Weekly Prompt: Tamiko’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Contest 1st Place Winner!)

This week, we’re featuring the prompt submitted by the grand prize winner of our National Poetry Month Prompt Contest (sponsored by Kaya Press) . . .

(::drumroll::)

Tamiko Beyer!

We loved the freshness of Tamiko’s exercise, and the way that it challenges the writer to combine the particular vocabulary of one activity with the extremely close, almost manic, focus, of an “obsession.”  As poets, we all have obsessions to which we find ourselves returning again and again, and Tamiko’s prompt provides a great way to step out of the boxes we draw for ourselves in order to approach a familiar topic from a new angle.

Prompt: Obsession

  • First, make a list of your obsessions – the topics you find yourself writing or thinking about again and again.
  • Now, think of a specific thing that you know how to do well – knitting, rock climbing, photoshop, fixing cars, etc. Make a list of as many words specific to that activity – the specialized vocabulary of it – that you can think of.
  • Finally, choose one of your obsessions (not related to the activity you chose) and write a poem about it, incorporating as many words from the second list as you can.

Tamiko will receive a copy of Lisa Chen’s Mouth, courtesy of the folks at Kaya Press. Congratulations, Tamiko, and thanks once again to all who submitted!

Signing off for this National Poetry Month,

Iris & Mia

LR News: Mia’s Post Featured at the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Site

Mia's Post on the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Site

We are pleased to announce that the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation has graciously reprinted one of LR Associate Editor Mia Malhotra’s Weekly Prompt posts in their newsletter (and on their web site)!  Click here to read the reprinted post, or here to read the original.  Many thanks to the kind folks at the Foundation for their generosity.  Mia, we are proud of you!

Review: SECRET IDENTITIES: THE ASIAN AMERICAN SUPERHERO ANTHOLOGY

Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology edited by Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow, and Jerry Ma | New Press 2009 | $21.95

 

In September 2001, The Amazing Spider-Man published issue #477 which has been called, for its emotively blank cover, the “Black Issue.” It opens with a two-page spread of Spider-Man covering his ears in shock over the excruciating collapse of the Twin Towers. What follows is a trauma narrative as New York picks up the pieces, searches for survivors and parents and loved ones. Our pantheon of Marvel Comics gods is down at Ground Zero helping as they can, each one suddenly rendered as miniscule as the citizens: Captain America in silent grief, having seen enough world wars; Doc Doom and Magneto combining their efforts and labor without rancor; Spidey pulling his mask up halfway to drink bottled water with firefighters in the rubble.

I read a blurb once that claimed the three most recognizable characters in the world were: Hamlet, Mickey Mouse, and Superman. The effect of this Marvel shadow history of 9/11, given both the scale of the event as well as these comic book icons, is not unlike that of Ovid using Phaethon’s sun-chariot fiasco to explain desert formations, or Moses using Nimrod’s Tower of Babel to explain foreign languages. Humanity has always written itself into larger, mythical narratives in which we all cohere, in an attempt to familiarize the cosmos. The only difference is that we don’t actually believe Peter Parker and Steve Rogers exist. Yet, reading the Black Issue and getting swept up in its reverent catharsis, I do believe. For that is how literature works. That is how we construct reality in our emotional imaginations. Moreover, that is how we codify our assumptions and stereotypes—what we choose to be believable in these realities we make.

This review of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology is going to be a geeky review of a geeky book, so some critical bolstering may be called for. Continue reading “Review: SECRET IDENTITIES: THE ASIAN AMERICAN SUPERHERO ANTHOLOGY” →

LR News: We’re Looking for a Summer Intern!

Are you a college junior or senior, graduate student, or recent college grad who loves and/or writes Asian American poetry and is interested in small press magazine publishing? Do you possesses superb organizational skills, appreciate beautiful design, and have a knack for working with social media, blogs, and other web applications? Lantern Review is searching for a part-time intern to assist us with administrative and editorial tasks this summer, and you might be just the right person.

This is a part-time, unpaid, work-from-home position.  For further details and instructions on how to apply, please visit the full listing under the Blog’s new Opportunities tab:

Summer Editorial Internship: Requirements & Application Instructions

Poems for Monday Mornings: M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong 19”

In celebration of National Poetry Month and APIA Heritage Month this year, we have started a two-month Monday Morning series in which we will be sharing an audio recording of a different poem that has moved, challenged, or stuck with us each week.

Today’s Monday Morning Poem is one of Mia’s picks, an excerpt of M. NourbeSe Philip’s book Zong! (Wesleyan U Press, 2008), which takes on, and writes against,  the injustice inherent in the [true] story of a slave ship whose captain—in November of 1781—ordered that 150 Africans be drowned so that the owners could collect insurance money.   Philip’s masterful control of sound, space, and pause; and the piercing understated-ness of her oral delivery make this recording (and the rest of the “Zong” poems that are documented in PennSound‘s archives) softly chilling and magnetically resonant.

M. NourbeSe Philip reads “Zong 19”

To listen via streaming audio, click the link above, which will take you to Philip’s page on PennSound, and then scroll down to the recording (#17 under the “Segue Series Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club”).

Or, to retrieve and open the file directly on your computer’s media player software, click here.

Enjoy, and Happy [Easter] Monday!

– Mia & Iris

Weekly Prompt: Aaron’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Prompt Contest Runner-Up)

This week, we’re featuring the prompt submitted by LR reader Aaron Geiger, whom we’ve chosen as the first runner-up in our National Poetry Month Prompt Contest (sponsored by Kaya Press).  We really enjoyed the genre-bending nature of this exercise and thought it was a fun and unusual approach to the challenge of writing narrative poetry.

Prompt:

Find one of your favorite short stories or essays; perhaps even one you might have written. Make sure it is a story that you know, or that you are going to read thoroughly. Deconstruct the elements of the story into a form suitable for a poem that is no longer than 20 lines.

Rules: you must maintain one of the plot devices, and you can only use words that appear in the story. The purpose here is to show how dense and vibrant poems are, and how much they can  convey with a few carefully chosen words. Can you recontruct the “essence” of a short story or essay in a poem?

Thanks once again to all who submitted, and congratulations, Aaron!

Happy Good Friday, and (early) Easter, to those who are celebrating this weekend.  We’ll see you on the other side of Monday morning.

The LR Postcard Project 2011: #029

#029 Front
#029 Back

* * *

Postcard #029
Received: April 2011
Poet: Kelly Fordon

. . .

it wasn’t lovely
but it was fine
wooden eyes in a
wooden head
mouth sewn shut
and hair like
twine—
oh I remember when
we used to sing—
in the morning
in the spring—
water flowing from a
moon washed gourd.

* * *
Thank you to all who participated in the 2011 LR Postcard Project.

Poems for Monday Mornings: Aryanil Mukherjee’s “honeycomb scriptures :: world granulated” at PennSound

In celebration of National Poetry Month and APIA Heritage Month this year, we have started a two-month Monday Morning series in which we will be sharing an audio recording of a different poem that has moved, challenged, or stuck with us each week.

Today’s Monday Morning Poem features a version of a piece that actually appeared in Issue 2 of Lantern Review.  Aryanil Mukherjee reads from his series “honeycomb scriptures,” beginning with the poem “honeycomb scriptures :: world granulated,” which later appeared in LR. (Via PennSound‘s archives).

Mia and I both love the ‘rubbly’ translucence and impermanence of the images in “world granulated,” so we were excited to run across this recording, in which we get to hear the poem contextualized within the series to which it belongs.  We hope you enjoy it, too:

Aryanil Mukherjee reads from “honeycomb scriptures” at the Cincinnati Public Library

To listen via streaming audio, click the link above, which will take you to Mukherjee’s page on PennSound, and then scroll down to the recording (the second one listed under “Poetry in the Garden at the Cincinnati Public Library”).

Or, to retrieve and open the file directly on your computer’s media player software, click here.

If you’d like to follow along as you listen, the version of “world granulated” that appeared in LR can be found here.

Happy Monday!

– Iris & Mia

 

LR News: LR Contributors Selected as Winner, and Finalists, for BEST OF THE NET 2010

Asterio Enrico Gutierrez

We are delighted to announce that LR Contributor Asterio Enrico N. Gutierrez’s poem, “Death poem exercise 64,” which originally appeared in Issue 1, has been selected for the 2010 Best of the Net Anthology.  Asterio’s poem was one of only twelve selected by guest judge Erin Belieu for this year’s Anthology (it appears alongside contributions from such luminaries as B.H. Fairchild and Claudia Emerson), and we are absolutely ecstatic to see his work honored in this way.

(To read Asterio’s poem in Best of the Net 2010, click here).

(To read Asterio’s poem as it originally appeared in Issue 1 of Lantern Review, click here).

Luisa A. Igloria
Subhashini Kaligotla

Congratulations are also in store for LR contributors Luisa A. Igloria and  Subhashini Kaligotla, whose respective poems  “Contingency” and “Sydney Notebook” (which were also originally published in LR Issue 1), were selected as finalists.

Many, many congratulations to Asterio, Luisa, and Subhashini, and as many thanks to the Best of the Net editors for this wonderful honor!

Be sure to check out all of the poems that appear in this year’s Best of the Net Anthology here.

 

 

Weekly Prompt: Chris’s Prompt (National Poetry Month Prompt Contest Runner-Up)

This week’s prompt features the idea submitted by LR reader Chris, whom we’ve chosen as the second runner-up in our National Poetry Month Prompt Contest (sponsored by Kaya Press).

Chris’s prompt was short, but we felt that it aroused a number of interesting possibilities.  It made me, in particular, think of the “beautiful witch” archetype that’s present in so many myths, legends, fairytales, and folklore (from the Greek sirens to Snow White’s stepmother)  and which is often sinisterly underwritten by the deep-seated fears of people in power (men, whites, imperialists, US ‘nativists’, etc.) about those who are ‘under’ them (women, racial or political minorities, colonized and indigenous peoples, immigrants, etc.).  In some cases, especially under colonial rule (and here I am thinking particularly of the line of questioning that Barbara Jane Reyes explores in her books Poeta en San Francisco and Diwata), culturally powerful local figures have been forcibly re-coded as demons, monsters, exiles by imperial powers. How the faces of those obscured behind such imposed masks of monstrosity might be reclaimed, even amidst the violence cast upon them by history, is something with which many writers of color, women writers of color, immigrants and descendents of immigrants, colonized peoples and descendents of colonized peoples, must wrestle on a daily basis.  Chris’s prompt thus resonates with me in the sense that it asks us to explore the possibility of celebration,  even from within (and, in fact, despite) a position in which individual identity has been marginalized by culturally- or socially-imposed images of monstrosity.

Prompt:

Take something that (or someone who) is frightening and write a poem about why it (or he or she) is beautiful.

If you’d like to investigate the approach I’ve described above a little further, here are a few books that deal with rehabilitating the voices of figures who carry the weight of  “monstrosity” in some way :

Poeta en San Francisco (Barbara Jane Reyes, Tinfish 2006)
Diwata (Barbara Jane Reyes, BOA 2010)
Habeas Corpus (Jill McDonough, Salt 2008)
Brutal Imagination (Cornelius Eady, Putnam 2001)

(Know of more collections that we should add to this list?  We’d love to hear your recommendations; please let us know about them in the comments!)

Congratulations to Chris, and thank you once again to all who submitted!  Stop by next week to see who we’ve chosen as our first runner up.