When you first come across what is now called concrete poetry, shape poetry or visual poetry, you might think it is an attempt to be cutesy, or a fad of some kind. In fact this kind of poetry has been created since the 2nd or 3rd century B.C., and was the subject of a movement and manifesto from a group of highly-regarded Brazilian poets in the 1950s.

Among other things, concrete poetry uses the shape and layout of the poem (the typographic arrangement of letters and words) as an element of the poem. In concrete poetry the shape of the poem also conveys meaning.

Knowing all this, I was very pleased to come across an 1835 example of concrete poetry in the Latter-day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate.

(more) »

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Back in the June progress update, I mentioned the possibility of having an early admit class to the Monsters & Mormons anthology. Theric and I have decided to go ahead and do that for a few reasons:

1. We received a ton of submissions early on and we wanted to acknowledge that support. We’re currently at about 25 submissions.

2. It gave the two of us a chance to see how we work together and what we have in mind and what some of the parameters are for this anthology. I’m pleased to report that the two of us are tracking quite well. There will, for sure, be some disagreements in the future as we fight to get our favorites in, but I think the two of us are realizing more and more that (and this is not just ego) we are uniquely suited for this project in terms of our editing skills, reading background and interests, networks of writer friends, etc. (more) »

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Series intro and Mormon Poets Roll

Wading through Segullah’s archives some time ago, I found a poem that really caught me off guard: “Spindrift” by Marie Brian. The thing that struck me first about “Spindrift” is its (Emily) Dickinsonian style: seemingly random, mid-sentence capitalizations, the hyphens, the brevity. The tone, however, is considerably more hopeful, more reverent as the poet’s mind reaches through the sea spray, contemplating redemption, contemplating God.

The opening image, punctuated as it is by alliteration, is especially striking, setting the stage for the rest of the poem:

Harpooning—the Undoubtable
Shot from your sea-swept eyes,
Frothing mouths—
Bobbing, billowing
On the world’s flood tide (lines 1-5).

I take this Undoubtable stare of the sea to be the gaze of God shooting, harpoon-like, from the windswept waves. This “spindrift” (6) cuts to the marrow with its chilling mist, its clarifying ambiguity. Divine paradox this, that the “good news” (6) often comes to us most clearly, often catches us with its barb, in the moments when we’re wading (faithfully, perhaps) into the darkness of the unknown. I think of Lehi wandering through the mist of darkness before an angel parted the black veil and led him to the Tree of Life. I think of Boyd K. Packer’s commentary on “the leap of faith”: “the moment when you have gone to the edge of the light and stepped into the darkness to discover that the way is lighted ahead for just a footstep or two.” I think of the piercing insights that sometimes come through the disorder of sleep.

While these piercings may at times wound us, they also, I think, mark us (as we come unto Christ) as the fruits of His wounded body, leaving their imprint on the soul, a place where the “tissue thickens, binds / Fast-barnacled hooks / Of scarring Divine” (18-20) that tells us we’re God’s, that labels us heirs of His Being, of His Place. Maybe such Divine scars are part of what it means to have His image engraved upon our countenances.

Just maybe.

In addition to “Spindrift,” Brian has at least two other poems online: “Pangaea Lost” and “Orisons.”

Happy reading.

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Shadow Mountain was kind enough to send me their summer/fall catalog early this summer and ask if I’d be interested in reviewing any of the titles therein. I have been meaning to tackle something by Rachel Ann Nunes as part of my wm-reads-lds-genre-novels project, so I jumped at the chance to get a copy of Imprints ( Amazon ). This title marks Nunes’ foray from Romance in to the Mystery/Thriller genre so it seemed like it would be a much more approachable entry in to her work for someone like me.

For this review, I’m going to break it in to four parts: the set up; what works; what doesn’t work; and the novel as Mormon literature. Each of those is going to be written from a slightly different point of view as I negotiate between my identities as a fan of genre fiction but with a bias towards genre work that has strong literary elements (the good ones — not the precious/precocious literary stuff); a writer and editor of fiction; a cheerleader for Mormon fiction; and a Mormon literary critic.

The Premise and Setting

Adopted by hippie parents, Autumn Rain lives in Portland, where she runs her late father’s antiques shop. She has also recently been reunited with her twin sister (also adopted — and apparently the main character in a previous Nunes novel) and has a crush on Jake, the tall dreadlocked African American dude who she sold her father’s herbal remedies store to. Autumn also has discovered (post the trauma of her father’s death in a bridge collapse) that she has a paranormal power: she receives impressions and memories from physical objects (assuming that they have been imbued with strong emotions [love, anger, terror, etc.]). She used these powers to solve a previous case, and the word gets out so one day a community college instructor turned private investigator named Ethan McConnell shows up with a pair of worried parents. It turns out that their daughter has semi-recently joined a commune that may or may not be a dangerous cult — the same commune that Ethan’s sister had joined almost a year previously. Autumn gets sucked in to the investigation, eventually going undercover with Jake and with Ethan’s help.

What Works

The setting: Portland and Oregon is the perfect place for a hippie chick with paranormal powers, and Nunes weaves in some good details and locations. (more) »

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So the last time we had a Short Story Friday, I mentioned that I had wanted to post Joshua Foster’s “The Newlyweds” but was unable to because the link that Theric had submitted was no longer good. I’m pleased to report that the Powers That Be at Dialogue read AMV and have generously provided me with a PDF edition of the story.

Title: The Newlyweds (PDF file)

Author: Joshua Foster

Publication Info: Dialogue; vol 41, No. 2 (Summer 2008)

Submitted by: Theric Jepson

Why?: Theric says: “.

Although it seems like the typical set of characters, these poor dumb kids were very appealing to me.”

Participate:

Submit to Short Story Friday

Possible online sources of stories and link to spreadsheet with current submissions

All Short Story Friday posts so far

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Series intro and Mormon Poets Roll

Note: I thought a post to honor Linda Sillitoe and her encounter with Mormon letters would provide a suitable launching point for the series. She passed away April 7, 2010. Exponent II has published a tribute for Sillitoe in their latest issue.

One of the most striking poems I’ve read recently is Linda Sillitoe’s unrhymed sonnet “Encounter” (link to PDF from Dialogue 35.1 [2002]), which takes as its lyric province the intergenerational relationship between people, places, and possessions. The poet, born of goodly parents (at least it seems so from the pleasant cache of memories stirred in this sensory experience), begins by formally and lyrically binding this relational triad and expanding and deepening the connections between them from there. (more) »

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Something Old, Something New, Something . . . Stolen

Since April 2009, as part of my (meager) commitment to raise the profile of Mormon poetry, I’ve been investing off and on in what I’ve called my Mormon Poetry Project, offering short readings of poems by Mormon poets on my personal blog. My ground rules: 1) the poets should be Latter-day Saints (of whatever stripe) and 2) the poems should be accessible online to provide my (meager) audience the chance to read for themselves and talk back with my interpretations, to the end—says the idealist in me—of sparking greater awareness of, interest in, and conversations about poetry by poets who are also Mormon.

Because I think these poets deserve exposure and because the traffic at my blog is a trickle—okay, maybe a slow drip—I’m giving those readings a new beginning (and in most cases, expansion and revisions) here at AMV under the series title “Mormon Poetry Now!” I’ll also be posting additional readings of poems (not included in the original list) and poetry reviews as I see fit. This introductory post will also serve as the new home of the Poets Roll: the list of poets, poems, and reviews I’ve posted so far.

Before I dive in, though, a note about the title: Twenty-five years ago, Dennis Clark, then poetry editor for Sunstone, began a four-part series for the magazine called “Mormon Poetry Now!” In his column published in four installments between June 1985 and August 1989 (1985, 1986, 1987, 1989), he set out, according to his purpose stated in the series opener, to survey “the state of the art of Mormon poetry,” to examine “the best of what Mormon poets [were] trying to publish” at the time. I’ve deliberately tied myself to these efforts to highlight the new Mormon poetry by stealing Clark’s title for my own and by following his example of close reading (though his readings are likely far more astute than mine promise to be). My hope is that migrating this ongoing project to AMV’s more fertile blogging grounds will reveal something of the varieties of Mormon poetic experience and open the way for our continued harvest of the field.

* * * *

Mormon Poets Roll

Marie Brian: “Spindrift”

Linda Sillitoe: “Encounter”

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So we have Peculiar Pages, which is Theric Jepson’s imprint. We have MoJo’s B10 Mediaworx, an indie publisher known for creating e-books that look great. And we have New Play Project, which has put together an impressive track record of productions over its (relatively) short history. Put that all together and you get Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project, edited by Dave Morrison. And for only $3.99, you get a set of plays that are well-written, thought-provoking, fun to read and together form a significant contribution to Mormon letters. A trade paperback is also available and a Kindle edition is forthcoming (although the mobi file you get in the e-book download should be readable on your Kindle or via the Kindle app).

And in the interest of full disclosure, Peculiar Pages is not only the imprint that will be publishing Monsters & Mormons, but it also asked me to provide a blurb for the anthology. Which I was initially nervous about, but happily did after reading the manuscript. Here it is:

With these 19 plays, the New Play Project ably makes its claim as one of the most ambitious and vibrant going concerns in the world of LDS culture to all of us mission-field Mormons who have only heard rumors and testimonies. Out of the Mount delivers comedy and tragedy and social commentary, allegory, politics and healthy doses of armchair philosophy and theology in plays that mainly focus on (as most good plays do) relationships that unfold via crackling dialogue. Whether it’s Clark Kent and Lois Lane applying for a marriage license or Adam and Eve feeling their way towards some sort of post-fall rapprochement or young couples falling in and out of love, these playwrights are writing for these latter-days, even when there’s nothing particularly LDS about their characters and settings. That said, what I love most about this anthology is that we get—especially with the fantastic concluding trio of “Gaia,” “Prodigal Son” and “Little Happy Secrets”—works that artfully and poignantly explore key aspects of the grand drama that is the Mormon experience.

You can buy Out of the Mount here; but you should also check out Theric’s series of posts on the anthology (including excerpts from some of the plays) over at the Peculiar Pages blog.

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