A Pep Talk to Our Authors:
Each columnist stretches to find material to engage you. We broadly cover the map from intros, interviews, opinions, technical results, IBPC, and a wee bit of comedy. We hope the variety allows you to choose at least a couple of sections for reading.
After all, it’s your monthly magazine! I would love to find a manila envelope containing a couple of pages, or a long email with an article written especially for Moon Notes.
Our members cover almost every topic known to man and woman in their posts. Why not stretch the number of lines for a prose article carrying opinion, news, events, or local breakthroughs?
There is room to include material from members as well as current staff. Have at it! Send an article, double spaced -- a full page or so. We'll mull it over and probably publish it. We may even ask if you’re interested in serving as a volunteer editor.
It’s up to you!
JDC
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This month, Sarah presents an interview with Meg Porter, a member of DMR and an American poet living in Beirut.
Who are your favorite living poets?
Without a doubt it is Joe Green. Joe is an exceptional artist, a fantastic friend and an amazingly competent mentor. He taught me how to read the poetry of others and, probably more importantly, taught me how to read my own work and become a better critic of my own poetry. The first correspondence I had with Joe involved asking him for an opinion about a poem I had read somewhere that was just terrible yet was being lauded by every person participating on one of these curious message boards. I was asking for a perception check because up until then I relied solely on instinct with poetry. Now however, I look for things in a poem that are often more obscure and 'encoded' by the poet. I encode much myself and have an extensive vocabulary of my own that is confusing sometimes to someone not familiar with my work for instance, "the mizzling rains" which connotes cliché in poems. Joe used this phrase once and I commented on the weary, dreary nature of that and we both had a good laugh over it because I think, he meant it that way. The Law of Moons as well refers to all that ought not be mentioned overmuch in poetry because of the tendency of modern artists to overuse certain words (like dross and thrum) which creates new cliché and new weary dreary-ness in poems, "weary-dreary" being Joe's term not mine.
Proust stated in an essay that he only used Moon once in all of his writing. The Moon of course is a powerful object in the solar system and ought not be taken lightly, responsible for the tides and the menses. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule and there are times when "dance" or "moon" are required to create an image that is spot on. Joe is rather fond of Wallace Stevens and if I hadn't spent so much time trying to understand Joe's Pessoa like characters, I would never have been a very good reader of that brilliant poets (Stevens) work.
Bell Book and Candle
I always liked Kim Novak
In “Bell Book and Candle”
Curled up on that couch
Which you would describe as
Immensely red but you are wrong
For the colors that show best by candlelight
Are (she tells you) white, carnation and
And a kind of sea water green
And Pyewacket that lucky cat
Curled up next to you green eyes
And a sardonic glance
And you reach for the silver cigarette lighter
Man, you are as shaky as Jimmy Stewart
And it is Christmas! Christmas!
And you know she is a witch and
You want to ask her
Why she well.. has a tree...Let the room
Abound in light especially
Colored and varied
Or something like that. Witch? Christmas?
And she gets up and is on
Tiptoes placing the ornament just so
(“oes and spangs as they are of no great cost”)
On the tree and she knows what you are
Looking at. She knows.
Christmas? But if you ask she’ll say
Something like “The best art is general”
Which, really, you haven’t heard before
And she turns and the doors to the balcony
Open and snow swirls you out and you
Are both on the balcony. Manhattan!
And you know that Gene Kelly is
There somewhere feeling just a bit blue
But will anyway dance his way into
Someone’s heart tonight and snow is
Steepling on the Chrysler Building and
There is a giant impossible yellow moon
And she is there and you
Know this poem ain’t going to end the way
You want it to.
On the girl side, I really like Alice Notley, who was born in my hometown Bisbee, Arizona and wrote a wonderful poem called One of the Longest Times which is an exact replica of how I felt growing up near the Liffy-ditch in Bisbee. The ditch there runs through the town, top to bottom and was a kind of river that was built at the turn of the century because a flash flood nearly took the town down. The water marks are still on many of the old buildings there. The poem is about the curious mythology we all share called childhood. Ms. Notley now lives in Paris and wrote another poem in which appear references to topaz and November, our common birthmonth and birthstones as she was born a day after me seventeen years before. She mentions the skeleton of Siamese Twins in that museum in the same profound manner as I felt when I saw this crazy piece of human memorabilia. The Twins were attached at the heart and my daughter captioned my photo: I luv u but ur killing me. She is the one poet I would truly love to meet and speak to.
Who are your favorite male and female poets who aren’t around anymore?
Wallace Stevens on the boy side. Not even a toss up with anyone else. I love the way he played with perception and language and his unbelievable ability to just make words up when he felt like it and use the existing ones in such surprising ways.
On the girl side, Elisabeth Bishop or simply, El Bishop as I call her. When I read her poems I feel as if they are poems that speak directly to me and my experience in this world as an expatriate poet and as a woman constantly engaged with her sexuality without 'selling out' i.e. using her notorious preferences to gain readership which is so common anymore with so many female poets who define themselves as "feminists". El, in my estimation, was a profound humanist and demonstrates a profound sense of ethics in her work.
Name three of your favorite books of poetry. What appeals to you about them? Do you feel you've learned something from them?
This isn't a fair question. I don't have access to all the great stuff you guys have over there in the West. Out of my collection here though: Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End that is probably the most joyous, profound and sad read there is. Seamus Heaney's The Spirit Level which is a book length poem actually about Irish sectarianism, life, the Greeks, religion...a real tour de force. Modern Arabic Poetry, an anthology edited (brilliantly) by Salma Khadara Jayyusi that shows how ahead of the game Middle Eastern poets are in terms of modernism and how they incorporate that into a strong sense of tradition both Judeo-Christian and Muslim. I believe that is due to the fact that Arabic is such a flexible language and so open to interpretation, that is, this advanced
sense of language being used as a kind of political game.
Who are some of your favorite poets whose language is not English?
Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish. Mahmoud Darwish's famous line: "Beirut is a city of gold and fatigue." I'd have to agree and he writes of the occupation of Palestine and life in exile in Beirut like no other. Adonis on the other hand takes Whitman on in his A Grave For New York. That poem, of course, predates our current problems and amazingly enough, predicted them as it discusses Vietnam, the Volga and that lost notion of freedom born in Walt Whitman. I wonder sometimes where it all went wrong and find it there in that poem.
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This Month: Charlene Dewbre and Fred Longworth
Reflecting over recent discussions on the board at Desert Moon Review, a number of questions begin to emerge. The questions raised had to do with how we go about our writing, and also the way we prove self-critical. Charlene Dewbre and Fred Longworth have consented to reflect on these question with us this month.
Charlene Dewbre:
1. I once claimed that I wrote poetry to help me see things more clearly. Is there, in your experience or reflection, any relation between what we see in order to write and what we see because we write, or have written?
A very interesting question. What comes to mind is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The act of observation can change what is observed. I know that when I started to study poetry seriously, I looked at things differently. When I sit to write a poem, I struggle to make new connections with things. You know, to look at them in some fresh way. If nothing else, to keep from boring my reader but hopefully to show them a different way to taste a caramel.
Ted Kooser quotes Seamus Heaney in his book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual - the aim of the poet and poetry is to be of service; he goes on to add ...once we have read and been affected by a poem, our awareness of its subject may forever be heightened and made memorable.
That's a pretty heavy responsibility, but also a gratification. It's not my job to change the world, but maybe, just once, if I'm lucky, I can wake someone up to a new way of looking at one part of it.
2. Comments have frequented the board about the depth element in the poetry we meet, usually asking for more, or more clarity about the depth there. People live at differing levels of emotional depth -- which is not a value judgment, merely an existential observation. To what extent does our writing reflect the depth we experience, or even cause us to experience?
I'm not sure every writer is capable of effectively communicating what they experience. We've all read poetry that lectures, or comes across as pedantic even though the content is very worthwhile. Conversely, some poems are so murky that it takes a great deal of patience just to sort out a few lines.
Harold Bloom wrote in the introduction to The Best Poems in the English Language that we seek out the best poems because something in many ... of us quests for the transcendental and extraordinary ...
I think it comes down to remembering our readers. The best work is layered (quoting a friend here.) He believes that poetry readers need to be able to pick up something in a quick pass, in order to engage them. If you write well, you can add layers of meaning and subtext which will open up for the reader who wants to explore farther.
3. A recent discussion began on self-criticism in evaluating our own poetry. Another asked how such severe self-criticism matched with the intuitive element in writing poetry. Silvano Arieti speaks of creativity as an abandon to intuitive associations, followed by logical dissection of the creative product. How do you see these balancing in your own writing?
Creativity is an intuitive thing; you can't learn how to be original. It has to be employed with great abandon. If you sit to write or paint with any kind of conformity in mind, you limit the possibilities.
One particular writing exercise I use, especially when I'm feeling blocked, is the 10 minute free-write. Just sit and write for 10 minutes straight about anything that comes into your head. It's enormously fun, and some really cool tidbits usually fall out of the mess. Those I use to jump start a new poem.
However, nothing worth accomplishing is that easy. Not in my book. Write freely, sure, but then grab the hacksaw. I'd rather spend time (and not a little pain) cutting up a piece so that I know the drafts I present have some care spent on them. I see it as a form of respect for the people who read it.
4. The comment appeared of one poet having long since internalized a sense of sound, balance and flow which is thereby immediately available to the writing process so that the work is not so much intuitive as freely drawing upon a preexisting lode of data/method in a nearly immediate mode. How thoroughly do you see this drawing upon the internalized -- as opposed to the rationally chosen -- working in your poetry?
When you've been writing awhile, some things will just 'happen' for you. You may have developed your own style and that leads to a very comfortable presentation. It also creates to problems, like complacency. A writer begins revisiting the same themes, written in the same style, over and over. That would tire even the kindest reader.
For example, I believe I have an ear for word music. Good sonics come easy for me; but knowing that doesn't help me write a better poem. In fact, I've written some pretty horrible poetry that sounds great.
I look at it as being desensitized, in a way. Like being so used to hot water that you don't notice when it burns you. It's a fine thing to have when you want to clean house; but you must pay attention, more than ever, in some cases.
Second, from Fred Longworth:
1. I once claimed that I wrote poetry to help me see things more clearly. Is there, in your experience or reflection, any relation between what we see in order to write and what we see because we write, or have written?
I would guess that most serious poets come into a piece with a partial awareness of what it will be about and what will be selected or asserted, while at the same time the poem functions as a little adventure on real or virtual paper in which a great many things are discovered.
The preceding paradigm – that a poem is necessarily a fusion of foreknowledge and discovery – has come to be sacrosanct. I dispute the universality of this principle. It leaves no opening for true inspiration. From time to time, a poem or story does come tumbling into one’s mind as a whole. There’s something mystical about this, hence, the belief that a Muse has interceded or conferred a blessing.
This brings us to another question: To what degree is a poem a gambit of emotional turmoil and emotional closure? I bring up this point because I believe that a great many poets began as journalers. They would sit down, pen in hand, and write; and the turbulence inside would become less distressing. Sometimes this relief would accompany the realization that some perspective on matters important to them was mistaken or an illusion. Other times, a dilemma would transform into a choice. Still other times, they would come to accept a certain measure of emotional discomfort as an inevitable consequence of being human – such as surrender to grief following the death of a loved one.
Many evolve from journaling to writing poems, the undertaking of emotional challenge being the common thread. I will go so far as to say that many of the best poems I’ve read pose an emotional challenge which is "resolved" in the poem at a very high level of insight and maturity. Think of The Road Not Taken by Frost. Why do we memorize, or often reread, this poem? One reason is because of the enlightened vision it comes to without stooping to "there, there, it’s okay."
I think that many poems fail (including my own) precisely because they do not accept and "resolve" the emotional challenge.
2. Comments have frequented the board about the depth element in the poetry we meet, usually asking for more, or more clarity about the depth there. People live at differing levels of emotional depth – which is not a value judgment, merely an existential observation. To what extent does our writing reflect the depth we experience, or even cause us to experience?
What depth means becomes clearer when we look at its antonym: shallowness. If someone describes Hamlet as "a play about a bunch of murders," we don’t dispute the fact of the murders. What we dispute is the superficial take.
For me, depth can mean two somewhat different things. On the one hand, it implies complexity or multiplicity, with the corresponding antonym of simplistic. Philip Levine’s poem What Work Is is a complex piece that takes an ironic jab at those who believe that work is merely the thing you do from nine to five.
The second element I associate with depth is maturity. There’s a way that a fifteen-year-old looks at a love affair that has ended suddenly; and there’s a richer understanding of what has happened that a fifty-year-old will have (or so one hopes). Since I’m finishing off these remarks on Monday, May 15, I should mention that yesterday I attended a feature-and-open-mic (yes, it’s "mic" not "mike") at Rebecca’s Coffeehouse here in San Diego. I would guess that about half those reading were under 25. I was taken with the observation that there’s a distinct character to "young people’s" poems. And that character is so consistently lack of depth that when I dig a hole in one of their poems and don’t encounter hardpan after the first few turns of the spade I am amazed and pleased.
It is fashionable to profess acceptance of all stripes of poetry. I suppose I could address fellow poets as "brother" and "sister" and we could pass around our poems like we passed around marijuana cigarettes forty years ago, exchanging good vibes and saliva, until some bright person stumbled on the germ theory of disease.
So, no – I do not believe that all strata are equal. A shallow poem may satisfy a shallow reader, but (thankfully) shallow readers do not define the canons of our culture.
3. A recent discussion began on self-criticism in evaluating our own poetry. Another asked how such severe self-criticism matched with the intuitive element in writing poetry. Silvano Arieti speaks of creativity as an abandon to intuitive associations, followed by logical dissection of the creative product. How do you see these balancing in your own writing?
One thing is clear: too much self-criticism during the initial creative outpouring will kill the art. To quote Paul Simon – "Maybe I think too much." It’s important to get the initial shape of the thing onto real or virtual paper. Then time passes. The poem "comes around" again. The poet has gained temporal and aesthetic distance from the work. Now, questions can be asked of the piece: Do I still care? How can this be better crafted? The poet looks over a dozen poems written from a few weeks to a few months ago. Two or three may still be important enough to revisit and revise. The poet is no longer quite so much in love with all those "little darlings" of language or structure which made the work seem ripe while the skin was still green.
It’s seldom painless to subject one’s poems to a kind of Hegelian Dialectic of vision and revision (to quote Eliot) impelled or moderated by a self-criticism machine running in one’s psyche. Beginning poets have special difficulty with this in part because their "working inventory" of poems is so limited. It’s hard to put one’s relationship with a friend at risk when one has only one friend; it’s much easier when one has a wide circle of relationships. More experienced poets have less at risk, I believe, with each individual poem, and this engenders a greater willingness to submit a piece to revision and to the criticism of one’s peers. It makes the poet less needful of premature closure.
I have items lying in file folders that I’ve been working on for years and years. My poem "Wake" posted recently here at Desert Moon is in about the tenth draft. I began this piece around 2001, and originally it was only a lamentation about the death in 1990 of my father. But it has evolved, draft after draft, driven forward by a lingering dissatisfaction, into a work that deals with the more general matter of the gloom that follows great loss or significant failure. Only the most recent version seems finished.
4. The comment appeared of one poet having long since internalized a sense of sound, balance and flow which is thereby immediately available to the writing process – so that the work is not so much intuitive as freely drawing upon a preexisting lode of data/method in a nearly immediate mode. How thoroughly do you see this drawing upon the internalized – as opposed to the rationally chosen – working in your poetry?
I see three sources of creativity. The first might be called inspirational. Something happens, one is powerfully moved, one "gets this out" on real or virtual paper. We might call the second source habits of craft. One has internalized a large number of writing paradigms (stuff that works), which come into play more or less automatically. The third wellspring might be termed rational choices.
When writing, all three of these sources come into play. The second – habits of craft – often allows the reader to define where a poet has attained to in his or her development, whereas the first – inspiration – seems to be present at all levels.
Beginning poets will frequently have very simple habits of craft. They rely on end-rhyme, often clumsily, paying no heed to internal rhyme. They have few internal censors to cull out cliches. They often fail to use figurative language, or when they do use it they get carried away, as if the purpose of a poem were merely to cloak every element in a semiotic disguise. They choose boring subjects like "Boo-hoo, I just lost my boyfriend. Woe is me." They have no sense of enjambment. They feel that the final lines of a poem have to "wrap it all up." (I can almost see the hypodermic syringe filled with morphine.)
The advanced poet usually has a great many habits of craft, of which a large percentage have been internalized to such a degree that they operate automatically.
Unfortunately, a body of habits of craft can be limiting as well as facilitating. I think it’s important to continuously reassess your bag of paradigms. If you don’t do this, your poems will wind up looking like fraternal twins; the element of surprise will suffer. How many times I’ve run into a poet who’s just finished an MFA program and has turned himself or herself into a walking MFA stylebook.
Thanks to Char and Fred for their discussions this month.
Bill Flewelling
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Members in Media
The CD of Chris George's show, "Jack--The Musical: The Ripper Pursued," by Chris and French composer Erik Sitbon, containing highlights from the musical numbers is available from the producers, Actors Scene Unseen. Also, an excerpt from the script of "Jack--The Musical" may be read in the May issue of Fire Weed edited by Gary Blankenship.
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We would like to thank all Desert Moon participants for their patience while we worked out some of the bugs in our new board software. We hope you find the new format easier to use, and now that there are no longer server errors(!!) the performance should be faster and more reliable.
Getting help:
If you're experiencing any technical difficulties, please be sure to send a message to HELP at Desert Moon.
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Hi everyone
Here are the three poems from Desert Moon Review that will represent our site in the IBPC contest for June:
Fred Longworth ~ ~ Father
S. Thomas Summers ~ ~ Eight Years Old
Laurie Byro ~ ~ Beginnings
In the pool of poems considered for the final three to go to IBPC were the following poems. We list all the poems by Poet, Title, and Nominator and thank both the poets for their fine work and the nominators for their keen eyes.
Fred Longworth
"Father" ~ ~ Rick Storey
"What Sticks Out" ~ ~ Laurie Byro
Sarah Sloat
"Waiting Room" ~ ~ Guy Kettelhack
"Opportunity Knocked" ~ ~ Rick Storey
Laurie Byro
"Beginnings" ~ ~ Mitchell Geller
S. Thomas Summers
"Eight Years Old" ~ ~ Guy Kettelhack
"Death Settled Well" ~ ~ Guy Kettelhack
Gary Blankenship
"Murderers and Other Deviants" ~ ~ Laurie Byro
Mitchell Geller
"Visiting Hours" ~ ~ Laurie Byro
James D. Corner
"Valley of the Sun" ~ ~ Rick Storey
"Rain Crow" ~ ~ Seán Callaghan
Our internal panel to decide the poems to go to IBPC comprised Tracy Estes, Johanna Donovan, Yolanda Calderon-Horn, and myself. Thank you for your help, Tracy, Johanna and Yoly!
Congratulations and best of luck to Fred, Scott, and Laurie.
Chris
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Summer Contest Announced
We challenge you to write a poem about the earth's dwindling resources: 'Earth without electricity' or 'Earth without oil' or 'Earth without Water' -- that is, you must use your imagination to envision our Earth without some essential element. What would life be like then? How would we survive?
Write a poem of 40 lines or under, any form. E-mail no later than end of day June 30, 2006 to editor@desertmoonreview.com. Winners and honorable mentions to be published in Crescent Moon Journal edited by Mustansir Dalvi. If you have not seen our Winter 2006 issue with the winners of our Winter contest check it out.
To start you off thinking about what to write here are some provocative statements by talented San Diego poet Fred Longworth:
Earth without an ozone layer is one possibility. Right now this is leading to a greatly increased incidence of skin cancer. In its more advanced states, it would damage crops and require special protective clothing (or use of SPF 100!) for people wishing to go outside.
Another possibility is a major raising of sea level, requiring either the construction of enormous levees in coastal zones (Long Island would be mostly underwater without barriers) or mass egress from coastal areas the world around. Obviously, rich areas (back to Long Island) could afford huge levees and sea-walls. In poor areas (e.g. Indonesia) people would have to flee or die.
A third threat is earth without numerous species. Already we are in the midst of a "great dying."
Earth without oil might be a blessing. It is extremely improbable that earth without electricity would ever occur, though earth without electrical distribution systems (high-tension wires) would be likely in the aftermath of catastrophe. The earth is unlikely to lose its water until the sun, billions of years in the future and having exhausted its hydrogen fuel, expands -- swallowing Mercury, Venus, Earth and likely Mars.
Good luck!
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The Back Side of the Moon
From Editor Chris George:
The weekend of May 13-14 was a really big one in my life and I hope everyone will bear with me while I reflect on it. Some of you already know I have a musical on Jack the Ripper on the go that I have been working on for some years. On Friday, May 12, I flew from my home in Baltimore down to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the U.S. premiere of Jack--The Musical: The Ripper Pursued by French composer Erik Sitbon and myself. I wrote the lyrics for the show and Erik and I collaborated on the book and libretto of the entire work. But actually the weekend was more than just the U.S. premiere, it was actually the first fully staged production of the show ever. It was thus a World Premiere, whew!
The weekend would also be special for me because my favorite soccer team (football or fussball to the Europeans!), Liverpool F.C., was due to play West Ham United in the F.A. Cup Final on Saturday morning U.K. time in Cardiff's Millenium Stadium, and thus I hoped to take in both events if I possibly could. I had ordered from an eBay vendor in Liverpool with few days to spare a red, yellow, and white LFC woollen scarf specially knitted to and designed in commemoration of the Final of Saturday, May 13, 2006. Luckily the package containing the scarf was waiting for me at the front desk of the Marriott City Center when I arrived on late Friday morning. So far so good.
I had learned that the Final would be shown at a suburban Charlotte bar called, appropriately enough, Jackalope Jack's. I rode out there at 9:00 a.m. on a cool Saturday morning in one of the shiny black limos that the hotels all seem to run in Charlotte. Just like Mafia staff cars. Comfy ride but don't cross the driver -- you might end up with cement shoes!
It was an amazing final, a real goal fest, with Liverpool down three times, 1-0, 2-0, then 3-2, until the dying moments of regulation time when Liverpool and England's player of the year, Steven Gerrard, equalized with a rocket of a shot from fully 35 yards, stranding West Ham goalie Shaka Hislop, to make it 3-3. In 30 minutes of extra time, the thrills continued with the Reds goalie Reina saving us in the dying moments. The 'Pool then went on to win on penalties. Sheesh.
I was hoarse from yelling, buoyed with pints of Bass Ale and a repast of English fish and chips with malt vinegar. I wondered if I had voice enough to take part in the planned "talk back" with Erik and myself with the audience of Jack after the two performances of 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm.
I got a limo back into 'uptown' Charlotte, to Spirit Square and the Duke Power Theatre, where our show was to be performed. It is a black box studio theater that holds 190 people in a complex that includes a desanctified Baptist Church that houses 700 people, the McGlohan Theatre, where I hope we can possibly restage the show again, perhaps for Halloween.
I was met by my partner Erik at the theater and we waited nervously for the show to start and as my French friend worried about getting an adapter to allow him to recharge his video camera to film the Sunday shows.
We need not have been nervous. The young cast pulled off the show brilliantly with the excellent deep baritone Bryan Long, a local music teacher (a number of his students sat in the audience), astoundingly realistic in the role of Tom Dolan, the Irish immigrant, who becomes Jack the Ripper in my fictional treatment. Bravo, Bryan!
The show had many highlights, particularly Newspaper Work my favorite song out of the 28 songs in this adaptation of the show. The song, in driving 4/4 time, was wonderfully sung by the fictional East End Star newsmen Dolan (Long), Alfred Corner (Jason Barney), and the exceptional character actor Robert W. Haulbrook as "The Boss," as the three extolled news stories that are "bloody and gory." Well done to the whole cast and special kudos as well to the staff of Actors Scene Unseen: producer Jim Vita, director Elizabeth Peterson-Vita, and musical director Lauren Konen, who not incidentally also did an exceptional job acting and singing in the key role of Betsy Dolan.
You can read impressions of "Jack--The Musical" by Mindfire's editor, Thomas Fortenberry, who attended the Saturday matinee, on Thomas' Blog.
For me, the whole weekend was a triumph. I flew home to Baltimore on Sunday night drained but deliriously happy that our show was a success. As you can imagine, it was an extremely gratifying feeling for me as a writer and creator.
Leaving Charlotte
In a black limo, like a Mafia staff car,
I am swept past Fat Boy's Lube Shop
and the Love of God Ministry:
playwright on the wing
memorialized in triumphant
tableau, in a backstage stairwell
with my Victorian cast, each actor armed
with digital camera: my visit officially sanctified.
Now AirTran crams me into a last row windowseat
without a window, the whining jet engine bores
into my brain. I nibble baby pretzels,
suck on a miniature Tanqueray gin.
Christopher T. George
From Associate Editor Trace Estes:
The following poets have recently been granted membership to the workshop:
- Kevin J. Kotecki
- Mildred Williams
- Elaine Parny
- Matthew Hupert
- Jane E Pearce
- Nadine Wills
- Bret Addison
Please join me in welcoming them to the Desert Moon Review!
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