RATTLE has posted a new e-review of a New Issues title: Tall If by Mark Irwin.
A sample of the review:
"The best poems of this collection, like 'When I Died,' are small, continuous reversals of perception, akin to Emily Dickinson, to whom the title of 'When I Died' is indebted. Like Dickinson, Irwin's voice has a strange power of conjoining disparate images. 'The Field,' for example, begins 'I like the field best in winter when it's a giant bug / lying on its back, when its legs / are trees, walking through the sky.' Some poets might stop here, having used the metaphor for effect, but Irwin pursues it until, in a moment resembling either apocalypse or rapture, the bug rights itself and carries the bodies buried in the field 'like eggs to another earth.'"
For the complete review: Tall If reviewed by Andrew Allport.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Coming Soon: We Agreed to Meet Just Here by Scott Blackwood
On Monday, February 2, New Issues will release the next title in the AWP Award Series in the Novel: We Agreed to Meet Just Here by Scott Blackwood. Author Robert Eversz, who picked Blackwood for the award, called his novel "a lyrical mystery about disappearance, told in precise and luminous prose.” Enjoy this beautiful image of the character Natalie, created by Dean Blackwood at Medium designs.
"For three summers, Natalie Branch was our pool lifeguard. She wore an old broad-brimmed white hat, the kind a fifties movie star might wear, while perched on her platform overlooking the pool. We coveted Natalie’s smooth pale skin, her wide hips and large breasts, so unlike the tan boyish bodies of the other girls who worked the pool.We watched with a kind of awe across the water as she gazed down between her knees at a knot of rulebreaking teenagers, some of them our own sons and daughters, their faces repentant. Later, she’d wave them over and they’d talk excitedly with her, forgetting themselves, their limbs intertwining lazily with the legs of her platform. We understood. Sometimes we pretended Natalie was our girl. So what did Natalie have to say? we’d quiz our children on the walk home, our secret hearts clenching. Vacationing in Colorado or on South Padre Island, we’d suggest sending Natalie a postcard and our children would give us sheepish looks and go silent, as if they suspected. And sometimes we’d see Natalie standing in line just outside the pool at Jim-Jim’s Fruit Ice stand, talking to college boys about a local band or a foreign film showing at the University (Almodóvar, a name we rolled in our mouths like a lozenge). She’d let the college boys buy her mango ices and then dismiss them, all the same, with her wide, canted hips, promising only that she’d be at the pool again tomorrow, the white hat askew on her head, fingers winding and unwinding her tethered whistle." - from chapter one
"For three summers, Natalie Branch was our pool lifeguard. She wore an old broad-brimmed white hat, the kind a fifties movie star might wear, while perched on her platform overlooking the pool. We coveted Natalie’s smooth pale skin, her wide hips and large breasts, so unlike the tan boyish bodies of the other girls who worked the pool.We watched with a kind of awe across the water as she gazed down between her knees at a knot of rulebreaking teenagers, some of them our own sons and daughters, their faces repentant. Later, she’d wave them over and they’d talk excitedly with her, forgetting themselves, their limbs intertwining lazily with the legs of her platform. We understood. Sometimes we pretended Natalie was our girl. So what did Natalie have to say? we’d quiz our children on the walk home, our secret hearts clenching. Vacationing in Colorado or on South Padre Island, we’d suggest sending Natalie a postcard and our children would give us sheepish looks and go silent, as if they suspected. And sometimes we’d see Natalie standing in line just outside the pool at Jim-Jim’s Fruit Ice stand, talking to college boys about a local band or a foreign film showing at the University (Almodóvar, a name we rolled in our mouths like a lozenge). She’d let the college boys buy her mango ices and then dismiss them, all the same, with her wide, canted hips, promising only that she’d be at the pool again tomorrow, the white hat askew on her head, fingers winding and unwinding her tethered whistle." - from chapter one
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Winner of the 2009 Green Rose Prize
The Editors of New Issues Poetry & Prose are pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Green Rose Prize: Malinda Markham for her manuscript Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart. Malinda wins a $2,000 award and publication of her manuscript in the spring of 2010.Malinda Markham received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. Her first book, Ninety-five Nights of Listening, won the Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize was was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2002. Her poems have been published in journals such as Conjunctions, Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, Paris Review, Volt, and Fence. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (ed. by Reginald Shepherd) and Deep Travel (ed. by Sandra Meek). She has also published translations of modern and contemporary Japanese Poetry. She works as an equities translator for a major Japanese securities company.
Also accepted for publication in the Green Rose Series:
Tocqueville by Khaled Mattawa
Vivisect by Lisa Lewis
The Green Rose Prize is awarded to an author who has previously published at least one full-length book of poems. Winners are chosen by the editors of New Issues Press. Guidelines for the 2010 prize are available on our website.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Myronn Hardy to Read at the Studio Museum in Harlem
Myronn Hardy, author of Approaching the Center (New Issues, 2001) and The Headless Saints (New Issues, 2008) will be reading at the Studio Museum in Harlem. "Poetry at SMH": an afternoon of poetry and prose hosted by poet Nicole Sealey. The event will feature Myronn Hardy, Hallie S. Hobson, Marcus Jackson, and Bakar Wilson who will share new work related to or inspired by the current exhibitions at the SMH.Sunday, February 2, 4–6 pm, Theatre
The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street, New York, New York 10027
www.studiomuseum.org
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Upton wins the 2008 Miami University Press Novella Contest
Lee Upton, author of Undid in the Land of Undone (New Issues, 2007), has been selected as the winner of the 2008 MU Press Novella Contest for her novella The Guide to the Flying Island. The final judge was fiction writer Joseph Bates. For more on the award, visit their website.
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