#2 on Dark Horse

Dark Horse by Lisa Couturier

Dark Horse speaks on the issues of slaughter houses and their attention towards America’s ex-race horses. Lisa has researched the topic thoroughly. Other countries find horse meat a normality where as Americans do not where the majority views horses as pets or for sport but not as livestock and don’t realize when we send horses off to auction they have the potential of being picked up by a kill buyer, shipped to a Canadian slaughter-house and sold as meat to a different country that wants it. Lisa gives YouTube links and other website links that prove her research worth which is a strength of the piece as well as adding excerpts from people who witnessed events that go along with slaughter houses for horses.  One site she listed is Kaufmanzoning.net, (scroll down to see the photos she mentions.)

The narrator of the piece is very well-informed and has done their research. She is educated in veterinarian studies, and has heart for the horses being illegally brought to slaughter. The piece is organized in a collage style format. We begin with the narrator at an auction, facts about ex-race horses, slaughter houses, a rescue agency, and ends back at the auction. We are given distance enough as readers to make it through this tough material and read on through the end without being too terribly disturbed. She also adds beautiful details in order to give a reader a breath to keep going on with the tough content, such as

“…jump-starting the truck that morning as the sun rose and the fog settled into the foothills and roosters called in the background.”

Another strong point in this piece is although it sheds light on a dark issue, it provides a means to help the ex-race horses and ponies from the slaughter houses. CANTER, (the Communication Alliance to Network Thoroughbred Ex-Racehorses) is as Couturier points out, a group that helps trainers give ex-racehorses homes instead of potentially going to slaughter.

 

number 1 on Mishti Kukur

Mishti Kukur by Deborah Thompson

What would you do if your life long mate died? How would you feel? What would you miss the most? In Deborah Thompson’s short story Misti Kukur we have a narrator who misses touch. She reaches out on lonely nights across the bed to find only the cool mattress against her finger tips. A warmth has left her life, she longs for touch she no longer feels.

The narrator is a compelling character because of the grief she has gone through. She’s an American who married a man from India, who recently passed away. The narrator is feeling grief through this rough time and finds comfort in touch, and most specifically, through petting dogs. The narrator is going through the stages of grief as she mourns her lost over seas in India. She notices culture differences, but also similarities. It is interesting to see how even though her mother in law and herself are completely different people, they both value certain things. Such as touch, we see this when the mother in law is massaging her dying son, but allows the narrator to take over understanding the importance of touch.

What makes this a compelling piece is the insights the author gives on such complex human emotions:

“Grief, like culture shock, temporarily distorts the proportions of reality, skewing them into cryptic streets of Kolkata, where nothing meets at right angles”

Thompson is able to capture emotions in this simile that escapes the bounds of easy speech. The narrator also is focussing on the dogs in India how they are wild in comparison to her puppy-dogs back at home. She is agonized by not petting these animals she is so used to finding comfort in. This is a parallel to her own life. She can no longer find comfort without her husband. The mother in law helps the narrator, but in the end it is the wild dog accepting water from her hands that drive her forward into healing from the grief. She nurtures an animal that needs caring, and she in turn knows she needs to be cared for. She realizes that her dogs have it good back home, and in a way implies that she could have a worse life. She will go home with this new knowledge.

Reflection

As I look back through the internship several things come to mind. I’ve learned how to blog which will be a great help in a sring semester class Weblogs and Wikis. I’m also learned how to copy edit and respect an authors artistic value. At first I didn’t undertand the necessity of doing minor copy edits until I had experience in having a paper completely torn up by another. I understand that some words are better choices  than others, but as a writer your voice and your words should come through and someone else shouldn’t change it.

I’ve learned alot about what a publisher must go through, and I think that with my own work I will be better prepared to understanding the process others will go through when dealing with my own work. Nothing should be taken personal, some people are your readers, some wont be.

Editorial Board Review

I’d say I’ve learned a lot through this process. It was a completely new experience for me and I think I’ve grown a lot in my understanding of what a publishing process entails…and it is a lot. One challenge is when reading a particular story that isn’t in your genre of expertise or taste of writing. It’s easy to want to reject those pieces, but you must have an open mind. You might not be a fan of a piece, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad writing and should immediately be rejected. That is why I like how we give each piece a second chance going through another editorial board. It keeps biased opinions down, and allows for good writing to trickle through in one way or another.

I’ve never liked group work, but in this case, there’s no other way to do it effectively. It’s nice being able to talk through a piece with several classmates and decide what worked well for the piece or what didn’t. In my case we had a few disagreements but being able to discuss a piece more thoroughly we all could come to a fitting decision.

Review of H.O.P.

House of Prayer by Mark Richard from Pushcart Prize XXXVI

Written in second person about a boy who is special. The narrator asks the reader to imagine yourself as the boy. The narrator is too honest about this special boy, we get into his life and live through his pains, darkness, and terror of being crippled and going to a childrens hospital.

The narrator provides images that I as a reader cringed at imagining, for instance an Appalacian boy goes home with a cast and when he returns there are bugs nested inside it. How one of the boys looks like a skeleton and bites anyone who nears, another boy gets a leg amputated. The smells of the hospital are incredibly disturbing, puke, dirty diapers, bedpans, wet beds. Staying awake at night flicking roaches off the bed so they wont crawl into the cast…and many more.

The disturbing imagery creates a compelling read. Right when you think you cant bear to read more, we are given insights to the boys better moments. Playing chess with a friend, the good nurse who gives him pop instead of water, and the wonderful barbers who treat them like people and not as their disease.

This story brings the issues up of crueleties of childrens hospitals, abusive father, failure of religious attempts, and overwhelmingly children neglect in general. A good story although hard content to read through.

5 poems

Civilization by Carl Phillips

This poem I didn’t quite understand fully, as all poems I struggle with. However, this poem’s ending I really liked:

“It must only look like leaving. There’s an art    to everything. Even    turning away. How
eventually even hunger    can become a space to live in. How they made    out of shamelessness something    beautiful, for as long as they could.”

It’s dark and honest, the words are compelling.

“What do Women Want?” by Kim Addonizio

This poem was easy to read and fun. Just about a woman wanting to wear an attention seaking dress that tells others that she knows what she wants. Ladies we can relate to sometimes just wanting to dress up for no reason, not to impress others but to feel good about yourself. That’s what I got out of this poem anyways. The ending was also something I really liked:

“I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want…

… I’ll wear it like bones, like skin, it’ll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.”

George Gray by Edgar Lee Masters

This was an easy poem to read, but I liked the metaphor it placed alot. Basically how a boat that sits at harbor is an analogy of life’s risks untaken, to be fulfilled yout got to go out and do something. THe ending also sums it up fairly well.

“But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire– It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid”

My Shoes by Charles Simic

This poem is another easy read, I liked it because of it’s simplicity. You can tell alot about a person by their shoes and this is what the poem is talking about.  Made me think of the places I have gone and how they relate to me as a person. How where you go in life relates to who you are. He also talks about two syblings who died at birth, and how his two shoes have gaping open mouths, and he is guided to innoscense. He mentions shoes as being his altar of his body. Biblically our body is the temple of Christ. He is relating shoes as being spiritual aspects of his life.

Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan

This poem is my favorite. Short and simple, but adorable. Brings to mind thoughs of friendship, imagination, and a calm moment by a pond. A beautiufl moment depicted in these lines.

” “It’s beautiful
here by this pond.  I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace”

Discussion: Our Daily Toast

Our Daily Toast by Brenda Miller
(from Pushcart prize XXXVI)

The narrator has an addiction. She is obsessed with it. She lies about it, hides it, and justifies caving into it. She cuts it out of her life for a month, for health benefits, but caves into it, blaming her dog. Her obsession is with toast.

Looking back in her life, the different types of toast she’s eaten relates to the different people she’s shared her life with. The earliest being rye toast from a bakery. Fresh rye bread is a potent flavor, and the memory that belongs to it is that of her mother. How she would watch her put groceries away as a child, Toast in her childhood meant that she was home safe. Toast becomes a symbol of her safety, since if her parents smell toast being cooked, and then she must be home.

Also with the different men she shared her life with, the act of making the toast with them, and now making toast in those ways reminds her of those people and those parts of her life.

She uses toast to bribe her dog, seeing it as a thoughtful moment of peace, whereas sharing popcorn is more excitement and frenzy. Toast symbolizes love with her dog, and calm moments, all in all, leading to small happiness’s.

What I found compelling is how she uses ‘taste’ to delve the readers into her life. Taste is a difficult sense to work with but adds a concrete detail to her piece.

 

Nephilim

Nephilim, L. Annette Binder: fiction

 

Narrator: Is the main character, Freda. She has a condition where her bones continuously grow, we find out later this is caused by a tumor and will take radiation treatments which eventually will quit working. She ends up being over seven feet tall, an insightful character who realizes that the world changes, and relates her condition to Nephilim, the descendants of the fallen angels throughout the story.

 

Reoccurring thoughts 1: When it comes to plants and animals the narrator draws parallels between them and herself. Such as when the neighbor’s dog is first mentioned “that dog’s got a streak in him,” as if it were part wolf. Freda feels as if she isn’t just human, but perhaps part Nephilim although this isn’t certain it seems true just like with the dog. Teddy’s pet lizard Freddy’s ‘gots a condition’ and Freda replies with “I’ve got plenty of those.” She relates herself to an animal since they both have a condition. Then when Teddy says that the flower bulbs look like onions Freda ponders to herself that the bulbs are ‘just sleeping’ and then we find out about her having a tumor. As if the tumor is a bulb inside her.

Reoccuring thoughts 2: The future is never certain. Freda constantly refers to the future as ‘turning in an instant’ ‘theres no knowing how things would go’ throughout the story. I think she does this because she doesn’t know how long she will live because of her condition. Sometimes she feels fine, but knows that her health will decline and it is only a matter of time.

The Compelling and Unusual: What I found interesting in this piece is the relationship between Freda and Teddy. Although he points out her condition as a young child, she is kind to him and takes pity on his appearance since he is thin and isn’t wearing the warmest clothes for the cold day and we get an immediate sense of his poverty through that image. She continues to care for the boy in a motherly fashion, giving him odd jobs that need to be done but also to keep company. When Teddy starts to move on in life, and gets a girlfriend, Freda immediately recognizes that the girl isn’t the prettiest and is taller than Teddy, however we get a feeling of tension, if she is jealous, worried, or relieved over the choice of girl he picks, it feels like a big deal to Freda. What is most shocking is that before he goes, she cups his chin and memorizes his face. However, she remembers kissing him. Its unclear if this really happened, or if she just ‘remember’s it that way because it would be a pleasing memory for her to have even if it weren’t real. Another compelling moment comes at the end when Teddy comes with his son to visit Freda and she chooses not to answer the door. Although she knows he would be kind to her, she feels looking at him would be like looking at a mirror and would be too painful for Freda to bear. I think she wants him to remember her before her condition escalated to the severity it became in her old age.

Online Magazine Review

I took a look at the online Magazine Ploughshares www.psshares.org

I read two stories, one was Charels Bacters’ What Happens in Hell (https://www.pshares.org/read/article-detail.cfm?intArticleID=9659) and the other Leen Freed’s Gloria Mundi (https://www.pshares.org/read/article-detail.cfm?intArticleID=9664)

Both had a theme of human mortality and questions of what happens after death, (I also read bits and pieces of other submissions and I found the same theme in those stories as well.) Both were compelling pieces although the narrators were quite different as were there stories were too. However they fit well together because of the similar themes.

I think that by having a theme for the submissions there can be a vast array of stories. I think that it would also be helpful for writers for them to narrow their mindset too perhaps having such open ended opportunities to write is over whelming, also this would keep the deadlines important since the writers story must be met at the deadline to fit in with the theme for that issue.

As a side note I noticed reader’s fees, for this magazine there were two fees for two different types of submissions the first was for a small $3 readers fee, however the second is also a writing contest for emerging writers, those who haven’t been published before. The winner of each genre receives $1000 prize BUT the reader’s fee is a bit more at $20.
At first readers fees seems like it would discourage writers from submitting their work I can see how this could actually be beneficial in some ways. I imagine the fee helps weed out the less serious writers, since I know I wouldn’t submit my work and pay a fee unless I knew I had a good piece of polished writing.

Book Jacket Example

by Jack London

 White Fang by Jack London:

                Kill or be killed is the lesson you learn when facing the world alone. If environment builds a monster, can another force tame it? When put to the test White Fang survives. As a half wolf pup White Fang doesn’t belong he is continuously rejected and attacked by everything he encounters. He must become ruthless in order to save himself from deaths grips, but can one learn to love after so many scars?