A year ago today, the US government revoked Edward Snowden’s passport as he attempted to flee the country. Snowden, as we all know, had just leaked thousands of classified documents detailing the existence of global surveillance programs far more intrusive than previously thought.
As writers of poetry and fiction, how do we address current events without sounding too heavy-handed? Without losing our claims to art?
Daniel Hornsby’s short story “Metadata,” is one example of a successful crossover. Published in issue 54 of Hayden’s Ferry Review, the piece comments on global surveillance, even as it aestheticizes it.
Introducing this poem, I’m reminded of a quandary that ghosts through my mind before a reading. I think: “This is obviously about the consequences of sexual abuse (or something like it), so why preface it? Do I need to?”
Well, it depends. Though I admire the way Sharon Olds, for example, doesn’t explain anything—the audience by now knows what to expect and so nothing extraneous needs to be said—I still spell it out at times. The main reason is to combat shame. The other reason I do it is more public. It isn’t that the poems can’t speak for themselves. It’s because I’m thinking of victims or survivors who are silent. But when I introduce a poem in this way, with words that appear in newspapers or courtrooms, there’s another danger: official terminology could establish a mask that’s hard to see past. That’s another reason why I sometimes prefer to let a poem speak for itself. I do this because one of my goals in my poems is to go beyond the official language to the experience itself.
Read MoreFirst there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.
[John Milton, Paradise Lost]
Chaos has many meanings. The ancient Greeks saw Chaos as the dark abyss from which life sprung. Mathematicians use Chaos theory to explain how small decisions can give rise to unexpectedly grave consequences. For parents, Chaos is their child’s bedroom, their busy work schedule. Most of us spend our lives trying to ward off Chaos and keep order. But what happens when we no longer avoid Chaos, and instead embrace it?
Read MoreThe highlight of my two years in UNC-Greensboro’s MFA program was the workshop led by visiting writer Richard Bausch. He inspired the class with his practical advice and his obvious love of the written word. I was encouraged by this man who made himself into a writer by sheer will, who, despite having a wife and children and a full time job, despite not being gifted with the innate brilliance of a Hemingway, say, or an Updike, was unflagging in his determination to turn himself into an accomplished writer. Bausch’s workshop boiled down to one particular piece of advice: “Just show up every morning. Something will happen.”
Read MoreHere are five notes on two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) from my short project, The Seven Sons of Golden, featured in Hayden’s Ferry Review #54…
1. I had an idea for a story: A young woman’s scandalous, unwanted pregnancy is unfortunately revealed when her belly begins to glow and change colors: an absurd exaggeration of a very real skin-pigmentation phenomenon that sometimes occurs during pregnancy. How do our bodies betray our secrets? The story, of course, never materialized; I’m not a very good writer. But the seed of the idea gestated and transformed into the short poetic sequence from which these two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) are taken. The mother’s physical discoloration became, in the poems, something allegorical via her naming, i.e. “Golden.” Instead of only one pregnancy, she becomes a sort of grotesque baby-factory – churning out son after (figurative) son.
Read MoreYou’ve already met new international poetry editor Brian Bender and new prose editor Gary Garrison—now we’re pleased to introduce to you our new poetry editor, Jacqueline Balderrama. The new staff is already hard at work on the fall issue, combing through the submissions to their flash prose contest (deadline today!). Kacie Blackburn caught up with Jackie to discuss what she looks for in poetry submissions and what inspires her own poetry.
Read MoreThe writer in me loves the nighttime. I imagine creeping up on the sleeping world to take it unawares. The night tells us its secrets, and demands the same of us, unheld-back. It’s a space for reflection. It feels hidden enough for a young couple to “go in for their first kiss.”
But the night can also be a time when the young couple “knocks front teeth” and feels the sudden terror of that. The night can be rife with danger: dark, too quiet, supine, riddled with the regrets of the day’s long life. It can be fraught with desires and the futility to act on them. A wished-for futurity that won’t come. It can be a time when the heart races, and the only way to slow it is to get up, open the front door and, as if enacting Nietzsche’s nudge to “Remain faithful to the earth,” step out into the world and take a deep breath under the little afterlives of its street lamps.
Read MoreIn the whirl of finals week and last-minute vacation preparations, did you forget to submit to Hayden’s Ferry Review’s “500 for 500” Flash-Prose Contest? Well, no worries, because we are extending our deadline! We will be accepting submissions for one more week; on May 23rd, we’ll be closing submissions for good.
The contest winner, chosen by author Catherine Zobal Dent, will receive a $500 prize, as well as publication in issue 55. Two runner-ups will also receive monetary prizes. So send us your best 500 words!
Find more details on the contest here!
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