nominations to the Best of the Web 2010 anthology...

I'm pleased to nominate these poets and their works to the Best of the Web 2010 anthology (Dzanc Books):

George Moore, “Survivor Tactics” (Fall 2009)

Eileen Tabios, “Alchemy at the Maykadeh: Dinner with Philip Lamantia” (Spring 2009)

Yun Wang, “Meditation on Hair” (Broadside #12, Fall 2008 - December)

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All three are gifted writers, and their works have made Blue Fifth Review a stronger venue.

fall 2009 issue now online

The Fall 2009 issue is now live, online:

Featured Poet: George Moore
Art: Ira Joel Haber

Also, new work by

Paul Hostovsky, Alan Britt, Marge Piercy, Allan Peterson, Naomi Buck Palagi, Peter Kenneally, J. B. Mulligan, Joanne Lowery

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Changming Yuan, Oliver Rice, Bryan C. Murray, marcia arrieta, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, Ben Nardolilli, Donal Mahoney, Christina Murphy

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Alan Catlin, Jessie Carty, Alison Eastley, Charles Freeland, Helen Losse, Maggie Hess, Philip Byron Oakes, Joan Payne Kincaid

Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years...

Thanks to the gifted poet - Arlene Ang - and her poem “In the Woods — A Shot — Fraught with Barking Dogs” (Winter 2007 issue), Blue Fifth Review is represented in the new anthology Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years (Snowvigate Press - this November) Ed. by Doug Martin & Kim Chinquee.


Sam Rasnake, ed.

looking ahead...

I’m pleased to announce that the poet Barbara Jane Reyes will be guest-editing the Spring Supplement 2010 issue of Blue Fifth Review.

This special issue, appearing in May, will be thematic in design – Code-switching: Poets working in multiple languages – and will be divided into two sections: poetry and essay.

Since all the work for this issue will be solicited, no unsolicited submissions will be considered.

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Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Diwata (forthcoming from BOA Editions, 2010). She has released two chapbooks as well - Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press) and Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs).

Looking forward to this exciting work.

broadside #15

Now online at Blue Fifth Review – Broadside #15… “Blue Mexico” – a suite of poems, focused on the life and works of Frida Kahlo, by Robert E. Wood

broadside #14...

Now online at Blue Fifth Review –

Broadside #14 – “Therese Berard, Oil on Canvas: A Still-life Speaks,”
a poem by Jill Crammond Wickham

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Broadside #15 – a poem by Robert E. Wood – will be online in late August

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The Fall 2009 issue will be online in October

best of the net nominations for 2009...

I've nominated the following poets & poems to the Best of the Net 2009 anthology from Sundress Publications - for their appearance in Blue Fifth Review:

The Linking Verbs
by Elizabeth H. Barbato (Fall 2008)

Always One Direction
by Melissa Buckheit (Fall 2008)

Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra"
by Amy Lemmon (Broadside #13, Spring 2009)

Acts Become Memory
by J. Alan Nelson (Fall 2008)

Alchemy at the Maykadeh: Dinner with Philip Lamantia
by Eileen Tabios (Spring 2009)

Meditation on Hair
by Yun Wang (Broadside #12, Fall 2008)


Congratulations to these poets, and my thanks for their sending their work to BFR.

more poetry & art news...

Later this summer:

Late July: Broadside #14: “Therese Berard, Oil on Canvas: A Still-life Speaks” - poetry by Jill Crammond Wickham

August: Broadside #15: “Blue Mexico” - poetry by Robert E. Wood


The Fall 2009 issue will be online in October.

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Call for submissions: Winter 2010
This issue will have a special theme: the body

new format for bfr...

With the Fall 09 issue, I will be altering the format of Blue Fifth Review. This change will only affect the general unthemed issue, and will in no way change themed issues or supplements. I will accept material from 25 poets - and one of the poets will be the feature.

I will continue to accept artwork - as in past issues - in various forms and will use a minimum of two or more pieces in the general issue.

Of course, I won't say that this change is permanent - but it is for the Fall 09 issue.

spring 09 issue, now online...

The Spring 09 issue is devoted to collaborative works of poetry and art, and features works by Eileen Tabios, Dana Guthrie Martin, Askhold Skalsky, Bob Bradshaw, Jill Wickham, Martin Willitts, Jessy Randall, Li Chevalier, Orly Orbach, Scott Owens, Rachel Lehrman, Moira Richards, Pris Campbell, Erena Rae, Daniel Shaprio, Carolee Sherwood, Jo Hemmant, Leslie Marcus, Barbara Taylor, and Diana Woodcock


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Broadside #14, a poem by Jill Wickham, will be released in July


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I am now reading submissions for the Fall 09 issue, an unthemed issue that is due online in October.

the fantasy, too, quickly peels apart...

New from Blue Fifth Review ...





Broadside #12, “Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra,” a poem by Amy Lemmon, now online.



Lemmon is the author of two poetry collections: Fine Motor (Sow's Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008) and Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009). Her poems and essays have appeared in Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. She is Associate Professor of English at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and lives in Astoria, New York.


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Coming in late May, the Spring 2009 Issue - Collaborations in Poetry and Art.

This issue will feature new work by by Eileen Tabios, Dana Guthrie Martin, Jo Hemmant, Erena Rae, Orly Orbach, Rachel Lehrman, Jessy Randall, Daniel Shapiro, Scott Owens, Pris Campbell, Diana Woodcock, Li Chevalier, Barbara Taylor, and Moira Richards.

a loss...

Nichole Shields

1969-2009

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Good poet, good friend.


~

American Hunger


American hunger
would not occur
if not every
but most untruths,
malicious acts,
and un-kept promises
could be consumed

each falsetto
an appetizing morsel
fattening the nation

tipping the scale


          - Shield's work was featured in Blue Fifth Review, Winter 2001

wating & waiting & waiting...

Coming this Spring...

...in April, Broadside #13 from Amy Lemmon

The Spring 2009 issue of Blue Fifth Review - a special collaborative issue (May)

eyes of strangers swim...

New from Blue Fifth Review ...



Broadside #12, “Meditation on Hair,” a poem by Yun Wang, now online.



Wang’s first poetry collection, The Book of Jade, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and was published in 2002. Her poetry chapbook, The Carp, was published by Bull Thistle Press in 1994. She has published poems in numerous literary journals, including Kenyon Review, Green Mountains Review, International Quarterly, Poet Lore.


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Coming in late January, Broadside #13, a poem by Amy Lemmon.

pushcart nominations for 2008...

The following poems, appearing at BFR, have been nominated for the 2008 Pushcart Prize.

Collin Kelley, Patty Hearst on the Occasion of Her Presidential Pardon (Broadside #10, Spring 2008)

Jeff Mann, Writers’ Tour of Kayford Mountain— October 16, 2006 (Spring Supplement 2008)

Felicia Mitchell, Zen and the Art of My Brother (Broadside #11, Summer 2008)

Oliver Rice, Minarets, Incense, Beggars (Winter 2008)

Amy Riddell, Lament (Fall 2008)

Susan Terris, See a Cliché, Be a Cliché (Broadside #9, Winter 2008)

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These are wonderful poems from gifted poets. I'm grateful that they've allowed their works to appear at BFR. Read them, and your world will be a richer view.

Congratulations to these poets.

presently reading submissions...

I am presently reading, and will continue through December, submissions for the Winter 09 issue – a special theme: works of collaboration. These works may be focused in poetry and/or art.

Remember that I’m interested in poetry that has not appeared in journals, print or online.

E-mail submissions or questions to bluefifth@lycos.com

more on the fall issue...

I’m always amazed at poetry’s ability to shift my attention in new directions. Here I am moving along, taking in my life and the world, and of a sudden, I’m shifted in another direction, encountering places I’d never been to, listening to voices I hadn’t heard. And I’m enriched, finding myself on new journeys of the mind – and sometimes, of the physical. The new Fall 2008 Issue of Blue Fifth Review has that power.

The poetry of Melissa Buckheit, this issue’s featured poet, is astounding. The form finds its own pace. There’s a fresh ease in her work that is both inviting and startling – a wonderful paradox. She writes in the opening lines of “Always One Direction”:

If I could I would walk right out of here

the hundred lives we are meant to live    

   and can’t 
          won’t forgive the moment of death
even in elation

       the gauze wrinkles up against the chin,
the skull sways,
      a clear grip from behind. 

This poem is a call to survival, a cry to move off center, to do the work that must be done – and that work is one’s life. You give yourself to that life. There are so many paths, so many lives – and here’s the hard edge: those lives “won’t forgive the moment of death / even in elation”. That is a powerful vision.

The poetry in Buckheit’s feature will challenge the reader. There is a wonderful physicality in these poems, a believable and intricate world that the reader is given access to. The poems unfold their intimate drama that is dreamlike but very real. It’s as if the reader becomes the casual eavesdropper to the moment. But here’s Buckheit’s gift – what I learn is about myself.

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Many of the writers in this latest issue – writers whose works I’m very familiar with – are appearing in the pages of BFR for the first time… Amy Lemmon, Kenneth Pobo, Amy Riddell, Steve Meador, Jon Ballard, and Yun Wang. There are many others, and I hope you enjoy them all.

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A poem from the pages...

Karen Head

“The muse says”


come to Chartres when the half-moon rises
wind your way up the tertres from the Eure,
pause only to pluck a peony for the Sancta Camisia.
Meet me on the sinners’ bench, last row on the left,
where cobalt light falls in shadows.
I’ll prop open the door beneath the archivolt
with the Seven Liberal Arts, Pisces, and Gemini.
Slip inside, shake loose your shoes,
glide across the labyrinth in your stockings.

And I ask,
isn’t it dangerous, this kind of devotion?
I know my feet will burn, no matter
how cold the ancient stone beneath us.
I know too, because I trust everything
you tell me, that the beauty will surpass
my capacity to describe it,
which is why you will embrace me,
press your open lips to mine,
ardent breath inspiring in me an approach –
the rapture so soon upon us.

fall 2008 now online...

Fall 2008 Issue is now online.

This issue features new work by...

Melissa Buckheit, Rachel Lehrman, Kenneth Pobo, Amy Lemmon,
Susan Terris, Steve Meador, Robert E. Wood, Laurel K. Dodge,
Karen Head, Scott Owens, Yun Wang, Collin Kelley, Amy Riddell,
Marge Piercy, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Felicia Mitchell, C. S. Reid,
J. Alan Nelson, C. E. Chaffin, Deborah Vatcher, Leslie Marcus,

and more

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Next: The Broadside Series, #12, by Yun Wang

Mid-November

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Special announcement:

Winter 2009 – special themed issue: Collaboration

Open for consideration: poetry of collaboration or art in collaboration with poetry.

I only consider new work that has not appeared in magazines, print or online...

This issue due out in February.

E-mail submissions to bluefifth@lycos.com

fall 08 issue...

I’m in the final editing stages of the Fall 2008 Issue. Contributors will preview their pages later this week, and will be online next week.

This issue will feature new work by...

Melissa Buckheit, Rachel Lehrman, Kenneth Pobo, Amy Lemmon,
Susan Terris, Steve Meador, Robert E. Wood, Laurel K. Dodge,
Karen Head, Scott Owens, Yun Wang, Collin Kelley, Amy Riddell,
Marge Piercy, Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Felicia Mitchell, C. S. Reid,
J. Alan Nelson, C. E. Chaffin, Deborah Vatcher, Leslie Marcus,

and more

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Winter 2009 – special themed issue: Collaboration

Open for consideration: poetry of collaboration or art in collaboration with poetry.

I only consider new work that has not appeared in magazines, print or online...

E-mail submissions to bluefifth@lycos.com