S p r i n g 2 0 2 1
Erin Singleton © 2021
craft essay issue
guest Editor: Annie Kim
Collage as Fraught Play Erika Howsare
“I still find a certain generative friction in the meeting of my own mind with something that already existed. . .”
Finding the Note Robert Thomas
“In some sense a revision is always a betrayal of the original poem, a sort of second marriage. . . "
Making Manuscripts:
An Irregularly Braided Conversation
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet & Annie Kim
“ . . . those poems do talk to each other, more than you realize—they can’t not. Your job is to find out how.”
From the Archives Gerald Locklin
Featured Poet, Winter 2007
In Memoriam, 1941-2021
VISUALS
virtual SALON
from the ether
On The salon
Last June we launched DMQ Virtual Salon, our antidote to another loss for the literary community: in-person readings celebrating new books of poetry. We’ve heard enthusiastic responses from contributors and readers alike, who love the format of sneak-peek, listen-on-your-own-time introductions to great poets, new books, and a range of publishers. A grand-slam as far as we’re concerned. And while we anticipate gathering before long in bookstores, pubs, and each other’s living rooms in a return to a delightfully more crowded life, for now, the Virtual Salon is part of DMQ Review’s new normal.
We chose “salon” to describe our reading series as a way to invite you—in keeping with the term—into a shared space designed to encourage conversation, spark creativity, and build community. And to this end, let me add here that if you click on one of our virtual salon readings and then watch on YouTube, you can leave comments and applause there for the poets who would love to hear from you. And of course, what we’d all really love is for you to click on their books and buy them!
More salon
Which brings us to this spring’s special Craft Issue, a salon, if you will, of accomplished poets sharing their thoughts and a conversation on three essential aspects of poetry craft: composition, editing, and manuscript building. We are thrilled that editor Annie Kim guest-edited this brilliant addition to DMQ offerings and has gathered here for us such outstanding voices, just the kind of considerations that we’d hope to be part of when actually attending a salon. From Erika Howsare’s exploration of poem-making through “Collage as Fraught Play,” to Robert Thomas looking at “Finding the Note” in revision, to “Making Manuscripts: An Irregularly Braided Conversation” offering a lively exchange between Annie Kim and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet about what they did to pull new books together, each of these poets offers richly generous insight and experience and some really good ideas for you to consider for your own writing practices. Please “listen” in. Artist Erin Singleton’s intriguing collages accompany our Spring 2021 issue. Many thanks to each of these contributors.
Submissions re-open
We’re also very happy to announce that one year after shutting down regular submissions, we are at last re-opening for a special fall Prose Poem Issue. Yes, it will be a prose poem-only issue, a celebration of a poetry for which we have great fondness. We look forward to featuring the best work we can find, both new voices and long-time practitioners. Please review our complete guidelines on Submittable before sending there.
If you’re unfamiliar and haven’t written a prose poem before, you’ve got a treat coming with our Fall 2021 issue. I encourage you to listen to one prose poem practitioner, poet and editor Peter Johnson, as he discusses and reads from his new book, Truths, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty: A Short Primer on the Prose Poem, with Selected Letters From Russell Edson featured in our March 2021 Virtual Salon for one way to think of this important genre of poetry.
I’m also recommending two anthologies and a brand-new introduction to the genre, all of which you will find engaging and instructive:
—A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on Their Prose Poetry, ed. Peter Johnson (MadHat Press, 2019)
—Great American Prose Poems, From Poe to the Present, ed. David Lehman (Scribner, 2003)
—Prose Poetry: An Introduction, ed. Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Thanks for sharing this space with us. And please, stay safe.
from the Ether,
Sally Ashton
Editor-in-Chief