.

So can a long poem exist that isn't a biography, and autobiography, or an epic? Absolutely. Some poems incorporate narrative as a mere whiff, a lingering scent of the narrative after it has left the room of the poem. Others fall in the middle.

"Her Island," Rita Dove's long poem about her trip to the island in Greece where legend places the kidnap of Persephone, is the capstone of a larger collection that traces the narrative arc through individual lyric moments that only mirror, rather than retell, the original story. "Her Island," is a collection of lyric and narrative moments that make up that larger story of her journey to Greece and her journey through these recapturings of the different elements of the story. One of the major ideas that gets circumvented in the poem is time. It passes, but rather than linear time, time is experienced as a cycle. Each sonnet is a section of the cycle you can wrap your head around as a reader, but the fact that repetition, the threat and promise of it, haunts the sonnet cycle is clear.

So what am I saying? The lyric lies about time. Wordsworth called poetry "emotion recollected in tranquility." There is an illusion that the lyric is somehow taken out of the action and exists in its own meditative bubble. This just doesn't fly after about 7 minutes. But with narrative, or the suggestion of narrative, (as simply implied as putting different dates and locations in section titles) time becomes concrete again, and this anchors the reader as they struggle to piece together the larger sense that they feel three pages demands.

Because three pages do in fact demand a larger sense of something!! The moments have to add up--have to tell as story! Such as in the wonderful surreal and ghostly Levis poems, "Linnets" comes to mind. The reader feels that this is the moment, in meditation, after all the action has occured. But they get the story, like flashbacks in a movie, fed to them in little amazing tidbits as they perservere through the poem. This narrative, and the confidence that there is a narrative, allows the reader to stop and enjoy the language. Otherwise, the reader might worry that they'll get to the end of the poem and there'll be no point.

This anxiety is created by time! The time the reader brings to the page creates the demand for revelation on later pages. When you turn the page, it's like an enjambed line magnified in it's effect of creating suspense. The reader has to keep in mind what they've read to make sense of what comes. And the more lines accumulate, the greater this suspense, the harder it is for the reader to keep everything they need in mind to find the resolution of the poem.

So be kind to your readers, long poem writers. Give them clear language, or fixed markers of episodes passing so they can close a chapter in their minds, carry a nugget forward with them into the next poem, and enjoy themselves. Give them a clear narrative they can follow with the comfort of narrative conventions, or at least the ghost of narratives past to fill them in on what's going on and why it matters so much.

Because if it doesn't matter more on page 3 than it did on page 1, what is the point?

Holiday Fundraiser

2009-12-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

If you know any procrastinating holiday decorator/gifters, here's a great suggestion: MisFit Journal's Holiday Fundraiser. We have a store at Etsy and we're selling handsewn rustic quilt ornaments for $4.00, and maybe some paintings as well. We're hoping to raise enough money for a year's worth of web hosting for our website!

Our goal is to post a new one each day! If you don't see one, we'll make one just for you, whatever colors you like :)

Art We Like: Tea Pirates

2009-12-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Tea Pirates! (For purchase on Etsy)

What I like about it: it's whimsical; it appears random at first, like an illustration from a children's book removed from its context. The pen and ink drawing suggests a narrative that's both strange and playful. And the thought of it in the context of a journal, hugging short meditative lyrics and snuggling next to long biographical monographs is full of delightful contrast and ironic potential.

Blog Submissions

2009-12-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

We welcome you to participate in MisFit Blog!

If you would like to profile a form, a book, or a writer who uses short or long forms, or if you are a writer who uses short and long forms and would like to be interviewed for the blog, email the editor at editor [dot] stringbeanpress [at] gmail [dot] com with your name, bio, and interests.

We're happy to read your mini-essays, or just your ideas!

MisFit Website Up and Running

2009-12-14T04:23:00.001-08:00

Come check out our website, designed by the beautiful Aimee Baker!

You Can Write a Short Poem: Sevenling

2009-12-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

Seven lines is a great length for poems! Proof: an exactly seven line poetry form.

The SEVENLING.

Other blogs have taken up the SEVENLING before, with great links.

Check it out! I particularly like "Sevenling 3" by Yolanda Calderon-Horn.

You can write a short poem: Prose poem

2009-12-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

Ok, those of you who say 7 lines is just not enough. What if they are really long lines? Try a seven line prose poem!

Check out the poem "Insect," by Ian Seed at Cafe Irreal. It reminds me in it's final movement of a James Tate poem!

To read a James Tate poem, and other prose poems, check out this site.

Good writing!

You Can Write a Short Poem! Sijo

2009-12-01T05:08:00.000-08:00

Most poets have encountered the haiku form before. Personally, I found that the short lines, combined with only three stanzas, made it hard for me to make a haiku that satisfied me.

The Korean alternative of Sijo offers a longer line, more natural in length to poets who, like me, have more syllables per line.

Check it out! MisFit would love to see some Sijo! Just consider that while the form might be interesting, don't feel compelled to stay within the traditional content.

Long Poems We Like: Rita Dove

2009-12-01T04:41:00.000-08:00

Rita Dove's sonnet cycle, "Her Island," a crown of sonnets finishing the collection Mother Love that in 2005 she said in an essay in This Is My Best was her favorite work.

I don't think I can, in a blog post, tell you all the reasons why this is an amazing poem cycle. I'll hit on a few:

The form so perfectly fits the content. Dove talks in another essay about the allure of the sonnet, putting a white picket fence around disturbing emotions. The collection, a treatment of the Demeter and Persephone myth, explores confinement, rape, loss, the struggle between mother and daughter, generational cycles, and the different kinds of violence a sexual relationship can contain. The sonnet, and the specifically the crown of sonnets with it's repeating lines, is a perfect container for these themes--circling back around the literal lake where the myth places the kidnapping of Persephone and also circling through the cycle of loss, recovery, and change. It's a freaking amazing poem and when I read it in college it blew my mind.

Would you like to write a crown of sonnets? I tried a heroic sonnet one time and I've got to tell you, this is not easy. What I gleaned from Dove's essay linked to above, in This Is My Best, is that this kind of poem is best tackled after you've spent a significant amount of time with the subject, working it out through poems as Dove does throughout her entire Mother Love collection. By the time she gets to "Her Island," she has seen meaning accrete through the different poems she's written--she's seen patterns emerge, she's connected to it in increasingly personal ways as one must as she nears completion of a collection. And then the fabulous capstone coalesces!

If you're nearing the finish line of a collection, a sonnet crown might be a great exercise. It may have to come out of form, may only yield a title poem or a last poem. But the circling energy of the sequence forces the multiple angles of exploration that have an effect of a concluding paragraph in a persuasive essay.

Short Poem We Like: Margaret Atwood

2009-12-01T04:23:00.000-08:00

You Fit Into Me

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

--Margaret Atwood

Ok, why we like it:

the original simile seems uninteresting, like the cliche hand in glove. But the second stanza turns the first on its head. The poems says so much in so few lines.

Long Poem Examples

2009-11-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

Want to write a long poem? See Stringbean Press's blog, Side-Dish, for examples!

Call for Art Submissions

2009-11-17T06:42:00.001-08:00

Misfit is now accepting submissions of black and white line art, drawings, calligraphy, and block cuts for it's first issue, appearing in print Apri 2010. Contributors get a copy! Art must be original to artist but can appear elsewhere.

Call for Submissions!

2009-11-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

MisFit: A Journal of Long and Short Poetry, is now accepting submissions for it's inaugural issue, April 2010.

Email your long (60+ lines) poems or your short (7 or less lines) in the body of your email, with the subject line "MisFit (long or short) Name" to editor.stringbeanpress [at] gmail [dot] com

Previously published poems will be considered!