Modern Authors Guide

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The Daily Poet – Poem 4 – January 4, 2010

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Welcome to the 4th edition of The Daily Poet, our online poetry publishing adventure and the first new poem of 2010.

We regularly publish new poems online and welcome any submissions to have your poetry published on TheMAGZine website.

I’ve been reading some of the articles in my new 2010 Poet’s Market directory and getting a bit depressed, as there is so much work to do in getting poetry published and starting a publishing company, and I haven’t been spending enough time on either lately.

But instead of letting it get me down, I’m trying to move forward and dedicate a block of time to these tasks every single day in 2010.

My first order of business is getting together a group of my more recent poems that I feel are in publishable condition and start sending them out to poetry magazines and other alternative poetry publishers.

So I’m hoping to work out some of my poems in the pages of The Daily Poet.

It’s not like anybody else is submitting poetry at this point, so I might as well publish my own, and then from here I’ll work out which ones to submit to which poetry publishing magazines, and I’ll outline the steps I take along the way.

Hopefully, I can get some of my poetry published in even the smallest magazines in 2010 if I’m lucky.

And without further delay, here is today’s edition of The Daily Poet.

Jewelry Box

There’s a box I am looking for
that holds more than its name entails,

not just jewels and precious metals,
but diamonds of the heart, hardened coals

that I’m trying to soften in our relationship,
and when I asked the elder who owns the thrift shop

she hadn’t seen one in her store for a long time
and the young woman at the decorative store

who shouted out from behind the cluster
where I couldn’t see her didn’t have any either

even though they sold wooden chests and costume jewelry,
but I’m looking for something with compartments

and secret drawers that open to hidden treasures
that can be tucked away, and silk linens that display

hanging charms and ring settings when it opens,
a sealed unit that locks securely with a key

yet is crafted finely to project its luxury from within,
complex in its structure but solid in its singularity,

something to be admired and measured on its own
where we store our gemstones and other odds and ends.

Thank you very much for reading, we really appreciate it. Please feel free to leave comments below on the poem or otherwise.

The Daily Poet – Poem 3 – December 27, 2009

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Welcome to another edition of The Daily Poet, where we publish original poetry online.

If you’d like to be included in The Daily Poet, please send your poetry to TheMAGZine@gmail.com.

We would be more than happy to accept submissions to publish your poetry online.

And without further delay, here is the poem of today.

Hope you enjoy this edition of our online poetry publishing adventure, The Daily Poet.

In the Streets of South Beach

Even though the dogs piss
on their roots in the streets of South Beach,
the coconut trees still grow sweet fruit
and provide a steady stump
for the hookers and homeless to lean on,
and when one nut falls, it could crack
the skull of a passing-by tourist
who unknowingly looks up at the wrong moment
and only tastes the spectacularly splattered milk
as it leaks across their open mouth
in their last gasps of tropical air.

Thank you kindly for your time in reading The Daily Poet.

We sincerely appreciate it and wish the best of luck to you.

Smear the Queer – Childhood Games and the Meaning of Words We Say

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I remember when we were young, a game of Smear the Queer could break out on the playground at any time.

One moment you were playing a friendly game of catch, and suddenly someone would throw the ball at you and scream out, “Smear the Queer,” which immediately made you the target of a tackling mob.

You’d run as hard as your pride would take you, until you were either smothered or managed to toss the ball off onto some other sucker who was feeling a brief sense of invincibility.

It was a game of boyhood bravery with no winners and no losers, where the sides were simple to see, and you could easily choose which to stand on, to either get or get gotten.

But it was mostly just stupidity and boys being boys, something that we thought might separate us momentarily as men.

The rules of Smear the Queer were simple: one person was it, either by chance if the ball was tossed to them or by choice if they grabbed the ball from another or off the ground, and everybody else tried to tackle them to get the ball.

However, not once when I heard that primal call to action shouted out, “Smear the Queer,” did I look around for a homosexual to harass, nor can I even remember understanding the true nature of the name of our game.

It could be argued that the word queer is not being used in the derogatory sense in this instance, that it is simply used to signify the person who is “it”, who represents the unusual or different person in the less sinister sense of the word, the person who is suspect, and therefore, outside of the mob.

And it could also be argued that smear is not meant to indicate an attack on the character of someone or a slanderous defamation of their good name, but rather to cover and smudge a person as some friendly tackling will do.

But then why use the more vicious term Smear the Queer and not some more appropriate name with the same meaning like Smother the Other, and where did the name of this game develop?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but like many terms that have been used over the years in American society, the name of this children’s game is likely rooted in hatred and bigotry, not from the children who play the game, but passed along by adults and somehow coined into the name of a playground pastime.

There are many examples of these terms in our lexicon, including “Indian Giver” (one who gives something only to take it back with obvious negative implications against Native Americans), and “Yellow” (a coward or traitor with suspect origins in the early American hatred of asian immigrants).

These terms get used at first in hatred, but then get adapted over generations until they end up being accepted terms that are used in everyday English by children that don’t know any better, who are taught by ignorant adults.

Of course, we hope that one day these children mature and realize that words have meaning, and that they will decide to no longer use them for communication, but culturally ingrained hatred isn’t good for our development as a community.

I’m reminded that this game still exists by my cousin, whose two boys were recently playing Smear the Queer with their team after a football practice, as the coach had literally told her.

When she told the other parents who were waiting for their kids that they were just playing a quick game of “Smear the Queer,” her words were met with outrage at the use of such vulgar language.

Funny enough though, none of them stopped the game until the boys were good and tired, and they really didn’t object to their boys either being tackled by a mob or joining a mob to tackle a single child, but just thought it was an inappropriate name for a game.

Even so, I can’t imagine too many parents explained the meaning of the name Smear the Queer to their children on the way home, but it’s probably better that they allow their children to live in innocence a little longer.

God forbid one of them might think they were actually being attacked for who they are and feel that they were no longer just part of the group playing the game.

The Daily Poet – Poem 2 – September 30, 2009

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It’s been a long time since our last daily poem, and the poetry has been anything but daily.

It’s not that I haven’t written any poems, I have, but I just haven’t published much on The MAG Zine for a while in general.

Well, let’s hope we can change that, and maybe you can help me.

The MAG Zine needs your help to publish quality poems on a daily basis.

I’m lucky if I can write one good poem a year by myself, and I’d be happy with one great poem in my lifetime, but if any readers out there contribute your own poems and enough of you contribute, there’s a chance we may be able to put a few good poems out there for all to read.

Please feel free to submit your poems, we’ll be more than happy to publish them.

Here’s mine for today. I’ve been working on simple poetic formats with basic rhythms and rhyming while trying to pull meaning out of the contrast between dark language and light format.

Here’s an example. Please feel free to leave your comments below:

Lie in My Bed

In death I’ll lie where fishes sleep
below bottomless oceans still less deep,

far underneath the netherworld
where no shadows from the surface swirl,

and finally I’ll empty my head
of dreams for what was once undead,

and let my story go untold
as endless darkness forever unfolds.

The Daily Poet column welcomes submissions for consideration for publication in The Daily Poet and elsewhere on The MAG Zine. Please review our Submission Guidelines for details on submitting your writing.

Liao Yiwu – The Corpse Walker – China from the Bottom Up

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Liao Yiwu was born in 1958, when Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward launched 30 million starving Chinese peasants into their early graves, and he has spent his life trying to uncover the stories of the forgotten souls that have been left behind during China’s tumultuous modern history.

In The Corpse Walker, Liao Yiwu interviews the Chinese downtrodden, the Professional Mourner, the Leper, the Corpse Walkers, the Tiananmen Father, the Grave Robber, the Migrant Worker, and many others whose lives have been torn apart and obliterated by the Chinese authority.

Liao Yiwu’s interviews are pieced together from his memory and notes, some from discussions over time with fellow inmates when he was politically imprisoned, others from oppressed elders who have nothing left to hide.

Their stories are stunning, sorrowful, and spectacular all at once, and they offer a true glimpse into the mourning heart of a Chinese culture that few Westerners could ever understand and most of the modern Chinese society would rather forget.

Liao Yiwu unleashes the immeasurable scale of recent Chinese history through the words of the oppressed people that the Chinese government never wanted to be heard, and although these stories are all true, they are even more unbelievable because of that fact.

Words from The Professional Mourner:

In the old days, there were people who specialized in walking the corpse. They normally traveled in the evenings, two guys at a time. One walked in the front and the other at the back. Like carrying a sedan chair, they pulled the body to walk along, as fast as wind. They would utter in unison, “Yo ho, yo ho.”

If you looked from a distance, you would see that the dead and the living march to the same steps. They used gravity to keep the corpse walking to the same rhythm. It was hard for the trio to change gait and make a turn, never a sharp turn. If you happened to see a walking corpse coming, you got out of the way. Otherwise, it could walk right into you.

I saw this in 1949. A local merchant was accidentally shot by a group of army deserters in Jiangxi Province. This merchant’s name was Lu. I helped arrange his funeral. At that time, there was no easy means of water or land transportation to bring his body back home. His friends couldn’t bear to bury him in another land. They paid money to those professionals to get his body home. It took them over a week, and when they got there his body looked as if he were alive.

End quote.

Liao Yiwu still lives in China, risking his life to hear the stories that were never supposed to be told, and even while he is awarded for his efforts, he is persecuted just the same, as are those who would dare to listen.

All the Beautiful Sinners by Stephen Graham Jones

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Stephen Graham Jones explores the tragic magic of storms and serial killers in his hardcore crime novel, All the Beautiful Sinners.

Following the destructive path of tornadoes across the American Southwest, a sadistic serial killer plucks children out of their homes into thin air, sucking them into the eye of his apprenticeship to be the next generation of psychopaths that carry on his legacy.

Pursued by Deputy Sheriff Jim Doe across the path of tornado valley, the killer leaves a trail of bloody evidence that leads Doe ever closer to the realization that he is intimately involved with the murders.

Steeped in urban legend and modern mythology, All the Beautiful Sinners is a triumphant smorgasbord of desperation and destitution, where a serial killer seeks to create his legacy out of the offspring of those lost to the storms.

Stephen Graham Jones strength is his use of language and metaphor to twist sentences into steely slices that penetrate your skin and leave scars long after you’ve closed the pages.

Both complicated in its design and simplistic in its intention, Jones’ sinister novel details the path towards atonement we all must seek, regardless of our past sins or triumphs.

A passage from All the Beautiful Sinners:

The moon was shot through with the small bodies of blind sparrows.

Behind her, the boy looked to the girl. To Marlene. Marly. She was smiling, the soldering wire molded into her lips, the flesh of her cheek, the one dimple pulled through with a piece of thread, tied to her second molar. The scissors used to cut the thread would show up in a trashcan back at the campsite. Along with an empty can of the sealant used on her face. They would be in a stratum that would get labeled March 15th. There would be no prints on her, though, not in the shellac around her arms, where she’d been lifted, placed, not on her own fingertips, even.

The boy shook his head no at Marlene, no no no, but then when he stood to run it was into a denim shirt. Far above, a brown hat.

The girl looked around slow.

‘Father,’ she said. ‘Look what we found.’

‘Yes,’ her father said. ‘Good, good.’

The boy looked up at Him and hugged himself into a ball, still shaking his head no, and his father carried him back to the road like that, the girl trailing behind, holding the fingers of one hand in the other, behind her back, her smile fixed like the children’s had been, her eyes glazed with wonder.

End passage.

All the Beautiful Sinners by Stephen Graham Jones is a journey into the violence of the American frontier, along all of the winding trails it entails, where children are lost to the howling wind and the memories of our past entwine with the dreams of our present.

Jerome Bahr Authors Simple Realism in Wisconsin Tales

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Jerome Bahr’s stories of stark small-town life with hard-drinking morality and innocent desperation capture the moody weather and seasonal sullenness that overcast the Wisconsin consciousness.

Jerome Bahr was born under that cloud in Arcadia, Wisconsin, around 1909, and he studied at the University of Minnesota before working at several Midwest newspapers.

Bahr later moved to New York, and his first book, “All Good Americans,” appeared in 1937 when Earnest Hemingway introduced him to the American reading public.

Wisconsin Tales was published in 1964, but some of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker, Mademoiselle, Woman’s Day, and Story Parade.

The characters in Wisconsin Tales show both the self-destructiveness of their behavior and the quiet fortitude of the landscape that surrounds them.

In “And the Fishes Were Beautiful,” a drunken fury leads a man to drag a woman to the edge. “The Grudge” shows how anger can eat away our sorrow. The subtleties of racism in the North are explored in Ebony Intermezzo.

Jerome Bahr may have left the Midwest for New York City, but his heart still lived in the hills of Wisconsin, and his writing always reflected the will of Wisconsin’s people.

This will is reflected in this passage from “The Grudge”:

August stared out the window. The sun had begun its descent, offering surcease to the baking hillside; and along the banks of the river, tree-shadows spread and cooled the shallow stream. The entire countryside was relaxing. Only August, grim and determined, seemed to oppose the day’s decline…

Stories in Wisconsin Tales include:

The Grudge
And the Fishes Were Beautiful
Whisper in the Night
Canny Fanny
Ebony Intermezzo
The Correspondents
Olga’s Revenge
The Word Passer
The Baker’s Triumph
Bannon’s Pavilion
The Grandmother

Jerome Bahr’s Wisconsin Tales was published by Trempealeau Press in Baltimore, Maryland.

In Wisconsin Tales, Jerome Bahr speaks of what is small-town in us all, our dreams to expand, and the struggle between who we want to be and what we become.

Review by The MAG Zine.

The Art of Accepting Rejection Letters

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Every writer who encloses their words into an envelop and sends them off to agents, editors, and publishers must learn to face the eventual return of a rejection letter.

Rejection letters come in many shapes and sizes, but they are mostly form letters with little personality, which is wise, as there is danger in treading the emotional waters of rejection.

If an editor ever chooses to grace your rejection letter with actual handwritten words, or if the gods are willing, a bit of inspiration or encouragement, then you must not consider that to be a letter of rejection, as human contact within a rejection letter is actually a form of victory.

However, most rejection letters are short and apologetic, and they usually point to the massive influx of new authors they receive every day as the reason your work could not be considered, which is really disconcerting if you understand that to mean that there are just too many people with more talent than you.

If you think about it, the very idea of the rejection letter is unique to writers alone, as other unknown artists are simply allowed to go unnoticed and are not directly subjected to a written form of deliberate rejection.

Not many budding rock stars would jam in dimly-lit bar stages if they knew they would actually receive a direct rejection from the audience after the show and not just be ignored, although it’s true that writers don’t usually have to worry about beer bottles flying at them while they’re writing.

How you handle your rejection letter is the most important aspect of the publishing process, as it could easily discourage you from otherwise pursuing your art.

At first glance, it’s easy to feel slighted. I mean, you spend years putting together your novel of over 400 pages, you slave over the crafting of every sentence exchange until the words bleed into your eyes off the page, and then you take the care to send a perfect copy to an editor or agent, only to have it dismissed summarily without so much the decency to even sign a name onto the rejection letter.

It’s enough for any writer to want to self-publish their work, but we must dismiss rejection letters as easily as they dismiss our work, because it’s just business.

It’s a numbers game, and it’s the writers job to submit our work to as many valid markets as possible, and it’s the publishing industry’s job to filter out what is viable for publication.

Of course, we may not agree with their opinion, but it’s how you disagree that makes you stronger.

Don’t write your editor back denouncing their knowledge of literature or demanding they reconsider your work. First of all, that’s crazy behavior, and second of all, maybe you didn’t deserve consideration at this time and you need to look further into your writing.

Just keep writing and accept your rejection letters for what they are, an initiation into the secret society of people who tell stories in isolation and invite others to listen.

Rejection letters are a symbol of your loyalty to your art. They are as important as your writing itself, because without them, you are only a diarists.

So keep writing, work harder, and continue submitting your work for approval, because without running the risk of receiving another rejection letter, you are removing the possibility that you will one day be published.

Article originally published by The MAG Zine.

Why Are the Mountains Crying?

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On a major network special covering the effect that global warming is having on the melting Andean glaciers, a local farmer was quoted as having asked the following question:

“Why are the mountains crying?”

His metaphor is poignant, comparing the melting glacier waters rolling down the mountain slopes to human tears, inflicting the sadness and frustration that often results in crying.

In a detailed program that revealed all of the facts and figures of global warming and the retreating glaciers, which threatens the water supply of this region, this single metaphor was more powerful than any image, interview, or scientific evidence.

It may only be that as a writer, I am more open to accepting the emotional significance of a metaphor than others who were watching this program, but in a very real sense, I believe it represents the power and influence of poetic language in our modern society.

With all of the statistics, survey results, scientific theories and their rebuttals floating about, it’s sometimes hard to understand the meaning of our world from an emotional perspective, which is really the mechanism by which motivation is inspired and change eventually happens.

Raw human emotion purified into palpable communication is the essence of poetry, and in that sense, poetry is alive and prospering in the words we hear every day, despite the meager sales of poetry chapbooks in local bookshops.

Whether it be Barack Obama’s eloquent words on racism that serve to inspire our country or the manipulated fragments of advertising copy that internalizes our unknown desires for products we didn’t know existed, poetry is everywhere, even if it goes undetected, and it’s as important in the world today as ever.

Originally published by The MAG Zine (themagzine.com).

Choose Your Local Librarian for the Spotlight Librarian Award

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If you know a local library professional who makes your life a little easier and loves their job, then take the time to nominate them for the 2008 Spotlight Award.

The Spotlight Award winner will receive a $2,500 prize as well as $250 for their library.

Any current public library employee is eligible to be nominated, so if you know of any employee at your local library who deserves a little extra attention, then make sure to nominate them for this award.

The Spotlight Librarian Award Nomination Form can be submitted online or by mail, but all entries must be received by May 15, 2008.

Librarians are the modern gatekeepers of our collective knowledge, despite what all of the Wikipedia worshippers write, and they deserve our recognition for the services they provide.

Nominate your local librarian today.