Lingerpost

Let’s begin with Helen Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, and what she calls the three essential areas for “great” writing: “The School of the Dead, The School of Dreams, and The School of Roots.”

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from The School of the Dead

1. We Need a Dead(wo)man To Begin

2. That the Act of Reading or Writing Be a Mortal Act

3. What is Reading? It’s Eating on the Sly

4. The Author’s Crime Has It’s Legend

5. The Author Is in the Dark;

—–Self-Portrait of a Blind Painter

6. The Inclination for Avowal

7. Towards the Last Hour

8. We Need the Scene of the Crime

Come read fantastic poetry by

Priscilla Atkins   Eleanor Leonne Bennett   Darren C. Demaree   Floydd Michael Elliott   Jeanette Geraci   Susan Gundlach   j/j hastain   Beth SK Morris   M. A. Schaffner   Daniel James Sundahl   Haley Van Heukelom   and   Leonore Wilson

Lately, I’ve been writing sonnets. But where is the place today for metrical poetry? And how do you define formal poetry? Robert Hass, in his essay “One Body: Some Notes on Form” (Twentieth Century Pleasures) says the “form of a poem exists in the relation between its music and its seeing.” Here is the perfect example:

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“To My Mother” Louise Gluck

It was better when we were

together in one body.

Thirty years. Screened

through the green glass

of your eye, moonlight

filtered into my bones

as we lay

in the big bed, in the dark,

waiting for my father.

Thirty years. He closed

your eyelids with

two kisses. And then spring

came and withdrew from me

the absolute

knowledge of the unborn,

leaving the brick stoop

where you stand, shading

your eyes, but it is

night, the moon

is stationed in the beech tree

round and white among

the small tin markers of the stars:

Thirty years. A marsh

grows up around the house.

Schools of spores circulate

behind the shades, drift through

gauze flutterings of vegetation.

Come read lovely poetry by

Wendy Wisner   Mark DeCarteret   Kevin McLellan   Mercedes Lawry   Howie Good  Robert Annis  Danielle Hanson  Chris Crittenden  Aimee Herman

Come enjoy the brilliant poetry and art of Caroline Klocksiem  Charlene Langfur  Daphne Stanford  Michael Morell  Dana Yost  Ika Duprass  Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke  John Palen  Amy Bryant  Andrew Spiess  Anne Germanacos  Bryan Rice  Jim Fuess  Courtney Feairheller  Flower Conroy  Kelly Dumar  and  Jessica Harkins

Lingerpost Issue # 4

We’re gearing up for Lingerpost Issue #4 so send us your poems, stories, essays, hearts & fireflies in jars!

Check out Lingerpost contributor Mary Stone Dockery’s new book!

Come read fantastic poetry by Carol Berg, Deirdre Regan Briggs, Meghan Brinson, Todd Fredson, Heather Frankland, Jamila Wimberly, Juliet Cook, Joe H. Gallagher, Leslie Morris, Mary Stone Dockery, Connie A. Lopez-Hood, Catherine Bailey, Joaquin de Feo, Nathan Logan, Miriam N. Kotzin, Theresa Williams, Skylaar Amann, and Allison Layfield…

–SO REALITY CANNOT DESTROY YOU. 

~Ray Bradbury

Poetry (to get drunk on) this way→