The New Formalist

Poetry Editor
Leo Yankevich

Publication:
The New Formalist is published biannually
in spring and fall
in PDF format.

Submissions:

lyankevich@gmail.com

Send no more than 5 poems in either the body of an email message
or in a single attached file (RTF, MS Word, or Open Office).


© 2007 by respective authors.


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Margaret Menamin

CHRISTMAS PARTY AT THE DEMENTIA CENTER

I’ve brought a little bag of chocolate drops
as party favors, just enough to grace
the plates. I join the residents, my hands
uneasy in my lap. No doubt I will
go through this “festive” evening cursing God.
It’s difficult for me to hold my peace

in here, where silence doesn’t equal peace
and clamor isn’t joy. Amanda drops
a paper cup—no glass allowed—and, God,
I pity her increasing lack of grace,
her mind’s authority usurped. She will
not realize she doesn’t own her hands.

A man called Orville smiles at me and hands
a pencil to me. I will have no peace
from him all evening, as he will
keep handing things to me until he drops
exhausted. I accept his gifts with grace,
or so I hope. Don’t let me cry, please, God.

It’s not as if this center is some god-
forsaken prison in barbaric hands.
It’s clean; it doesn’t smell. Bright pictures grace
the antiseptic walls. Fred prays for peace
repeatedly while eating. Silence drops
like death on me. Of course the patients will

not notice. Mostly silent too, they will
obediently eat dinner, snubbing God
who gives these creatures light before he drops
them into darkness, snatches from their hands
all joy, and trades oblivion for peace.
There is a strange and horrifying grace

in this passivity. It’s not disgrace,
it’s nothing, nothing. I’m the one who will
go home to tinsel, try to make my peace
with what we’re pleased to call the will of God
and place myself in arbitrary hands
of one who counts the sparrows and the raindrops.

And here, but for the so-called grace of God,
I too will be, not knowing my own hands,
and have no peace until his hammer drops.

JOURNEY IN THE DARK

This long straight highway, tapering to twilight,
pushes apart dark trees on either side,
with no illumination beyond my light,
and startled roadside grass my ghostly guide.

The radio is low. An obbligato
accompanies a dying Violette
as phrases of Addio del passato
are wrung from Stoltzman’s mourning clarinet.

The forest closes on my back, and narrow
as ribbon, center-striped, the road draws on,
pointing to darkness: a relentless arrow
ending, if ever, somewhere known as Gone.

THE SWEET POTATO TRICK

Unhappy to the point of suicide
because “the vimmin hate me,” Ole stands
poised on the bridge’s edge when he is spied
by Sven, who takes his buddy by the hands

and pulls him back: “Don’t do it, Ole, vait a
minute and ay tell you vat you do:
Shust get yourself a nice beeg sveet potata
and put it in your pants. Girls fight for you.”

The next day Ole’s back and more depressed
when Sven approaches. “Vell, it didn’t verk.
Ay use the sveet potata you suggest
and still the vimmin treat me like a jerk.”

Then Sven steps back and eyes his friend askance:
“Damn, Ole—put it in the VRONT your pants.”

Paul Stevens

THE CELLAR

We choose our keenest tools for this
interrogation session:
each wants, and each intends to have,
a gasping, full confession.

So strap me in your iron maiden,
softly close its door:
delirious agony, perhaps—
at least no tedious bore.

I’ll stack you in a prisoner-pile,
a human pyramid
of naked flesh: your superego
crushed beneath my id.

You execute exquisite voltas
of balletic pain,
twist tight the twinkling silver screw
that bites into my brain.

Submit now to my bastinado,
feel the subtle beat,
beat, beat of rod reverberating
on your dainty feet.

My poker probes, your pincers force
their grip around my head;
I clamp electrodes to your bits;
the light burns lurid red.

Your grim garrotte, my ruthless rack;
two martyrs on this bed
of torment: screams re-echoing
till you and I lie dead.

I LIVE!

I live! Yet where I live, none knows or cares—
Certainly not at number twenty-eight,
With its unvacuumed hall and tricky stairs,
Nor yet at fourteen with its broken gate;
Nor sixty-six, a few doors down the way,
With its shenanigans, both night and day.

Into the High Street shops of crowds and noise
I trundle with my trolley, seeking cod,
A target for the jibes of truant boys,
Or brazen girls who bellow: “Rack off, sod!”
And e’en the cashier at the supermarket
Is strange, and mutters, “Get a move on, fark it!”

I long to lodge on telly with Big Brother,
There in the House with Pete, who’d be my bro,
George Galloway, Aisleyne, and any other
Chum who’d vote to keep me on the show:
We'd be there for each other, talk, sing songs,
Play jolly pranks, and flick each other’s thongs.

John Hart

CREDO

The saintly tell us we are on belay:
There is no error we can make
Will drop us far enough to break
The human spirit into spray.

Upon our curious pitch whose rock
Is rotten, wrecked and anchorless
The boot can slip, hand can digress
And still we can sustain the shock.

And even in the black couloir
Where evil trembles at the arm
No terror of the flesh can harm
The rope as solid as despair.

But I have seen my brother fall,
My sister on the ice depart
From all the usage of her heart
And do not trust the angel tall.

REFLECTED SUNLIGHT

To discern in the reflection which is real
Is hard: the tree may be exactly tree:
The hill and its cartoon on water faithfully
Alike, and clouded with the points of grass:
But if the sun is in the ponded air
You know the difference by the lack of pain.
The image is aloof, a little dim,
And almost safe to look at. Not the thing
That excavates a blackness in the eye.
Reflections do not mock us as we die.

WHATEVER THE SLEEPER

Whatever the sleeper stares at is not mine.
The good rock scorns me, and I must go down.
I will adventure never on that line
Where bolder creature in the man were seen.
No longer hope, though it was my design
To execute so forcible a sign
Upon the slope accessible to none
As would have brought anachronous angels down.
Tell the inquisitors that they have won:
Today the traitor to his land is shown:
Lapidez-le: he has betrayed the stone.

Anna Evans

A JOURNEYMAN PIECE

Upon a deck that overlooked the sea
he said You cannot claim to be a poet
until you have written at least one sonnet
about Icarus—I’ll help—I can be
your Mentor. They plucked words out of the trees
and fixed them on the bones with a delicate
syntax made from molten wax. I bet
it even flies, he said and carelessly
cast it over the bay and into the sun
along with a bright eagle of his own.
The poor thing flew the very best it could
with wings not meant for that high altitude.
Watching it sink he said, with no trace of guile:
Not bad for novice verse—almost a mile.

David W. Landrum

TO THE TUNE OF “SOARING CLOUDS”

You held my lotus blossom in your hand
So gently, and you played a marvelous game,
Your lips upon the pistil. When I came,
We took some rhino horn, and my demand
For more and more received no reprimand.
You fucked me all night long! You had no shame!
All night the rooster’s gorgeous crest, in flame,
Stood up, bright red. As bees in flowers stand
And gather nectar, you were lodged in me,
And trembled at my stamens, perfumed jewel.
So you shall have my all. It would be cruel
For someone else to plumb my lotus pond.
You make my blossoms fire with love so fond
And passion deeper than the eastern sea.

CHRISTOPHER WREN’S SENSE OF HUMOR

The flying buttresses that hold the dome
of Saint Paul’s (we know now) don’t really touch
the gold-leaf roof. They miss it by as much
as six inches. Their flat surfaces comb
the rushing air—a joke by Mr. Wren
upon the stodgy bureaucrats who feared
collapse, catastrophe, though it appeared
he had obeyed the orders of those men.
When he walked by, frock-coated, did he smirk,
complacent, as he surveyed his own guile?
Seeing the tall cathedral, did he smile,
at what he’d hidden in that piece of work?
Day after day, throughout his life, he knew
the last laugh would be his, yet it appears
he told no one. He’d gull them in arrears
after a hundred seasons had played through.
Whatever else he did, he never spoke.
A hundred years later, we got the joke.

COLETTE’S RETURN

You came back from the world you tried a while:
the dykes, the bars. You did it for a year.
“I gave it a good go," you say, and smile—
“and I found out the hard way I’m not queer!”

You laugh. You’re nervous, wondering what I think
of your late sojourn as a lesbian.
I only smile and offer you a drink.
Two years ago you became born again.

Or was it when you went to Washington
just four days after your first Zen retreat,
shaved off your hair, became a Buddhist nun
at the Sravasti Abbey? Near the feet

of some female guru, the abbess there,
you sat throughout that winter—the rice gruel,
the hours of silence, drove you to despair
(you were not cut out for that convent’s rule).

You wrote about the Dali Lama—long,
letters, cited a monk from Vietnam,
gave details on Tibetan chant and song.
Three years ago you were quoting Billy Graham.

“I need a place to stay until I find
a job. I’d like to stay here if I can.
I’ve always loved you, David. You’re so kind.
It’ll be nice to do it with a man.”

I’ll take you in. You knew that from the first.
We both knew the conclusion was forgone.
You’ll stay with me until you are submersed—
some new obsession, and then you’ll move on.

Joseph S. Salemi

THE BAWDY HAND OF THE DIAL

IS NOW UPON THE PRICK OF NOON

I wonder how Will Shakespeare would react
To poetry today. How would he judge
The bourgeois politesse with which it’s packed—
This rainbow-colored, all-inclusive sludge?

Would he who gave us Falstaff hold as peers
The poets of propriety and niceness—
Those well-behaved, phlegmatic sonneteers
For whom suburban etiquette is priceless?

He’d want, instead of that anemic crew,
Live poets who breathe out sarcastic snorts;
Some bawdy, brazen bards who’d freely spew
Vulgarity and impudent retorts,

And who, like him, care not a fig of Spain
If prissy little milquetoasts cringe in pain.

A TRIBUTE TO WOMEN ON LONG ISLAND

I found, as I traversed New York,
That people varied in their talk.
In Queens they had a word for girls
Who rented out their pubic curls.
This sort of dame was called a hoo-er
To make a perfect rhyme with sewer.
In Harlem she was called a ho
(With macron on the lengthened o)
And Brooklynites, both rich and poor,
Denominated her a hoor.
I heard the same thing in the Bronx
Drawn out with aspirated honks
While Staten Island had a mix
Of labels for commercial chicks:
Ho and Hoo-er, Hoor and Hoe-er...
Some said faster, some said slower.
The double-u I never found
Except on the Long Island Sound
Where ladies of the upper classes
Get the best price for their asses.

ADAPTED FROM MARTIAL, IV.4

A mackerel lying in the street
For three days, during summer heat;

The spoilage of dead whey and curd,
The ripe scent of an unflushed turd;

The foetid breath of fasting Jews,
The rancid sweat of worn-out shoes;

Detritus from a cesspool’s source,
The stalings of a spavined horse;

Putrescence of an addled egg,
Aroma of a gangrened leg—

All these stenches I’d prefer
To the damned smell that reeks from her.

Tom Riley

VOCATIONAL SCHOOL

Said Joe Pongo: “Most humans are fools
Who cannot grasp Darwinian rules
            That rule both them and us.
            They pray wildly—and cuss.
But I do find they’re real skilled with tools.”

THE BIG DIPPER

She dipped her mind in eighteen kinds of dirt,
Then smiled and said aloud: “How clean I am
Compared to all of this!” Innocence hurt.
She dipped her mind in eighteen kinds of dirt.
Unknown to her, her cells moved to convert.
She gossiped but no longer gave a damn.
She dipped her mind in eighteen kinds of dirt—
Then smiled and said aloud: “How clean I am!”

THE SECRET OF HIS HEART

“What’s-Her-Face”—that’s what he called the lass
Around all of the rest of the class.
            But that light appellation
            Was, of course, obfuscation.
In his heart, she remained “What’s-Her-Ass.”

Samuel W. Hinkle

THE PHILOSOPHER DRINKS STARBUCKS

The young philosopher is very bright,
contradicting what he does and says.
He drinks his Starbucks coffee day and night.

A college student, upper class and white,
he speaks of corporation’s evil ways.
The young philosopher is very bright.

He studies Marx and Engels with delight
and shouts by rote their every word and phrase.
He drinks his Starbucks coffee day and night.

He rants how Lenin was so very right:
“Capitalism’s just a passing phase!”
The young philosopher is very bright.

He loves the down and out, this Trotskyite,
but not the trash who live on mayonnaise.
He drinks his Starbucks coffee day and night.

Yet, come spring break he’ll drive off in the light
to a mansion and an orchard full of rays.
The young philosopher is very bright.
He drinks his Starbucks coffee day and night.

T.S. Kerrigan

GOOD TIME GIRLS

In pushup bras and skintight jeans,
Those goodtime girls we knew in youth
All seemed to step from magazines,
Each body like a centerfold.
Voluptuaries bent on fun,
They proved to be as good as gold.
But beauty wasn’t made to last;
It fades away in smoke-filled bars,
Where none can reinvent the past.
The years move at a breathless pace
Defying lotions, serums, creams,
To mar each beauty’s form and face.
What’s left for girls who time’s undone,
Who never dreamt the laughs would end,
Then learn that they’re no longer fun?
When men begin to grow unkind,
A goodtime girl just draws the shades
And tries to drink away her mind.

LILITH

Your eyes, so lovely then,
Could cast a winding skein
To trap unwary men.
Abstracted by those eyes,
I lingered night and day,
Believing all your lies;
And when, in your ennui,
You let me slip away,
I still was never free.
Obsessed with you each fall,
When leaves of oaks begin
Their dark recessional,
I call your name alone
In throes of restless sleep,
A hunger in the bone.
No matter where I stray,
In Eden or beyond,
I’ll always be your prey.

THE MATRIARCH’S BIRTHDAY

Recite again your list of fallen men,
Your father, brothers, lovers, husbands, son
You’ve known in three score years and ten.
Though guests arrive and lighter talk’s begun,
You think about those shadows just the same
While musing where to put your fragile hands.
Now blow away each waxy smelling flame.
Your daughters whisper manifold commands:
The birthday gifts appear, are opened, put away.
The children, bored now, scuffle on the floor.
Pale matriarch, emaciated, grey,
Describe your frieze of dead for us once more.
Your father, brothers, lovers, husbands, son.
You bore the strength to bury every one.

Wiley Clements

PASSAGE TO POINT BARROW

Four cargo vessels plowing furrows forward
thru Bering swells, serene as polished glass,
a pair of blowing whales appears to norward
between the Diomedes and Seward plying.
The captains close at half-speed, not to pass
but to make them sound, to see their great flukes flying.
As pride will suffer no leviathan,
to sport with little man at man's behest,
they sink, enormous, soundless, darker than
the continents that loom to east and west.

LETTER TO EZRA POUND (1959)

Dear Mr. Pound, I write
to say that I regret
I missed the chance you granted me
last year in Washington, D.C
I wish we’d met.

Yet I can truly say
I could not fathom why
the note I sent, although naïve
and importuning, should receive
so strange reply.

I wrote to you in fall:
you answered in the winter,
an envelope addressed to me
in your own hand, presumably,
but in it—no letter.

I saved it, souvenir
of you and your condition.
Months later, peering down inside
I saw what you had meant to hide:
this cramped inscription:

Next Saturday at 2pm—
They read my mail, you know.

But now I have a family,
and you are free in Italy
where I cannot afford to go.

YOUTH, LOVE, AGE, AND DEATH

Sublime and sacred, splendid grief
becoming selflessness in time,
is love, but death is naught,
for brief is death and long is love.

Deep and bright-burning
are love and youth gone by
where sleep embraces age
and dreams are joys returning.

Bells sounding silver
are days and years passing;
and shells of men are we,
but love is ours forever.

Forever ours is love
but we are men of shells;
and passing years and days
are silver-sounding bells.

Returning joys are dreams,
and age embraces sleep
where bygone youth and love
are burning bright and deep.

Love is long and death is brief;
for naught is death, but love is time
in selflessness becoming grief,
splendid, sacred and sublime.

Jared Carter

THE LOW AND SWEEPING

I hear the low and sweeping
        from every bush and tree
Of my dear mother’s weeping
        alone, away from me

It’s only her a-sleeping
        cold dew-drops on her brow
Low in the grave she’s keeping
        I have no mother now

ETRUSCAN KINGS

Etruscan kings, now lost, who would defy
the darkness that comes after, chose instead
to deck their tombs with scenes of life and love.
And luminous they stand among the dead.

The lovely queens, who knelt against the block,
and knew that nothing could be taken away,
that down through time their beauty would remain—
these, too, among the vanished, I would praise.

And you that hurry on, whose lives are spent
in gathering coins to keep in coffers drear,
who would not risk a single sacrifice—
how soon the shadows fall, and night draws near.

J. Patrick Lewis

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU DO

You fuck them up, your girl and boy.
    It doesn’t matter what you do.
The latest theories you employ
    Will make them flaming assholes, too.

And then, to maximize despair,
    Greedy daughters and selfish sons
Repay your fine parental care
    By breeding Young Republicans.

Alexander Blok (1888-1921)

***

Night, street, lamp, and pharmacy,
A meaningless and misty light.
Live on a quarter century—
The same. There is no hope of flight.

You will die, rise from where you fell,
All be repeated, cold and damp:
The night, the wavering canal,
The pharmacy, the street, the lamp.

***

Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи еще хоть четверть века—
Все будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрешь—начнешь опять сначала
И повторится все, как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

George Trakl (1887-1914)

AN AUTUMN EVENING

The brown village. A darkness often treads
Along the walls that stand in autumn.  Mock-
Shapes: man as well as woman, dead now, walk
In the cold parlours to prepare their beds.

Here young boys play.  A heavy shadow spreads
Over brown dung.  Servant women walk
Through the moist blue, and sometimes their eyes mock
It, longing, as bells toll above their heads.

An inn leans for the down and lonely there.
Patiently it waits beneath dark arches,
Moved by clouds of gold tobacco smoke,

Yet always black and near.  A stranger soaked
In booze stands in the shade of older arches
After the wild birds take to the air.

EIN HERBSTABEND

Das braune Dorf. Ein Dunkles zeigt im Schreiten
Sich oft an Mauern, die im Herbste stehn,
Gestalten: Mann wie Weib, Verstorbene gehn
In kühlen Stuben jener Bett bereiten.

Hier spielen Knaben. Schwere Schatten breiten
Sich über braune Jauche. Mägde gehn
Durch feuchte Bläue und bisweilen sehn
Aus Augen sie, erfüllt von Nachtgeläuten.

Für Einsames ist eine Schenke da;
Das säumt geduldig unter dunklen Bogen,
Von goldenem Tabaksgewölk umzogen.

Doch immer ist das Eigne schwarz und nah.
Der Trunkne sinnt im Schatten alter Bogen
Den wilden Vögeln nach, die ferngezogen.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

“Le soleil du matin doucement…”

I.

The morning sun now slowly warms and gilds
the rye and wheat all moist and dew-strung still,
and the sky holds close the fresh cool stance of night.
One leaves without an aim except for leaving,
walks the length of river, follows vague
gold grass, a path of lawn along the alders, aged
as air. The air is keen. Now and then a bird
with hedge's fruit or straw in beak has turned
and passed so water mirrors its long gleam,
and this is all.
                       But the dreamer likes this scene
whose bright-hued softness has just now caressed
and soothed his dream of daily happiness,
and lulled his charming memories of a girl,
pale form who sings and shimmers, whirled
through the poet's thoughts, the cherished one
who holds his wishes, smiling, who's become
the Companion he has found at last, the soul
his soul has mourned and sought, today, and days of old.


“Le foyer, la lueur étroite de la lampe...”

XIV.

The low hearth, the dim drawn wane of lamps;
the reverie, the head leant to the hand
and eyes that lose themselves in lovers' looks.
The hour of steeped tea and close-stacked books;
the sweetened sense of evening ended, late;
the good fatigue and the attendant wait
for nuptial shadows and the deepening blues,
oh! It's this, the dream that still renews
without release, without delay it seeks,
impatient with these months, these furied weeks!


“Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d'été…”

XIX.

So yes, the day will come in summer, clear:
the great accomplice to my joy, the sun,
will—above your satin and your silk—grant one
resounding beauty to your face, again, my dear.

The sky all blue like tents pitched high and late
will tremble, sumptuous, vast, a lengthy sail
above our happy foreheads, which will pale
with wanting for each other, and the wait;

and when the evening comes, the sweetened air
will play, caressing through your veils' fine lace,
and stars, so peaceful, will shift from their place
to softly smile on us, the wedded pair.


“Va, chanson, à tire-d'aile...”

XII.

Go, song, with up-drawn wing
to dance before her and to tell
what faithfulness my heart flings
to her, a joyous glow, a spell.

Dissipate, holy rays,
the darknesses of love:
dull suspicions, doubt, hate—
what's here, day breaks above.

Long time, muted, stark,
do you listen? Love comes
like a lively-playing lark
to brighten skies, calm-sung.

Go, then, song sincere,
and with no regret; may
she know that she is welcome here
when she, at last, has come to stay.

Joseph S. Salemi

WHY WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED

TO CRITICIZE POETRY TOO HARSHLY

1. Poetry is a tender flower that withers in the rough winds of criticism. As far as we can ascertain, Indo-Europeans have been composing sophisticated verse for six millennia, and probably much longer. The notion that poetry cannot stand the blast of criticism because a few contemporary crybabies might pout and stop writing is absurd.
2. Poetry is an endangered species, and all of it should be protected. There’s more poetry being produced today than in all previous ages combined. We need a rigorous criticism that will hack through the weeds, and give breathing space to the valuable stuff.
3. Poets are doing their best, and should get credit and encouragement for their efforts. Show me one field of human endeavor (other than poetry) where anyone would dare assert such a principle. Well-meaning efforts are only rewarded in kindergarten.
4. Poets, as a beleaguered minority, must unite against a hostile world; and therefore they should speak well of each other as a professional courtesy and a sign of solidarity. This is just the old in-group and clique mentality posturing as a moral principle. Poets aren’t members of a corporate guild or trade union. No poet of any character would want to join such a collective. This “beleaguered minority” argument is usually advanced by people who feel safe in a large crowd.
5. Every poem, no matter how inept, expresses some element of truth. So what? Does that make up for its ineptitude? Only in a hopelessly Puritan country like America could people actually think that a bad work of art is redeemed by its content.
6. If you criticize poems too harshly, you will make enemies. Again, so what? Is poetry a cocktail party where you are striving to be personable with everyone? In today’s world, having a lot of enemies is usually a sign of intellectual independence and strong character.
7. 
   

Contributors’ Notes

Alexander Blok (1888-1921) was a Russian poet and dramatist. He is regarded as the most gifted lyrical poet produced by Russia after Alexander Pushkin.

Jared Carter’s poems and stories have appeared online in Astropoetica, Boheme Magazine, Eclectica, Melic Review, Plum Ruby Review, Red River Review, The Scream Online, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. His fourth collection of poetry, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, is available from Wind Publications in Kentucky.

Wiley Clements lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in retirement after a long career—first as a military journalist, later as a developer of health maintenance organizations (HMO’s). His collection of poems, Yesterday or Long Ago, was published by Clock & Rose Press in July 2004.

Anna Evans has had over 100 poems published in various journals including The Formalist, The Lyric, The Evansville Review, The Edge City Review, Raintown Review and Light Quarterly. She is the Editor of the formal poetry journal, The Barefoot Muse.

K.A. Hays’ poetry and verse translations have appeared most recently in The Hudson Review and American Literary Review, and are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Florida Review, New Orleans Review, and other magazines. She is at work on a first book of poems.

John Hart is an editor at the venerable all-poetry magazine Blue Unicorn (now in its thirtieth year of publication) and teaches in the Lawrence Hart Seminars, a San Francisco Bay Area poetry presence since the 1930s. His work has recently appeared in Listening Eye, The Midwest Quarterly, and the British magazines Orbis and Seventh Quarry. He makes his living as a writer of non-fiction about the environment.

Sam W. Hinkle was born in Fort Worth, Texas and raised in North Carolina. Now, he is a junior at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, focusing on vocal performance.

T.S. Kerrigan’s poetry has appeared in Southern Review, International Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, the Pacific Review, and scores of others. The Scienter Press has published a collection of his poems entitled The Shadow Sonnets and Other Poems.

David W. Landrum, teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Cornerstone University, a small liberal arts college in Western Michigan. He has published poetry in many magazines and journals, including The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Small Brushes, riverrun, Driftwood Review, Hellas, The Formalist, and many others.

J. Patrick Lewis’s poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Dalhousie Review, Kansas Quarterly, Light Quarterly and many other journals. He has published thirty-seven children's picture and poetry books to date.

Margaret Menamin lives in Pittsburgh and is a regular contributor of poetry to Iambs and Trochees, The Lyric, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her book, Sonnets For a Second Summer, was published by Westphalia Press in 1996. She has been, among other things, secretary, court clerk, librarian, newspaper editor and feature writer, ad writer, and currently works from her home as a medical transcriptionist.

Tom Riley has published well over 700 poems in venues ranging from The Lyric to Light to Anglican Theological Review. He teaches Classical languages and English literature in Napa, California.

Joseph S. Salemi teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University, and in the Classics Department of both Hunter College and Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. His work has appeared in over one hundred journals and literary magazines in the United States and in Britain.

Paul Stevens was born in Sheffield, England, but has lived most of his life in Australia. He has an Honours Degree in English from the University of Sydney, and teaches Literature, Historiography, and Ancient History. He has published on the Julio-Claudians, as well as poetry and literary criticism. He is the founder and editor of The Shit Creek Review.

George Trakl (1887-1914) was an Expressionist poet whose personal and wartime torments made him Austria’s foremost elegist of decay and death. He influenced Germanic poets after both world wars.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French lyric poet first associated with the Parnassians and later known as a leader of the Symbolists. With Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire he formed the so-called Decadents.

Leo Yankevich’s poems have recently appeared in Chronicles, The Barefoot Muse, Iambs & Trochees and Ship of Fools. He lives with his wife and three sons in Gliwice, Poland.