Red Elegy: Beginnings Gasping Their Last

by Mary Bast

An elegy is a lament. It sets out the circumstances and character of a loss . . . in all societies, death constitutes a cultural event . . . as well as an individual loss. (pp. 167-168, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000).

Of the two poems we nominated for a Pushcart Prize last year, an earlier post describes Raphel Kosek's "When the Saints Come Among Us." Bacopa 2019's other Pushcart-nominated poem is "Red Elegy," by Miranda Sun.

As do all elegies, Sun's connects us, invites us to mourn together, echoing shared memories, seeking consolation in our common grief.

Classic elegies ("Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," "Epitaph,"  "A Dirge," "Stop all the clocks") have no characteristic metrical structure. What most denotes this poetic form is its public utterance. And so all of us are called to Miranda Sun's "Red Elegy" from its beginning line, "Morning comes over the hills like war," to tulips with "blood rising in their throats," to salmon "gasping their last," to a fox "burned black to the bone," to holding a new born rabbit knowing "that is all you have:"

Morning comes over the hills like war.
Once we bore witness, you and I, with
our child eyes. To dawn with her
rosy fingers rubbed raw, knuckles blistered
with horizon.

That meadow we used to run through.
Tulips repeating themselves, red iteration,
blood rising in their throats.

Salmon returning to rivers, full of scarlet,
life spawning warm from their bodies. Beginnings
gasping their last against the gravel. I hope you know
that's not the only way to come home . . .

(Read the rest of Miranda Sun's "Red Elegy" (pp. 58-59) and other works

in Bacopa Literary Review 2019, Print Edition or Digital Format)

*    *    *

Miranda Sun is twenty years old. An alumna of the NYS Summer Young Writers Institute and Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and published in Body Without Organs, Lammergeir, TRACK//FOUR, Red Queen, riverbabble, Sobotka, YARN, The Gravity of the Thing, and more. She loves bubble tea and aquariums, and currently reads for Ninth Letter Online.

2019 Pushcart Prize Nominations

CONTRATULATIONS TO Bacopa Literary Review 2019's SIX PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES:

   Michael Dylan Welch, "Shengxiao" (Haiku)

Michael Dylan Welch has served as Poet Laureate for Redmond, Washington, and runs National Haiku Writing Month and his website Graceguts, devoted mostly to poetry. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. He lives in Sammamish, Washington.

   Raphael Kosek, "When the saints come among us" (Poetry)

Raphael Kosek is 2019 Dutchess County NY Poet Laureate. Her chapbook, Rough Grace, won Concrete Wolf Chapbook's 2014 Prize, and Brick Road Poetry Press has published her poetry collection, American Mythology. Kosek's poems have appeared in  Poetry East, Catamaran, Briar Cliff Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Marist College and Dutchess Community College.

   Avra Margariti, "The Calligrapher" (Fiction)

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Argot Magazine, Glintmoon, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Terse Journal, 50-Word Stories, pif Magazine, and other venues.

   Jeff Streeby, "A Brindle Bull: After Kuoan Shiyuan" (Mixed Genre)

Jeff Streeby is an American poet and haibunist. His mixed-form collection, An Atlas of the Interior, is available from Unsolicited Press. His chapbook of haibun, Wile: Sketches from Nature, was published by Buttonhole Press. Streeby is an Associate Editor for poetry and prose at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters.

   Miranda Sun, "Red Elegy" (Poetry)

Miranda Sun is twenty years old. An alumna of the NYS Summer Young Writers Institute and Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and published in Body Without Organs, Lammergeir, TRACK//FOUR, Red Queen, riverbabble, Sobotka, YARN, The Gravity of the Thing, and more. She loves bubble tea and aquariums, and currently reads for Ninth Letter Online..

   Ed Coonce, "The Photograph" (Creative Nonfiction)

Ed Coonce is an Encinitas CA artist, writer, actor, and the Creative Director for Theatre Arts West. An alumnus of San Diego State University where he studied art and anthropology, he hosts a weekly meetup, East Hell Writers.

by Senior Editor Mary Bast 

Bacopa Literary Review 2019 Prize Winners

by Bacopa Literary Review Senior Editor Mary Bast

We're delighted to announce this year's prize winners:

Fiction

First Prize: "The Calligrapher," by Avra Margariti (Greece)
Honorable Mention: "Inheritance," by B.W. Jackson (NY)

Creative Nonfiction

First Prize: "From One Field to Another," by Hugh E. Suggs (FL)
Honorable Mention: "The Madonna of Main Street," by Erica Verrillo (MA)

Mixed Genre

First Prize: "A Brindle Bull, After Kuòān Shīyuǎn," by Jeff Streeby (MI)
Honorable Mention: "Photograph of a Very Young Boy," by CB Follett (CA)

Haiku

First Prize: "Shēngxiào / 生肖," by Michael Dylan Welch (WA)
Honorable Mention: "old oak tree," by Ed Bremson (NC)

Poetry

First Prize: "When the saints come among us," by Raphael Kosek (NY)
Honorable Mention: "Red Elegy," by Miranda Sun (IL)