The Online Literary Magazine at Arizona State University
We are excited to announce that past Superstition Review contributor, Rose Knapp, has a new poetry collection available. Metempoïesis was released at the end of January and can be purchased through Dostoyevsky Wannabe.
Rose was featured in Issue 19. Her three poems are accompanied with sound and can be read, and heard, here. Rose also contributed to the Superstition Review Blog via an Authors Talk. Here she discusses about her poetry, language, and translation.
Congratulations, Rose!
Today we are pleased to announce that past contributor Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach has been recently featured in Four Way Review. Julia’s poem “They Think They Know Amelia Earhart” can be read on Four Way Review’s website.
Four poems by Julia can be read and listened to in Issue 19 of Superstition Review.
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University is hosting a special 8-part reading series featuring brand new work from ASU graduate students! Each reading will host 3-4 students at The Watershed, a beautiful waterfront restaurant and bar.
The next installment of the series will take place on November 7 from 7:30pm to 8:30pm, though you can come earlier to mingle, drink, and eat. You can find The Watershed at 5350 S Lakeshore Dr, Tempe, Arizona 85283.
The featured readers for the November 7 event are:
(Update: Natasha Murdock has replaced Jack Geist as the third reader!)
We’re so excited for this installment of the series, especially because Kalani Pickhart was a contributor in Issue 19 of Superstition Review! You can read her piece, “Little Mouse,” here.
Stay tuned for later installments of this reading series! You can find more information on the event’s Facebook page and on the Facebook page for the ASU MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Today we are pleased to announce that past contributor Paisley Rekdal will be the poetry consultant for the 2018 Writers at Work Conference. The Writers at Work Conference takes place in Alta Lodge, Alta Utah, near the Wasatch Mountains, where writers of all backgrounds gather to share ideas, craft, and fine writing. For more information click here. 
Paisley also released a book-length essay titled The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam. The Broken Country uses an incident that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2012 to delve into the long-term cultural and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. Purchase a copy from The King’s English Bookshop here.
To read our interview with Paisley in Issue 19 of Superstition Review click here.
Today we are pleased to feature poet Maureen Seaton as our Authors Talk series contributor. Maureen speaks about the way that her poems began and her love of poetic form.
Maureen describes her poems as “fraternal twins” that were born from a state of shock after her first bout with breast cancer. She notes her future’s ambiguity asking “I wonder what I would be today if….” That ambiguity is reflected in the poems’ simultaneous “straightforwardness” and complexity, their connection and their difference. The surface differences are in full view in the poems’ forms, which Maureen discusses.
You can read and listen to Maureen’s poems in Issue 19.
Today we are pleased to feature author Jonathan Cardew as our Authors Talk series contributor. Jonathan discusses the work experiences that let “The Story of the Elephant” and its characters come to him.
Jonathan speaks intriguingly about what draws him to flash fiction. He notes his love for ellipses and the fact that anything can happen even after the end of such a short story, that the story “could be about anything or nothing.”
If you’d like to develop your own theory, you can read and listen to Jonathan’s story in Superstition Review Issue 19.
My definition of a “good poem” is expanding and shifting every day. As I continue to read, write, and learn poetry, I find that my understanding and appreciation for the art also continues to grow exponentially.
I believe that the poem, at its very best, is a discovery. I find that the best poems are invitations to see an object, an idea, the self, the very world, in a different light. Gaston Bachelard describes poets as individuals who are unafraid to take even the corners of a house and bring them to life. I am interested in the corners, in the ordinary that is explored and made meaningful through poetry. The unexpected image, the lyrical line, the compelling thought, the voice that flows familiar—these are all ways in which I am immediately drawn into a poem. I leave the poem not quite the same as when I entered it, and the poem still never quite leaves me.
I also believe the poem is an intellectual pursuit. I believe that art is meant to be constantly challenged within its own forms and notions—Dean Young says that we must “disrupt the habitations of use”. There is incredible importance in this, but ultimately, it should still be done well. As writers, we are always faced with this question in the revision process: did I say this well? Is this worthy of the page? Whether it is the utilization of form and technique, or the challenge of such through the experimental, our choices on the page should reflect our investment in the craft. I am interested in poems that are well-crafted and conscious of technique, but more importantly I am interested in poems that are meaningful enough to make the technique worthy. To quote Mary Ruefle, “It is not what a poem says with its mouth, it’s what a poem does with its eyes.”
Ultimately, I am always drawn to the honesty of a poem. The poem that is unafraid to explore simultaneous vulnerability and strength, authority and hesitancy, directness and tenderness. As Dorianne Laux writes in her poem “Tonight I Am in Love”: “I am wounded with tenderness for all who labored / in dim rooms with their handful of words / battering their full hearts against the moon.” Like Laux, I too appreciate poets and their ability to constantly bare themselves open through words.
Bio:
Mary Lee is completing her Bachelor’s degree in English at Arizona State University. She is in Barrett, The Honors College and is currently the poetry editor for Superstition Review.