Issue 16.1

 

Literary Matters 16.1

(Fall, 2023)

 



Meringoff Prize Winners

Fiction Winner
Becky Hagenston: Wild Creatures

Poetry Co-Winner
Ernest Hilbert: All the Usual Distractions
Ernest Hilbert: Air and Space
Ernest Hilbert: Nostos
Ernest Hilbert: White Cottage
Ernest Hilbert: Taphonomy

Poetry Co-Winner
Garrett Hongo: The Surfaces of the Sea

Non-Fiction Winner
Hope Coulter: A Label for My Father

Translation

Diana Senechal: The Flower-Waterer Who Didn’t Believe His Flowers Were Beautiful (translated from the Hungarian of Csenger Kertai) 

Interview

J.P. Gritton: On Identity, Doubt, & Digging In: A Conversation with Fiction Writer Mesha Maren

Featured Poet

Didi Jackson: Praise Poem with First Line by Derek Walcott
Didi Jackson: canis latans / coyote
Didi Jackson: Dogfight
Didi Jackson: Bingo Cemetery, Green Mountains, Vermont
Didi Jackson: Glowing with Joy

Criticism

Ned Balbo: To Live for Not Yet Created Things: Measured Voices in a World of Discord

Maryann Corbett: Capital Improvements: The Initial-Caps Wars

Paul Dean: Julien Gracq: History in the Making

Rachel Hadas: Meetings on the Sea Front

Mark Halliday: Bleak Solace in a Poem by William Olsen

Maurice Manning: 17 O’Clock

Melanie McCabe: The Famous Sisters Break Free from the Dusty Pages of History in The Badass Brontës

Thomas Pfau: Saving Time or Saving Yourself: A Memo to Students on AI

Jay Rogoff: Becoming Poetry: An Introduction 

J.C. Scharl: Turning Home: A Review of Aaron Poochigian’s Mr. Either/Or Books

Daniel Cross Turner: Still Looking: Dave Smith’s Late Poetry

Poems

Camille Carter: Evening Falls 
Cameron Clark: Another Ophelia, Another Venus 
Sarah Cortez: Good Riddance, Clyde 
Morri Creech: American Sublime
Morri Creech: At Isle of Palms
Cally Conan-Davies: At Oyster Cove 
William Virgil Davis: John Ruskin Drowsing in his Stone Seat at Brantwood
M.I. Devine: Church Going
Jeanne Foster: From a Tuscan Farmhouse Window
John Foy: Sextina 
Judith Harris: On the Anniversary of His Death
Toni Holland: Mothlight 
Anna Maria Hong: New Year’s Eve 
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman: Weathering 
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman: Vestibule 
Timothy Kleiser: Closing Up the Beauty Parlor
Ted Kooser: In Transit
Ted Kooser: Raincoat
David Lehman: Three Aesthetic Questions 
Toby Martinez de las Rivas: The Mountain
David Mason: Huckleberries 
David Mason: Dream Job 
Shane McCrae: The Player on the Bridge 
Ashley Anna McHugh: The Light of Autumn 
Christopher Lee Miles: Against Sleeplessness 
Carl Phillips: Yes 
Carl Phillips: Mechanics 
D.A. Powell: Space Race 
John Savoie: Night Drive 
John Savoie: Old Dog at Night 
Grace Schulman: Witness 
Grace Schulman: Voyeuse 
Robert B. Shaw: Happenstance 
Timothy Steele: Orb Weavers 
Lesley Wheeler: Submicroscopic 

Translations

Kelly Scott Franklin: Verses (from the Spanish of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer) 

Ethan McGuire: Between the Hillocks (from the Chinese of Yue Fei)