Today’s post by Crazyhorse intern, Nicole Palazzo:

As we near the publication of the 81^st Crazyhorse for Spring 2012, we’d like to take a look back at the Fall 2011 issue to remember the joy of reading our talented authors’ works in print! This week, we look to poet Carolina Ebeid.

Carolina Ebeid grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in Austin where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in H_NGM_N, West Branch, Poetry, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. She is a CantoMundo fellow, and the poetry editor for the Bat City Review.

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of her poem “Veronicas of a Matador”:

After a diagnosis, one thing

becomes obvious:  a good

patient is a patient patient.

I forget which is the super-

stition.  Trouble comes

in twos?  Or in threes?

Night said:  I am an ox

drawing my harrow.

Night said:  I am a lacemaker

with a pincushion bouquet.

What were you expecting night to say?

To read the rest of “Veronicas of a Matador,” take a look at issue 80 of Crazyhorse from Fall 2011. There, you’ll also find her poem “Epithalamium” as well as the works of many other poets, storytellers, and essayists.

We can’t wait to share the next issue with you soon! To keep updated, please follow CrazyhorseLitJo on Twitter and like us on facebook at “Crazyhorse: Literary Journal.” Until then, we wish you the happiest of springs.

The AWP Conference is just around the corner!  Swing on by the Bookfair (Table F1) to check out our recent issues, and say ‘hello’ to editors Carol Ann Davis, Emily Rosko, and Anthony Varallo.

Join us, too, on Friday, March 2 from 5:00-6:30 PM as we pair up with Bat City Review for a reading with recent contributors. For more information, please visit: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/176335542467440/

In case you missed them, three poems from our latest Issue 80 were featured recently on Verse Daily:

Carolina Ebeid’s “Epithalamium”

Danniel Schoonebeek’s “Geneology (rest)”

Steven Cramer’s “from ‘Clangings’”

It never fails to sock me in the stomach—this scenario: the poet, having finished a dinner at a neighboring friend’s house which was interrupted by the bad news that another longtime neighbor had just lost her husband, notices something on the way home:

…walking to the car I noticed that, on the neighbors’ back steps, Michael had lined up in order of size, from the largest to the smallest, from the first step to the landing, those five ripe tomatoes…

An hour earlier, the poet’s friend, distressed by the sudden news, does the one small thing she knows to do: she plucks five tomatoes from her garden, places them in a paper bag, and tells her son, Michael, to take the tomatoes next door but not to ring the bell or disturb. Michael listens, placing the tomatoes carefully on the steps as described above. The poet, moved by Michael’s innate ability to read the situation, reflects on this act:

If one accepts Keats’s belief that the poet is less an identity than a responsive sensibility, then one could say that Michael possessed, to whatever small or large degree, a similarly responsive nature. Not only had he seen through his mother’s sad attempt to shelter him from their neighbors’ misfortune, but he’d also managed, “without asking questions first,” to turn this perception into an active form of sympathy. A sympathy which found expression in the polished arrangement on the back steps of their neighbor’s house. And is it going too far to suggest that those five tomatoes lined up that way, largest to smallest, one on each step, constituted a kind of poetic form?

I often teach this essay, “A Toy Balloon, the Man-Moth’s Tear, and a Sack of Ripe Tomatoes: Poetry, Reticence, and Attention,” by the poet Sherod Santos to my undergraduate students. And, it always surprises me, the seasoned professor that I am, how near tears this excerpt brings me, right there in front of the whole class. What moves me is the same thing that moves Santos—that quietly resonant, responsive sensibility the young boy Michael acts on. It is a poet’s sensibility: one of attention. A poet’s “first responsibility,” writes Santos, “is to push beyond those elements we already recognize.” Here, those simple-seeming tomatoes, placed with care, become a gift beyond their materiality–they become a form of empathy and an unspoken understanding of grief. It is a powerful idea—that poetry, via its careful seeing of the small, charged things and moments in the world, can engender this startling and critical acknowledgment of our common humanity.

I am so delighted that Sherod Santos will join our visiting faculty at the first Crazyhorse Writers Conference this March.  Not only is he a brilliant poet, translator, and scholar of poetry, but he is an exceptional teacher and friend.

Sherod Santos is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton & Co., 2010), The Perishing (2003); The Pilot Star Elegies (1999), which won a Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize and was both a National Book Award Finalist and one of five nominees for The New Yorker Book Award; The City of Women (1993); The Southern Reaches (1989); and Accidental Weather (1982), which was selected for the National Poetry Series. He is also the translator of Greek Lyric Poems and author of essays on the art of poetry, A Poetry of Two Minds (2000).

For additional reading, please follow the links below.

Sherod Santos, Interview (with Andrew Mulvania).

Sherod Santos, Poetry Foundation page.

I’ve been a big fan of Doug Dorst’s fiction for years, and I’m thrilled that he will be our guest faculty member in fiction at the Crazyhorse Writers Conference, March 15-18, here in beautiful Charleston.

Dorst is the author of the highly-acclaimed novel, Alive in Necropolis, which was honored as San Francisco’s 2009 One City One Book selection, winner of the 2009 Emperor Norton Award, runner up for the 2009 PEN/Hemingway, Shirley Jackson and IAFA/Crawford Awards, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and one of Amazon.com’s Best Books of 2008.  His most recent book is the short story collection, The Surf Guru, which was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Dorst is one of the few writers I know who can write in both traditional and experimental forms without sacrificing precision, clarity, or emotion.  The stories in The Surf Guru, for example, range from the buttoned-down realism of “Vikings” (one of my favorites) to the post-modern satire of “Splitters,” (also a favorite) which blends text and images, divides point of view between three speakers, and both savages and pays a strange homage to academic writing, resulting in one of the funniest stories I’ve ever read, period.  How does Dorst move from one style to the other?  How does he choose between traditional forms and those a bit off the beaten path?

In a recent interview in The Rumpus, Dorst explained his process this way:

Bill: How did you decide to play around with some stories and the method of delivery as opposed to the ones you told in a more straightforward way?

Doug Dorst: I try to let the material dictate what form the story wants to be in. “Dinaburg’s Cake,” for example, felt like it wanted to be very straightforward, with a very slow build. “Gachet” had the “various portraits” idea built into it. (There are in fact two of them in real life.)

Bill: Do you ever find yourself second-guessing that impulse, and reworking straightforward prose into something more experimental? Vice-versa?

Doug Dorst: Sometimes, although usually if it doesn’t work the way I originally think of it, it doesn’t end up working well. (While I can think of times I went from more-experimental to straighter, I can’t recall any that went in the other direction.)

I admire Dorst’s approach, letting the material dictate the form, and not vice versa.  I think that’s a mistake many young fiction writers make, deciding that a story will be “straightforward” or “experimental” before the writer has wrestled with the material, before the writer senses what’s interesting and urgent about it, and begins to see what’s the best way to tell that particular story.  Let the story instruct you, Dorst seems to say, not the other way around.  Trust the story.  Good advice.

Dorst is also honest about his writing process, admits he’s never been able to stick to a strict writing schedule, and usually has to overcome doubt and procrastination before he can begin writing.  From the same interview, here he is describing his writing process:

Nancy Lili: Because your style is so diverse — and yes, you like to have fun (which shows and makes it fun for the reader, too) — do you have any special writing warm-ups or techniques?

Doug Dorst: Yes. My warm-up technique appears to be to waste several hours on the web, waste several more telling myself I’m a fraud, and finally, if I’m lucky, telling myself, oh, hell, just type some words already.

Just type some words already.  Yes, that’s the writer’s true call to arms, as unromantic as it is.  I admire Dorst’s honesty, candor, and humor.  I’m looking forward to hearing more about his writing process during his craft talk on Saturday, March 17, at the Crazyhorse Writers Conference.  I hope many of you will join us!

Bret Lott here, co-director of the Crazyhorse Writers Conference at the College of Charleston. As we begin our initial approach to the big event – March 15-18 – we thought we’d take a little time each week to highlight who exactly you’ll be meeting, hearing, and learning from while you’re here on our beautiful campus in our beautiful city.

Robin Hemley, our creative nonfiction specialist, is the author of nine books, four of which are nonfiction. What I’ve found most interesting about his work is his versatility – his first foray into the genre was the intensely personal and brilliantly illuminating Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art and Madness, about the life and death of his older sister, while his next nonfiction book was the anthropological memoir (for lack of a better phrase) titled Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday, in which he charts both historically and first-hand the lives of a people group “discovered” by the Marcos government back in the 1960s, and which features the very real possibility of Robin’s getting killed in his efforts to find out what really happened.

In his latest effort, the book Do-Over!, Robin returns to the scenes of his lamentable childhood in order to do-over what he wished he’d done back then.

When a child shouts “Do-over!” he wants a second chance. He wasn’t ready the first time. It was just practice! The pitch came while he was daydreaming about a movie he wanted to see. Or she meant to make her fingers into scissors, but her hand had a mind of its own and formed a rock instead. As a kid, I never took full advantage of do-overs. Either I wasn’t focused enough in asserting my natural-born right to do-overs, or I was a young fatalist, accepting all outcomes, no matter how unfair they seemed or how unprepared I felt. I’d like to think I was just saving up my do-overs, banking them, because one day deep into adulthood, I suddenly remembered this simple perk of childhood and thought, If kids can do it, why can’t I?

Thus begins the book, and what follows is a series of chapters in which he revisits – indeed, does-over – such monumental events as never having asked the girl he had a crush on out to the prom, misbehaving in kindergarten, and being last to be picked for everything at summer camp (“I had some scores to settle”).

I’ve known Robin for over twenty years – back to when we were kids and our short stories appeared in the anthology Twenty Under 30 in 1986 – and have seen him in action with students, conferees, and colleagues. I value the way by which he is ever seeking to help writers best render what they need to write. Having him here for our spring literary getaway in March is going to be a terrific opportunity for writers of all genres to hear firsthand the means by which to write their own stories, and to approach the truth of who they are. So visit our website right now – chwriters.cofc.edu – and register, and see you in March!

As the holiday season approaches, all of us here at Crazyhorse want to wish you and yours a Happy Holiday and Merry New Year! We’re three posts old already and the new year is approaching fast. With our Fall 2011 issue complete and ready for launch, we’re already looking towards the spring. Things move quickly…too quickly. The holiday season is a good time to slow down and take stock, and of course, reflect. Keeping with the format of our last blog post, we will once again feature excerpts from two of our featured authors. This week, it’s going to be Robert Kloss and Molly Bashaw. Check it out below:

Robert Kloss’s stories have been published recently or will be published in such journals as Caketrain, The Collagist, Gargoyle, and Unsaid. He can be found online at rkbirdsofprey.blogspot.com.

Here’s an excerpt from his short story “When Are You Going To Finish Don Quixote?”:

Those rare occasions inspiration struck, Welles worked through the night by the pallor of the moon, the street lights reflecting off rain-strewn windows, and indeed continued his momentum into the next day, through his commute. He clasped the stacked sheets aboard the streetcar, pencil nubbin clenched between his teeth, the jolting of the car, the coughing shouting sneezing telephone conversations of hooky-playing school children. Finally, he staggered into his morning classes, unshaved with shirt untucked, indeed often unwashed and splattered with chop suey.

And onto our featured poet of the week….Molly Bashaw grew up on small farms in New York and Massachusetts. For the last eleven years she has lived in Germany, where she makes her living as a classical bass-trombonist.

And here is an exclusive look at her poem “There Were No Mirrors In That Farmhouse”:

Peacocks screamed us into ourselves.
In wood, in wool, we welled up, about to appear.
We could not decide if our faces were most ours
in the yellow hawthorn, the cornhusk, or milk.
In bonfires we stayed the same, in moss we aged.

Beautiful isn’t it? We are so proud of all of our authors and we implore all of you to read Issue 80 for Fall 2011. And that about does it. From all of us here at Crazyhorse, Happy Holidays! Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Friend us on Facebook. Check back here next week for more excerpts. Authors and readers alike, send us your work! You never know what’ll happen, and that’s why we turn the page everyday.

www.crazyhorsejournal.org  Follow us on Twitter! Friend us on Facebook!

It’s Almost Here…

Welcome Back! And to those of you who are following us for the first time, welcome. Our Fall 2011 Issue is nearly out of the stables and we couldn’t be happier with the issue. We would like to thank all of our contributors for the collection of prose and poems which is truly fantastic. Today begins the first of several promotional posts featuring our upcoming authors, starting with Ann Gelder and Renee Ashley.

Ann Gelder’s fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Portland Review, Rosebud, and Slush Pile. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Millions, The Rumpus, and Tin House. “Origin” is an excerpt from her first novel. Take a look at “Origin” for yourself:

“Everill’s daytime world was green and scented with the benign blood of timber. It resounded with saws, axes, bulldozers, and trucks doing their duty. Trees bowed in reverence for their lost lives and crashed. Men shouted, not in terror or rage, but to confirm that all were out of harm’s way. The battle with nature was titanic but orderly.”

Each week we will feature a featured writer from our fiction and poetry selections. Renee Ashley is this week’s poet and her poem “She Thinks About the Things Shapes Take” is the first poem published in our upcoming issue. Renée Ashley is the author of four books of poetry, Salt (University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), The Various Reasons of Light (Avocet Press, 1998), The Revisionist’s Dream (Avocet Press 2001), and BasicHeart (Texas Review Press, 2009). Her most recent chapbook, The Verbs of Desiring, was published
by New American Press in 2010. She is also the author of a novel, Someplace Like This (Permanent Press, 2003), and is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s two low-residency graduate programs, the MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in Creative Writing and Literature for Educators.Take a look at a snippet from her poem “She Thinks About The Things Shapes Take”

The space between us and the meaning the
mind makes All the lyric complications of stile splat seat rung
and rail Everything after a while

If you liked that, please pick up an issue of Crazyhorse 80 when it hits shelves. One other announcement:

Prize Entry Deadline Jan. 15
$2000 each and publication in Crazyhorse
The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize
The Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize
Includes print and e-book subscription
Enter completely online, or by mail
www.crazyhorsejournal.org

Mail in or upload online up to twenty-five pages of fiction or up to three poems (up to 10 pages total of poetry). Reading fee of $16 per manuscript includes a one-year/two-issue print and e-book subscription to Crazyhorse starting with the next issue. Upload manuscript and pay reading fee by secure online credit-card payment, or by check or money order.

And that about does it for us, running out of the stables and not looking back. Have a great week and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook! See You Soon.

Crazyhorse is officially out of the stables. This blog is an effort to reach all of our readers, and we want to give you all updates on what is currently being featured in our journal and hope to intrigue you to follow us more closely. For authors, if our style suits you, please submit, as we are happy to feature both established and novice writers as we seek the very best and inspiring. For this first post, we want people to learn a little more about the journal and its origins. With that, the first poem featured on this blog is by Crazyhorse’s founder, Thomas McGrath. Enjoy.

Gone Away Blues read by McGrath

We hope to continue the fine tradition Thomas started with our journal. Follow us on Twitter! Friend us on Facebook! Check out our website! www.crazyhorsejournal.org  Don’t be afraid of a crazy horse. Get on.