Author: augurybooks

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Patrick Moran is the Winner of the 2011 Editors' Prize in Poetry

Thank you so much to everyone who submitted. We were completely overwhelmed by fantastic manuscripts.

Congratulations to Patrick Moran for winning the prize for The Book of Lost Things!

Patrick Moran’s poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a variety of publications including Crazyhorse, The New Republic, The Iowa Review and The Writer’s Chronicle. He is the author of two other collections of poetry, Tell a Pitiful Story and Doppelgangster.  Currently, he’s an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He lives in Fort Atkinson, WI, with his wife, the painter Bethann Moran, and their three children.

 

Finalists are listed below. Check back during the next few week for poems from Moran and our finalists.

–Borrowed Wave by Rachel Moritz
–Vitreous Hide by Michael Edgerton
–Doubter Come Home from a Drowning of Vision by Carrie Meadows
–The Silhouettes by Lily Ladewig
–After Hurricane by Mark McKain
–ROBINSON ALONE PROVIDES THE IMAGE by Kathleen Rooney
–Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope by Frank Montesonti
–Rancho Nostalgia by James Cihlar
–Mirror Inside A Coffin by Maureen Alsop
–Paradise for the Rest of Us by Gary Hawkins
–No Tee Vee by Andrew Terhune

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A new poem by John Deming

 

Half-Size Dishwasher Routine Voice

 

“Like all routines, however mindless, this

is one I backed into. But it’s–

don’t fear: don’t wake up half-drunk,

hating yourself: you’re tremendous,

one of the best–and it’s

you there, only you attempting

hard memory at what muscle memory.

Remember things, not emotions.

There are reasons to stay one place a long time.”

 

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John Deming’s new chapbook 8 Poems was just published by Eye For an Iris Press, and his four-song Tugboat EP, which features members of P-Funk, was released this summer by BozFonk Music. Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, FENCE, Verse Daily, Tarpaulin Sky, POOL and elsewhere.  He is Editor-in-Chief of Coldfront Magazine, lives in New York City, and teaches at Baruch College and LIM College.

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Still Reading

 

We are still happily reading the many excellent manuscripts submitted for our inaugural Editors’ Prize book contest in May. We will notify the winner personally and announce results here on this page by early fall.

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A poem by Oni Buchanan

The Occupation

 

You see, it really is a lot of work
because there is a lot of mud, you see,

especially when it rains so much
like it has and makes mud

upon mud, mud all the way
down, and then it really becomes

quite the occupation to
move all that mud

from one side to the other,
to push all that mud back and forth, to sort

one mud from another mud.
I was an industrious pig.

In my pen I pushed a ball of mud
from one end to the other—

There is so much mud to distribute
and so much works against my

perfect placement of mud,
against all my efforts.  It rains and

my piles of mud are destroyed, are rendered
sloppy, festering pools

where loathsome mosquitoes breed.  At least
I can wallow, but to make progress,

to make any progress at all,
one needs a certain

substance to the mud, a certain texture, a
structural integrity

to the mud to build on it,
to build mud upon mud—

I suppose I am all design, all strategy and design.
All lofty, ephemeral dreaming,

enchantment and charm, unlikeliness—
The sun as a kiln could work for me

if the sun worked at all.
There is no moderation on this earth.

Or maybe that’s just it.
Maybe there is only moderation.

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Oni Buchanan is the author of Spring, selected by Mark Doty for the 2007 National Poetry Series, and published by the University of Illinois Press in September 2008. Her first poetry book, What Animal, was published in 2003 by the University of Georgia Press. She is also a concert pianist, has released three solo piano CDs, and actively performs across the U.S. and abroad. She lives in Boston with her husband, the poet Jon Woodward.

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From the Archive with Ray DeJesús

From the Archives of the Dancer-cum-Singer-cum-Actress Recreation Project in Progress

as is an undone bow-tie dipped in a well of M.L. Ciccone’s
antiseptic pomade for brunettes
gone blonde genteel.

From the Archives of the Great Potamkin
Blowout

The stretched pleather gloves reach to the Peconic of yr
lap like Cadillac
hubcaps

*

Kindly that she endures
an uproarious Cantiflas
laugh

 

From the Archives of the Case of the State of Florida vs. State of Florida

an argyle
v-neck
of
geese

 

why does the hunter follow with
delta airline
units

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Ray DeJesús was born, raised, and still resides inBrooklyn,NY. A first generation Nuyorican, Ray is a graduate of The New School (MFA, Poetry, May 2010), and he currently teaches writing atSt.FrancisCollege.  He has had the privilege of reading at the following: 169 Bar, Rose Live Music for the Earshot Reading Series, The New School Faculty/Student reading (May 2010), Cornelia Street Café, and Flying Object inHadley,Massachusettswith the fine folk at Maggy Poetry Magazine. His poetry has been published in The Best American Poetry’s Blog, Maggy Poetry Magazine (Issue 2), and Literary Chaos. Poems in G(o)BBet magazine (UK), Gondola Journal, Peaches and Bats Journal, and an essay on Hüsker Dü in Jackie Clark’s Song of the Week are forthcoming. Ray was also guest blogger for Best American Poetry, June 22-28. He can usually be found shielding his ears from the awful, shrill sound of church bells on a daily basis in his neighborhood of Bay Ridge,Brooklyn. Ray is currently working on a collaboration: A chapbook long project with poet Christine Kanownik. In addition, he, along with Jeff T. Johnson and Claire Donato, produce Vampiros Documentos Presents, a video online journal. His current mantra: Sometimes things is just things.

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A Poem by Jim Behrle

I Go Forth Blurbless
America needs more
mosques & less fear
“The post office freaks
her out” / I kissed
a boy and it tasted
like the New York Jets
I eat phonies & crap
out copies of Catcher
in the Rye
Put yourself in debt
forever to write like
the poets you like
Turns out I didn’t need
a therapist, I needed
an exorcist
I want to fail worse
I still don’t have
health insurance
You can get along just
fine on boredom &
despair
“Hold me closer, tiny
gangster” / I’ll never
win a Pulitzer unless I
get cancer Stealing your best lines
—
“The poem / does not lie to us. We lie under / its law”–John Wieners, “A poem for vipers”

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Jim Behrle’s latest chapbook, IT SERVES ME RIGHT TO SUFFER, is due out soon

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Three Days Left to Submit!

Once again we are pleased to announce that we are accepting manuscripts for our inaugural Editors’ Prize in Poetry. 

-The winner will receive a $1,000 honorarium and publication with Augury Books as well as 10 complimentary copies of the book. Additional copies can be purchased at a discounted price.

-This contest is open to anyone, except personal friends, colleagues or former students of the editors.

-Multiple submissions are accepted as long as each manuscript is submitted individually with separate reading fees.

-All entries will be considered for publication.

–Submit up 40-75 pages of poetry and an acknowledgments page. Please do not include a bio.

-Entry Fee: $20

-Deadline: May 15, 2011

We are accepting submissions online through Submishmash at http://augurybooks.submishmash.com/Submit.

All money received will go directly towards the title and the maintenance of our catalog.

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Everything Changes Now by Melinda Wilson

There is a knotted ghost
sucking at your wrist; it is a tick,
a numb, fuzzy mass,
an underground straw,
a snake in the gas tank.
You live in an evaporated swamp,
blown up like a bull frog.
Everywhere and everywhere
little pieces of your skin.
Everything changes now.
You woke up repeating and heard
everything changes now.
Like below frost level,
a toad in a mud hole,
your heart rate deliberate and slow.
Detached, it’s clear:
everything changes now.
Frogs buried and sleeping.
No peeking,
no stirring, or peeking.
Bulging eyes or empty
sockets of fish
formerly packed
in the ice of the markets.
Silver dollar scales shed in the wind,
in the black of everything.
Every little thing
you’ve been thinking,
everything changes now.

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Melinda’s poems have appeared in Arsenic Lobster, Diner, The Agriculture Reader, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Her chapbook Amplexus was published by Dancing Girl Press in winter 2010. She is Managing Editor for Coldfront Magazine www.coldfrontmag.com and VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts www.vidaweb.org. She lives and teaches in New York City.

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Thanks, Hafez by Diana Arterian

after Ted Berrigan

I made the trip with the help
of the bird of Solomon.
Taste some healing water – kiss nothing
except the sweetheart’s lip
and the cup of wine.
Now I am biting my own lip,
Solomon’s magnificence, his horse of wind,
his grasp of bird language – at least at this moment.
The bells sound, their tongues
continue to strike. Nothing is sweeter.
I find I am crying in this foreign place
lifted by the wings and feathers of glory.
The grieving chest finds honey –
abandon the scene in motion, sit in the Garden.

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Diana Arterian recently earned her MFA in poetry at the California Institute of the Arts, where she was a Beutner Fellow. In the fall she will begin her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing as a Merit Fellow at USC. She is a founding member of Gold Line Press, a chapbook publisher, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in River Styx, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Iron Horse Literary Review. She lives in Los Angeles.