High-Brow Horror

by Senior Editor Mary Bast

After submissions closed for this year's contest, one of our Writers Alliance of Gainesville members asked me to clarify my adamant notice in the 2019 Fiction guidelines, "NO HORROR, SCIENCE FICTION, OR OVERT SEXUAL CONTENT."

     I have a Bacopa question about content. I know the guidelines say "no horror." But let's pretend that M.R, James, Joyce Carol Oates, Shirley Jackson, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, and Charlotte Gilman of "Yellow Wallpaper" fame were submitting their weird/macabre/spooky short stories... would they be turned down? I haven't submitted anything before because I thought it didn't stand a chance... but would love clarification. Best, J.Elliott.

After mentally reconstructing what moved me to add the admonition in caps, I sent this response:

     Please feel free to submit next year; I'll make sure our guidelines are less exclusive. I added "NO HORROR" this year after reading several submissions that were full of blood and gore with no literary merit. The point of being called a "literary review" is our desire to publish top-notch writing. If a well-written story focused on the macabre I would consider it for publication, but if it was only scary to be scary and the writing was not eloquent, I probably wouldn't.
     I wasn't familiar with Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and found a .pdf of it online, which I've just read. To me, it's not simply a "horror" story. It's a psychological treatment of the husband's domination over the wife (and implicitly, male domination over females), and what she sees in the wallpaper is a metaphor of her own existence: "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out." And at the end, "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" Yes, I would accept Gilman's piece, but only after reading it to assure its literary depth.

J. Elliott  thanked me and added, "I like the psychological what-ifs and a steady ratcheting of discomfort."

Further exploration of frightful fiction that satisfies the demands of good writing brought back memories of stories I'll never forget: Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, Stephen King's The Stand, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, Daphne du Maurier's The Birds, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, among many others.

Uncovering a larger body of "literary horror," including contemporary devotees of the dreadful and H.P. Lovecraft's manifesto on the morbid, Supernatural Horror in Literature, I rejoiced in my narrow escape from ordinariness upon reading Lovecraft's suggestion that "the appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside..."

And for a contemporary twist, I highly recommend Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, published in 2018. Being a nurse, and quite knowledgeable about cleaning products, makes Korede the perfect person to clean up her sister Ayoola's crime scenes. Lots of surprising turns, each short chapter introducing a new surprise, "in a taut rhythm like that of a drumbeat."

So let's look forward to next year's submissions that "skillfully intermingle reason and madness, eerie atmosphere and everyday reality."

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)

To Be, Or Not To Be

by Bacopa Literary Review Senior Editor Mary Bast 

The verb "To be" ("I am," "I was," "I have been," etc.) is the most protean of the English language, constantly changing in form (the word protean's namesake, the Greek sea god Proteus, could change form in an instant--lion, wild boar, snake, tree, running stream).

Thus protean means "versatile," and has the positive connotations of flexibility and adaptability. You'd think writers would find its versatility useful. Yes and no. Search Google for "why not use to-be verbs" and you'll see such articles as "How to Eliminate 'To-Be' Verbs," "Avoid Unnecessary 'to be' Verbs in Writing," and "Not to be: Removing be verbs from your writing."

I'm a "show-me" learner. The first time a fellow writer pointed out the number of to-be verbs in my work, I thought "So?"

Well, "show-me" is in fact the key to improving your writing, a specific version of the "show, don't tell" rule we've all heard. For example, "This cherry pie tastes delicious" is more descriptive than "This cherry pie is delicious." Another example from Gail Radley: to improve "His failure to make the goal was unfortunate," try "Unfortunately, he failed to make the goal."

For a quick and easy way to get a feel for this process, go to Aztekera's "To Be" Verbs Analyzer, where you can paste an entire document and receive a list of sentences containing all the to-be verbs.

I tried it with a flash memoir piece written years ago, "Bread and Butter," picked at random from my Autobiography Passed Through the Sieve of Maya. The result? "54.5% of your sentences have to-be verbs." That doesn't sound good!

Below I've placed in bold the to-be verbs identified by the Aztekera tool. Be my guest: see how you might improve this piece with alternative verbs that "show" vs. "tell." 

Bread and Butter 

Young couples used to say "Bread and Butter" if separated by an obstacle when walking together, to keep something from coming between them. This is based on the difficulty of separating butter from bread once spread.

My mother, Ruth, still has an old-fashioned beaded bag my father, Clovis, gave her for high school graduation, and I'm struck by how like her it is: small, pretty, many colorful pieces forming the whole, smooth to the touch but with attitude. I imagine my father fell in love instantly. They were fourteen years old when they met, and neither time nor distance ever separated them in spirit.

Ruth's father, Lake Starkey, was a physician, her mother, Mary Bosworth Starkey, a descendant of early English settlers. Clovis Ritter was the rough-cut son of immigrant German stock--his mother, Ida, a short, fat, bossy sort and his father, C.H., a tall, skinny, quiet man, her Jack Sprat counterpart.

I don't know how my maternal grandparents viewed this bright, farm-grown young man, because they died in a car crash before I was born. I can guess they hoped their middle daughter would find a better catch if they moved her away from La Feria, Texas--population 1,594.

Ruth tried to follow her parents' wish that she go to college in Chicago, where her aunt and uncle lived. Once there, however, she schemed to move closer to Texas A&M, where Clovis was studying agriculture. She went to three different colleges in as many years and finally--after her third year away--they were married, with fifty dollars between them.

My father, enforcer of his own rules, scared me when I was growing up. Determined to have his way, he'd paint himself into a corner where to say yes would be to give in, a loss of face he couldn't tolerate. Mom, though, saw through his tough exterior, and would act as go-between--placating me without challenging his decisions.

She has never liked conflict. Even now, at age 102, when we're out together if I walk on the other side of a post in the sidewalk she'll say, "Bread and Butter!" and insist I say it, too.

My parents were not without arguments, however.

Mom and I wear the same size shoe, and on one visit I brought her a pair of discount store stilettos, just for fun. She pranced around in them for Dad, expecting something flirty, I guess. Instead he gave her a dour look and said, "You're not going anywhere with me in those shoes."

Mom wept, I was furious. When she asked me what she could do, I said, "LEAVE the son-of-a-bitch!"

That was out of the question, of course. Until he died at age 69, whenever I visited and walked into a room where they were sitting, I'd find them whispering, Mom on Dad's lap, her arm protectively around him.

Strangers in Their Own Country

by Senior Editor Mary Bast

Paddy Reid

Paddy Reid, winner of our 2017 Bacopa Literary Review's Honorable Mention in Creative Nonfiction, recently published an anthology of his stories, Deserted. From the book's Kindle description:

"Ireland has always been a Neutral country. But during World War II, thousands of Irish soldiers left the Irish Army to fight alongside the British forces and their allies, against Germany and Japan.

"These soldiers were 'dismissed' in absentia by the Irish Army and found guilty of desertion. On their return home, instead of receiving a hero's welcome, they were treated as pariahs, outcasts in their own towns and villages. Paddy Reid was a child of this era. His father, also Paddy Reid, was one of these soldiers.

"The stories contained in this anthology have more than a grain of truth to them. In his own beautiful prose, Paddy tells of Ireland during the decades following the return of his Dad. They paint a vivid picture of the hardship and suffering of life during those years, that at times will have you laughing out loud, or reaching for the tissues. His stories are a reminder to us all that life is precious, there is laughter even in the most destitute of homes, and the human spirit is indomitable."

The Walls Around the Ring

by Senior Editor Mary Bast

Bacopa Literary Review 2018's Poetry Prize winner, Patrick Synan, has published a chapbook that includes his prize-winning poem, "Outside the Clinic." From his publisher:

It is with great pleasure that The Orchard Street Press announces the publication of The Walls Around the Ring, the first chapbook from Patrick Synan, an exciting young poet from Watertown, Massachusetts.

Mr. Synan, who has previously had work appear in Crosswinds and Bacopa Literary Review, first came to our attention in Orchard Street's Poetry Contest last year. Two of his submitted poems were selected for inclusion in Quiet Diamonds, our annual poetry journal.

We were struck then, as we were with all the other poems in this new collection, by the freshness of the language, the imagery. Patrick paints with new brushes and presents life and experience in an exciting and insightful way. David Dragone, editor of Crosswinds, notes of Synan: "it becomes clear almost immediately that this poet is not satisfied with mere poetic descritpion or good crafting" as "he takes us through an exmination of what one might call the 'geometry of the heart.'"

J.N. Fishhawk of Bacopa Literary Review writes: "The Walls Around the Ring offers clear-eyed descriptions of personal and social experience couched in accessible but boldly deployed, vital language."

In the poem "First Day," Synan writes:

The pen goes around again

For the students to draw lines

Between their hometowns

And their classmates' hometowns,

The final shape is an imperfect

Circle, whose dips and curves

Record moments within moments,

A handful of facts that alter us

To learn the infinity of others.

The Walls Around the Ring is available for $12 (check payable to Orchard Street) at The Orchard Street Press; P.O. Box 280; Gates Mills, Ohio 44040. Please call us at 330-264-7733 if you have any questions or would like additional information.

Wear Your Erudition Lightly, But Wear It!

by Fiction Editor/Senior Editor Mary Bast

Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window. -- William Faulkner (cited in Literary Works)

We're half-way through our contest, I've read hundreds of fiction submissions, accepted one so far, and have about a dozen Maybes awaiting further reading. We've learned to wait a few days before declining a piece, because people don't believe we've thoroughly considered their work if we respond within a few hours.

But, truthfully, don't you know within a page or two, when reading others' fiction, if you are compelled by the unfolding story, astonished by the strength of its voice, impressed with the quality of writing, and/or mentally chewing over a fresh perspective?

I read all kinds of fiction, classic and contemporary. I read a LOT. And everything I read hones my ability to ferret out good work quickly. I hope it will help those submitting fiction to Bacopa Literary Review to know what kind of work has recently compelled, astonished, and impressed me.

Siri Hustvedt's work is so intelligent, I could weep. I'm currently reading Memories of the Future, savoring every sentence. For example, "I am still in New York, but the city I lived in then is not the city I inhabit now. Money remains ascendant, but its glow has spread across the borough of Manhattan. The faded signs, tattered awnings, peeling posters, and filthy bricks that gave the streets of my old Upper West Side neighborhood a generally jumbled and bleary look have disappeared. When I find myself in the old haunts now, my eyes are met with the tightened outlines of bourgeois improvement" (p. 10).

Note that Hustvedt doesn't bludgeon readers with her erudition. For example, she further explains what she means by bourgeois improvement: "Legible signage and clean, clear colors have replaced the former visual murk. And the streets have lost their menace, that ubiquitous if invisible threat that violence might erupt at any instant and that a defensive posture and determined walk were not optional but necessary."

The Irish Times sums up Hustvedt's style succinctly:

"... under the control of a consummate intelligence, Hustvedt wears her erudition lightly and her cool intellect has a playful and warming passion."

Claire Adam's Golden Child is a very different kind of reading--compelling storytelling with lots of dialogue between characters and richly described scenes. For example, notice how much is conveyed by this interaction (p. 6) between Joy and Clyde, a married couple who are members of an Indian family that's migrated to Trinidad, and parents of the twin boys Peter and Paul:

Joy is sitting down when Clyde comes in, the fan set to blow breeze straight on her. The sheets that they laid over the couch and armchair since the break-in are all smoothed out and organized, but the place still looks terrible...

Water gone? he asks.  

Yea.  

When? In the morning?

About lunchtime, she says, I saw the pressure was getting low so I filled up the pots. She keeps talking as Clyde goes through to the kitchen to put down his keys. He waves away the flies from the dishes stacked up in the sink...

Golden Child is particularly characterized by depth of character, especially with Clyde and Paul (the twin who is not the "golden child"). You learn from Clyde's conversations and inner dialogue, for example, why he is reluctant to accept help from anyone and what goes into his decisions about schooling for Peter (the brilliant one) and Paul ("slightly retarded").

From The Guardian's review of Golden Child:

"Overall, this book manages to combine two things rarely bound together in the same spine: a sensitive depiction of family life and the page-flicking urgency of a thriller." 

My all-time favorite author of mysteries is Tana French, an American-Irish writer and live-theater actress who lives in Dublin. I'm currently reading The Witch Elm, and--as with French's other mysteries I've read--the psychological depth of her characters is unsurpassed. The reviewers below agree with me: 

"[Toby is] so deep into his own artifice that he doesn't recognize that's what it is. He thinks he's a pretty terrific guy and ignores any evidence to the contrary... In the aftermath of his brutal attack--his first major misfortune, and the first of many to come--the thing that frightens him most is the possibility that some essential part of this great shining self is gone: He can't remember parts of his life, can't seem to finish a thought. He is facing, for the first time, the possibility that he is, in some fundamental way, incomplete." The Nation

"Most crime fiction is diverting: French's is consuming. A bit of the spell it casts can be attributed to the genre's usual devices--the tempting conundrum, the red herrings, the slices of low and high life--but French is also hunting bigger game. In her books, the search fo the killer becomes entangled with a search for self." The New Yorker

So if you want to know what kind of fiction we'll accept for Bacopa Literary Review 2019, show us your erudition, let us know you're a smart reader because we see in your work what I've described above: a compelling story, a powerful voice, beautiful writing, a fresh perspective, depth of character, but don't try to hit us over the head with how smart you are. Wear it lightly.

New Category This Year: Mixed Genre, An Ungendered Genre

by Kaye Linden and Mary Bast

Bacopa Literary Review's editors coined the term diffusionism for writing that merges, blends, or removes the definitions from traditional genres. We've opened this Mixed Genre category for 2019 submissions and invite writers to mix up traditional genres, to write skewed or in shapes, with creativity, imagination, and clarity--meaningful writing with a powerful voice, offering readers a consistent evocation of justified emotion or imagery.

Examples of diffusionist writing might include a prose poem, a creative nonfiction piece written in one long sentence, creative nonfiction or fiction written in lists, prose narratives with intermittent broken lines, or shaped prose that offers a concrete image or images on the page that support the writing's themes. Other examples might include a poem written backwards, or from right to left, bottom to top, or in a series of boxes.

As always, we seek great writing and originality, our main criterion for success the voice of the piece and its impact on readers.

Where did the term diffusionism come from?

While creating a lecture on diffusion, Kaye--a Registered Nurse--considered the comparisons between physiological diffusion and writing across genres. In the simplest of chemical terms, "diffusion" is the movement of molecules from a higher to a lower concentration, a scattering of particles across borders. While researching further, Kaye came across the term applied to the diffusion of cultural ideas across geographic borders.

Mary added that the word's original meaning was from the Latin diffundere (pouring out), and in general refers to the spreading of something more widely. Of two particularly relevant definitions, one refers to "the action of spreading light evenly from its source to reduce glare and harsh shadows," the other to "intermingling of substances by the natural movement of their particles."

We apply this concept to the intermingling of genres and genders, driven not by low or high concentrations, but by natural movement from creative energies:

Reducing the "shadows," expanding the light.

Fiction That Creates Its Own World

by Mary Bast

Every story has its own world, and its own feel, and its own mood... to create that sense of place... good enough for close scrutiny, for the little details to show. You may not ever really see them all, but you've got to feel that they're there, somehow, to feel that it's a real place, a real world. "A Sense of Place," p. 117 in David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.

As fiction submissions begin to arrive, one of the first things I look for is a sense of place, "fiction that creates its own world." As a reader, I want to know where I am in space, and this may be reflected in character, plot, theme, atmosphere, voice, language, as well as the more obvious descriptions of the setting.

I chose the above David Lynch quote because the concept of place becomes immediately evident when we think of films--we wouldn't waste ten minutes on a film that had no feel of a world.

So I look for writers who have immersed themselves so completely in their stories that the world in which their characters live seems effortlessly drawn, yet we as readers step right into the action with them.

Here's an example from Lore Segal's "Dandeliion."

On the road at the end of the hotel gardens, a group of silent walkers passed at the steady pace of those who have a day's march ahead of them, young people. I followed them with my eyes. This was the moment that the sun crested the mountain--a sudden unobstructed fire. It outlined the young people's back's with a faintly furred halo, while here, in the garden, it caught the head of a silver dandelion, fiercely, tenderly transfigured into light.

Writing on the Head of a Pin

by Haiku & Mixed Genre Editor Kaye Linden

The language of haiku demands precision and restraint. Each word must count, each word must offer meaning. This tiny poem expresses a truth or viewpoint in layers of concrete detail and juxtaposed visual imagery, demanding skill and focus, and language control.

Haiku captures a moment when the mental chatter ceases and the heart "feels" a connection previously unseen. In just a few lines, haiku embodies the essence, the holiness of being alive--a flash of surprise, an interesting perspective. Such brevity demands skill and focus, like writing on the head of a pin. The reader is the yin of the yang in this form where the writer and reader meet half way.  A reader might take away an intellectual concept from the haiku or "feel" the emotion of the poem like a light punch in the solar plexus.

According to Higginson in The Haiku Handbook, haiku happens when we "see or sense something that gives us a bit of a lift, or a moment's pure sadness. Perhaps it is . . . some scent on the wind . . .

At midnight
A distant door
Pulled shut

and we find ourselves more alone, because of the being on the other side of that door."

Perhaps you have heard of some of the greatest Japanese haiku masters. Basho, Issa and Buson were a few of the most well known. In 17th century Japan, poets often met in groups to compose a single long poem and together contributed two or three lines in an ongoing string of poetry, sometimes traveling throughout the country and adding to the linked poetry. This original linked haiku writing was known as Haikai no renga or haikai.

In traditional style, the three-lined poem had a "kigo" or seasonal word, but today this is not necessarily the rule. The traditional criteria to include a seasonal theme has expanded to incorporate other themes such as human or animal themes or playful irony:

Years later--
she polishes the silver comb
with his toupee

Notice that haiku does not demand a title. It is a snapshot, and a title would suggest and distract the reader from an immediate response. The "image" of a haiku must capture the reader with specific concrete words such as "toupee" and "silver comb." Instead of "anger," which is a vague word to visualize, we "see" a disgruntled woman, possibly a widow, or an angry divorcee. This is the classic "showing not telling." Can you see the irony in the juxtaposition of the use of the word "toupee" for a bald head, and the use of a rich man's comb, a woman polishing with his hairpiece? How does she feel about this man?

When writing haiku, try to use words that might appeal to the senses, which can include touch, hearing, taste, smell, temperature, movement, pain, and any others you can think of. Therefore, when creating haiku, connect two images in unusual or surprising ways.

After the funeral--
even the mountains
are small
(Higginson)

after the funeral--
a blood-red moon

Now write your haiku.

Found Poetry: The Literary Equivalent of a Collage

by Senior Editor Mary Bast

A successful found poem doesn't simply repeat information. Instead, the poet engages with the text and offers a new context, a contrary view, a fresh insight, or lyrical and evocative writing. Just as plastic bottles can be recycled to make a chair, the source text is transformed into something completely different. ("Introduction to Found Poetry," Jackie Craven, ThoughtCo.

As mentioned in an earlier post, our "From the Editor" pages in Bacopa Literary Review 2018 included Senior Editor Mary Bast's found poem devised of key phrases from that issue's content. We accept found poetry submissions, and our 2016 issue featured Reading Between the Lines of A Tale of Two Cites, where Bill Waters created the additional visual effect of superimposing his found poem over the original text (click on image for larger view):

"Found" poetry is created by refashioning and reordering words or phrases from existing text, changing spacing and lines, adding or deleting text, and imparting new meaning, using any poetic form. The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms has a section on found poetry guidelines, and there's more online. For example:

A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.

Found poetry is the literary equivalent of collage. Much like the visual artist who combines multiple media (newspaper, feathers, coins, sheet music) into collage art, you can do the same with words, pulling concepts and phrasings from various sources to create "found" poems.

Although there are found poets who create this type of work as a literary exercise, most visual artists do it to create a work that is both meaningful and visually pleasing.

A specific type of found poetry is the cento, composed of lines from poems of a single poet or many poets. The word cento comes from the Latin for patchwork quilt or curtain.

Among many other forms of found poetry are erasure poems, which eliminate everything from a page or pages except the words that make up the poem, accomplished by white or black tape, various colors of paint, etc.

Haiga traditionally incorporated an ink-brush or watercolor painting, a haiku poem, and calligraphy. Modern poets stretch these boundaries, superimposing Haiku on photos, for example.

During a National Poetry Month project with the now defunct Found Poetry Review, I combined found poetry and haiga in six found haiku, created by mixing up lines and words from English translations of Japanese haiku masters Matsuo Basho, Yosa no Buson, and Kobayashi Issa (click on image for larger view):

Does Nobody Give a Shit?

by Short Story Editor Kaye Linden

I chose Dean Gessie's "Nobody Knows How Much You Love Him" for Bacopa Literary Review 2018's Short Story Prize because of its powerful voice and edgy style. I like the comparison Gessie makes to traditional story structure and the way he inserts his story into that specific structure while discussing it. For example,

We'll call that mood, a rosy blush in the sunroom. It leaves you completely unprepared for the hook.

This is a story about two people whose child has difficulty breathing and must be rushed to the ER where:

Suspense accompanies you into the Emergency Room at Southlake.

The story is not as much about the child as about the father's response to the life-threatening condition of his child. The story adopts a panoramic, sardonic view of life and what life throws our way. As opposed to a short story where an author has control of the outcome, Gessie relates this narrative as a real event where the outcome is never controlled:

Nobody writes this story... You've won this round, but you can't possibly win them all... hug your baby while you can.

The last sentence of the narrative typifies the attitude of the story:

Because Nobody knows how much you love him and Nobody gives a shit.

There is an unnerving buzz throughout this narrative, spurned by a frightening supposition that the life of an innocent child lies in the hands of those who "don't give a shit." Whether we agree with this philosophy or not is the challenge Gessie throws in our faces.

*     *     *

Dean Gessie has been a finalist in ten international fiction competitions. His stories have appeared in anthologies in Ireland, England and the United States. He has also published three novellas: Guantanamo Redux is dystopian fiction; A Brief History of Summer Employment is a fictional memoir; and TrumpeterVille is animal allegory.  

A Fast-Paced Ride

by Prose Poetry Editor Kaye Linden

Cynthia Roby won Bacopa Literary Review 2018's Prose Poetry Prize because of "U-Turn's" powerful voice: the vivid tapestry of sub-text, theme, word choice, visual and aural imagery, and minimal but effective dialogue produce a fast-paced ride that takes readers to the edge and leaves us there:

  Mami is driving. Straight. Fast. She has no license.
  No detenga el coche! I yell. Don't stop the car! I want her to drive
  to the end of the world. Her scarred brown knuckles turn white
  as she squeezes the steering wheel of Papi's prize: a 1956 Mercury Montclair.
  In the back seat, Felix and Edwin peel, squeeze, and suck sweet,
  sticky guavas. No napkins. This is an adventure.
  And this is why Papi will kill Mami dead.

The voice of the narrator comes through with a jittery, nervous cry for help that never arrives. Bordering on a flash story, this piece is a vignette that provides an implied story where readers fill in the gaps. The subtext, or implied information and backstory, is well-handled without offering us too many specifics or too much dialogue. This is a piece that fits the "diffusionist" category of mixed genre:

  We chase the 1 train north on Broadway to another world: The Bronx.
  The light quickly turns red at 145th Street. I squeeze my eyes shut and point.
  Mami slams her bare foot on the brake. Felix and Edwin scream.
  Mami holds out her arm; I don't hit the dashboard.
  The 1 train continues without us. Hey Jude is playing on the radio.
  Mami pounds her tiny fists on the steering wheel, curses my father: hijo de puta!
  Bruises on her wrists and neck are spilled paint:
  hues of red, black, blue, purple, and pain.
  Her eyes are ruddy worm-like slits
  wrapped in tar-black circles--like the tire swings
  behind our old house in La Romana.
  Papi es un monstruo, a monster. Mami kisses her crucifix.

  In La Romana Papi held Mami close; they danced bachata;
  he chased us around our leaky chabola, catching only her.
  Eres bella, he would say, tickling her waist; kissing her neck,
  her fingertips, her earlobe. We giggled.

"Bruises on her wrists and neck... Papi es un monstruo" gives us a clear visual of what kind of man "Papi" might be. However, Papi also "held Mami close; they danced bachata... tickling her waist, kissing her neck..." The juxtaposed scenes and theme of an abusive relationship bleed nicely into this piece, offering a clear picture of a family in crisis:

  The traffic light ticks, clicks hard;
  gives us permission to continue up Broadway.
  But Mami blinks hard, makes a sharp right and then another.
  The seat covers are polished floors. I slide beneath her armpit.
  Our boy hips collide. She squirms; grunts from Papi's old pain.
  Felix and Edwin tumble onto the floor. Scream. Drop what's left of
  sticky-fruit-Papi-will-kill-Mami-for onto no-longer-flawless upholstery.
  It's still an adventure.

  Mami! Que estas haciendo? I scream. What are you doing?
  Siga el tren 1! Follow the 1 train!
  Her face is wet. She leans her head back, screams,
  rocks back and forth. Drives faster.
  Dios mio! We're going back. Back to my wetting the mattress
  I share on the dining room floor with Felix and Edwin.
  Back to Mami forgiving Papi for being a pendejo. Back to the beatings
  and the screams in the night. Back to the mujeres malvadas
  and rum and parties and money and cars that have changed my Papi
  into someone I no longer like.

  Mami made a U-turn. And this is why Papi will kill her dead.

Mami's crazy driving epitomizes the speed at which such a family might "U-turn" between violence and a false sense of safety. Mami is angry at the "hijo de puta!" but during the insane ride, decides to make a U-turn back to Papi, who will "kill her dead." The author has captured the insanity of abuse within a tiny piece of writing. This takes precision of language and skill.

The visuals are prose-poetry-appropriate and paint an event with its backstory in medias res on a wild ride where the mother decides to head back "to the screams in the night... to the Papi I no longer like." Once we realize Mami is heading back to the violence, we feel the true chill of this amazing piece. Not only is Mami's driving endangering her kids, but now she is heading back to the original situation from which they fled. The train winds in and out of this narrative, emphasizing and symbolizing the threatening force of Papi. In addition, the vehicle Mami is driving offers no safety for the family. The vehicle and the train are fabulous metaphors for the instability and insanity of a family in chaos.

The circular motion and veering back and forth come through the language with a fast and breathless pacing. The first line comes like an unexpected punch--hard and fast, a set-up for the zigzagging and fast-paced movement. "Mami is driving. Straight. Fast. She has no license." What an excellent set-up for this piece.

"U-Turn" has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize Anthology XLIV by Pushcart Contributing Editor Carolyne Wright, also a former Bacopa contributor and Poetry prize winner.

 *     *     *

Cynthia Roby lives in Bronx, New York, where she works as an adjunct professor of academic writing. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in publications including The Penman Review ("Boomerang And Sadie," "Faltered Footwear"/"After My Five Cents, I Ran," "Lust"), The Lindenwood Review, Rat's Ass Review, Thrice Fiction, and Black Denim Lit. Cynthia earned her MFA from Lindenwood University. Find her on Twitter and her Amazon author page. 

She Said NO

(by Creative Nonfiction Editor Susie H. Baxter)

In her Creative Nonfiction Prize Winning work, "I Said No," Roberta Marstellar's words paint a tranquil picture of Tuscany as she eases the reader into a gripping story:

The picturesque Tuscan valley spread out like one of Mom's quilts, fields stitched together with black-green cypresses, billowing as if thrown over a giant's pillows...

The drama becomes more intense with each paragraph. There is no way readers could walk away from it without reading to the end, and the last line does not disappoint. A tale told with finesse and a thought-provoking ending you are not likely to forget. What follows are excerpts leading up to this short memoir's critical events: 

Rinaldo rumbled to a stop outside the window and smiled, an awkward smile the color of my morning's cappuccino... "Buon giorno," he said. I slammed the door and immediately regretted it. Washing crates was shit work, but he wasn't to blame.

      We flew down the gravel road, the farm filling our rear view... My gaze drifted left and caught Rinaldo scratching at this crotch. I snapped my head to the passenger window. He turned down a narrow road and reduced my view to nothing but vines... So much feels wrong I can't breathe. I slip my hand into my purse and fish around for my phone. When Rinaldo takes the next turn, I slide it out--no bars... "Be careful," I almost hear my husband Greg warning from five thousand miles away... my heart, wild with fear, inches up in my throat as Rinaldo approaches...

      "Tu riposo con me," he says and breaks into an awful smile. My head says run, but my body is frozen...

      I feel him on me, yet I'm watching it happen to someone else from a distance. Greg's voice comes through again, clear as a well this time, "Be careful!" My head oscillates back and forth like I'm shaking off a punch. Coming to, I jump back, waving my arms overhead like a referee. "NO! NO! NO!"....

(You can read what happened in Bacopa Literary Review 2018)

Roberta Marstellar is a writer and storyteller. Her career path is a circuitous one, defined by detours: Structural engineer—marketing specialist—finance manager—general contractor—food blogger—entrepreneur. Since the age of twelve, writing is the one endeavor Roberta has faithfully pursued. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two beehives, and a lifetime of books.

Making the World Felt

By Senior Editor Mary Bast

"We do not feel strongly enough that we are part of a global community, part of a larger we . . . This is where art can make a difference . . . engaging with a good work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and mind. It can make the world felt." Alafus Eliasson, "Why art has the power to change the world," World Economic Forum,

This year's contributors in all genres reflected social issues as a felt experience, none more than Patrick Synan, winner of Bacopa Literary Review 2018's Poetry Prize for "Outside the Clinic." Synan paints the scene so clearly that without being told directly, we understand this woman waiting outside the clinic is poor and ill, driving a van she could only afford because it was auctioned off, and we cannot look away.

We know she's not one of the chosen ones (deadened to the weather / of the season and the soul...), but part of the rest of nature, rising to another chapter of slow death. And we readers--even if chosen ones driving a late-model car on our way to a private doctor--feel this woman's panic as she calls the same three names, knowing she won't get in today:

Patrick Synan is a young poet from New Hampshire who studied literature at Boston College and teaches in Boston. "Outside the Clinic" will be included in his forthcoming chapbook, The Walls Around the Ring (The Orchard Street Press Ltd)

Deciphering: Layers Upon Layers of Art, Poetry, Art

by Senior Editor Mary Bast

I've written before of my love for ekphrasis, traditionally understood as poetry written in response to visual art. Wikipedia now more accurately describes the broader applications of ekphrasis: "Given the right circumstances, any art may describe any other art."

Thus my pleasure when Prose Poetry Editor Kaye Linden accepted Devon Balwit's ekphrastic poem for Bacopa Literary Review 2018, dedicated to the artist Melvin Way:

Melvin Way With One of His Poems

Seeing images of Way's work draws us deeper into Balwit's poem, especially the ending lines, You cannot look at surface only / but must dig down. Beneath is where you find / the much we rest on, the clamor, the ever- / multiplying root.

Balwit's title "Deciphering is Something Only I Can Do" echoes a line in Alanna Martinez's Observer article: "Deciphering the drawings is something only Mr. Way can do, but each is a sort of three dimensional thesis... compressed to four-inches-by-five-inches of a reused scrap of paper... a refined--almost elegant--haiku." Jerry Saltz, in "Studying the Masterpieces of Visionary Artist Melvin Way," further describes Way's artwork as "creating synaptic connections between real things in possible and impossible ways, all with great graphic imagination."

And Balwit does the same, creating synaptic connections between the possible and impossible layers of Way's art and the possible and impossible layers of the world around us.

Artwork by Mary Bast

Feasting upon this interstitching of poetry and artwork, I felt drawn to include a response to both in my mixed media piece, "Something Only Melvin Way Can Do," among a series of tributes to artists traditionally ignored in a white-male-dominated art world. (Melvin Way studied briefly at the Technical Career Institute before mental illness left him homeless, in and out of psychiatric care and the city's shelter system.)

*     *     *

Devon Balwit lives in the Pacific Northwest. She has six chapbooks and three collections out in the world. Her poems can be found in The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Peacock Journal, Fire Poetry Journal, The Wild Word, The Ekphrastic Review, and many others. Her chapbook, Forms Most Marvelous, is available at dancing girl press & studio.

From the Editor: Bacopa Literary Review 2018

What always impressed me about Zaki's work was that she was able to keep that just anger hot and alive, but she also knew how to keep it properly focused, to keep it in check and not to let it consume her entire being. "Combat breath" she calls it in one of her essays. Mastering the anger rather than being mastered by it. (Michael Dennehy: "Ntozake Shange: On a Brilliant Balance of Anger and Poetry," Literary Hub, December 1, 2016)

Last year our contributors sought meaning and inspiration in the face of environmental concerns, political dissent, divisiveness, war, discrimination, and suffering. In Bacopa Literary Review's 2018 edition, the work as a whole is even tougher, more demanding, angrier. Metaphorically knocked out by the clout and courage in these poets' and writers' voices, I found heart in the notion of combat breath.

Readers, you too will benefit from combat breathing as you engage with the works in these pages. As a prelude to this issue, I've devised the found poem below of key phrases from its contents. Inhale, exhale, slowly, deeply. Release your fear, inspire a survival mindset.

A culture ignorant of reverence, currency cold, hard,
dark hills, cultivation of scabs, scratchings of desire,
stand before the bar charged with racism, tangles, decays.
So much feels wrong, another chapter of slow death,

waiting to take your heart in its teeth. Reams
of dark matter unravel as nature rises through depths
of lantern shadows, to the thread Atropos will cut
for each of us: oh, this conflux is fucked for sure. 

Earth locks us by hard turns in its round embrace, and
don't we tremble at our stations with bleak temptation
to despair? To raise is to bend, not break, yet how
the heart contrives to tint the glare of a boisterous sun.

Minds go mad to plot the coming revenge. Un-
penitent seekers, almost-reformed skeptics squinting
in the bright light: though all departures taste like loss,
step away from the comfort of narrow familiarity,

leave a trail of shredded paper, cry, curse, forget every-
thing on your way. You cannot look at surface only, must
dig down, smell the perfume of righteous anger, see how
a poet--neither angel nor beast--can make you feel. 

Stare into the eyes of the tiger, push that Sisyphean
boulder up the hill, one foot then the other, scraping
against the pull of gravity and family. Release
the breath you didn't realize you were holding.

Become less fear, more sigh.

Mary Bast

Senor Editor

    

What is it About Shoes?

by Bacopa Literary Review Editor in Chief Mary Bast

I've written before about ekphrasis, the intersection of verbal and visual arts. Not included in that post are Marianne Moore's poem "Nine Nectarines and Other Porcelain" and Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Large Bad Picture" (based on George Wylie Hutchinson's "Seascape," right).

As Bishop's title implies, creating ekphrastic poetry can be enormous fun.

In the same Melanie Almeder workshop that inspired my Bacopa 2012-published "plummet" (imagining Icarus in Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" as a woman), Almeder also asked us to to make a list of terms describing something ordinary in our lives, and then to write an ode to that item. My most ordinary and also cherished possession, after years of corporate-consulting-required-suits-and-oh-so-uncomfortable-high-heels, were (and are still) my Birkenstocks:

ode to my birkenstocks 

(from "Eeek Love")

sole-mates I am barely

clothed in you

so easy to slide into

walking me

away from suits

you've taken me

to places high-

class shoes would fear

you relish luscious mud

& sand & bits of twigs

that hang on tightly

to your treads

I am besotted birkies

with the child in you

who tastes & smudges

oh you messy shoes

this simple-minded

search for ground

may wear us down

you mortal stumble-bums

Then, just this morning, I read a a friend's post about a Poetry Workshop on Ekphrastic with Pauletta Hansel [Cincinnati Poet Laureate Emeritus (April 2016-March 2018)].

Barbara Sliter's ekphrastic poem "The Red Shoe," much like mine, remembers "a time . . . / before the guy selling lettuce / said "I don't think of you / as an old person. . . a time before / shoes became practical. . . ."

I'm still smiling.

Yamaraja Das, Back to Godhead

Today we learned that Yamaraja Das (born Robert Wintermute II), who created the layout for Bacopa Literary Review since its inception in 2010, passed away on June 22. A Krishna devotee, Yama (as we knew him) was, indeed, "a quiet hero."

As one of his friends said, "It irked Yamaraja to see badly produced books. Even after many years of working with him, I continued to be impressed by how he always produced attractively designed articles with extremely limited resources."

We join Kesihanta Das, who visited Yama in his final days, in imagining Yamaraja Das "already Back to Godhead."

Bacopa Literary Review 2018 Prize Winners

Congratulations to our 2018 Bacopa Literary Review prize winners:

Creative Nonfiction Prize: "I said No"
Roberta Marstellar

Roberta Marstellar is a writer and storyteller. Her career path is a circuitous one, defined by detours: Structural engineer—marketing specialist—finance manager—general contractor—food blogger—entrepreneur. Since the age of twelve, writing is the one endeavor Roberta has faithfully pursued. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two beehives, and a lifetime of books.

Short Story Prize: "Nobody Knows How Much You Love Him"
Dean Gessie

Dean Gessie has been a finalist in ten international fiction competitions. His stories have appeared in anthologies in Ireland, England and the United States. He has also published three novellas: Guantanamo Redux is dystopian fiction; A Brief History of Summer Employment is a fictional memoir; and TrumpeterVille is animal allegory.

Prose Poetry Prize: "U-Turn"
Cynthia Roby

Cynthia Roby lives in Bronx, New York, where she works as an adjunct professor of academic writing. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in publications including The Penman Review ("Boomerang And Sadie," "Faltered Footwear"/"After My Five Cents, I Ran," "Lust"), The Lindenwood Review, Rat's Ass Review, Thrice Fiction, and Black Denim Lit. Cynthia earned her MFA from Lindenwood University.

Poetry Prize: "Outside the Clinic"
Patrick Synan

Patrick Synan is a young poet from New Hampshire. He studied literature at Boston College and teaches in Boston. His first poems appeared in Crosswinds Poetry Journal.

Art Imitates Life: Every Story has Two Sides

by Bacopa Literary Review Editor in Chief Mary Bast

Charles Baxter pursues his tough-minded ideas -- steeled as they are by paradox and contradiction -- without ever losing sight of the quieter truths revealed in ordinary lives. Kirkus Review

After reading Charles Baxter's First Light, I sat quite stunned at how completely individual and well-wrought were each of his very different characters. Hugh Welch is an ordinary guy who sells cars and thinks about sports. His sister Dorsey is a brilliant astrophysicist. The thoughts and actions of Hugh and Dorsey are so completely drawn, I felt as if I'd been transported inside their brains, each with distinctive cognitive ability.

I was also impressed by the range of Baxter's own mind, to be able to identify so fully with each of his characters. And I was reminded of how differently each of us views the world, quite evident in the contrast between Hugh's and Dorsey's perspectives.

Those reactions to First Light reminded me of my response upon reading Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet  (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea). Still in my early twenties, this was the first time I learned from brilliant writing how different perspectives color individual interpretations of the world. I'd just finished reading Justine and turned to Balthazar, expecting a continuation of events described by Justine in the first novel. Instead, I was surprised to read about the same events Justine had described, only now from Balthazar's point of view.

Durrell brilliantly illustrated how our limited perspectives create completely different interpretations of the world. Now it's quite common to read novels in which the remarkable differences among characters' points of view underlie apparent reality. In a more contemporary example, Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies, the entire first half is from Lancelot (Lotto) Satterwhite's point of view, the second half from his wife Mathilde Yoder's. 

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives.

How to Die Happy: An Incentive to Excellence

Guest post by Diane E. Hoch: 

Here's an example of two paragraphs that justify Andrew Sean Greer's Less winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While the novel is deemed comedic, one paragraph riffs on Shylock and they both not only deal with aging and loneliness, self-deprecation and all the other attendant emotions, but the language... no other writer compares a human being to a soft-shelled crab; nor does any other writer consider the crab's transparent carapace. Those lines (about Arthur Less, a failed writer) are ones you can die happy after having written:

Once, in his twenties, a poet he had been talking with extinguished her cigarette in a potted plant and said, "You're like a person without skin." A poet had said this. One who made her living flaying herself alive in public had said that he, tall and young and hopeful Arthur Less, was without skin. But it was true. "You need to get an edge," his old rival Carlos constantly told him in the old days, but Less had not known what that meant. To be mean? No, it meant to be protected, armored against the world, but can one 'get' an edge any more than one can 'get' a sense of humor? Or do you fake it, the way a humorless businessman memorizes jokes and is considered 'a riot,' leaving parties before he runs out of material?"

Whatever, it is, Less never learned it. By his forties, all he has managed to grow is a gentle sense of himself, akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab. A mediocre review or careless slight can no longer harm him, but heartbreak, real true heartbreak, can pierce his thin hide and bring out the same shade of blood as ever. How can so many things become a bore by middle age -- philosophy, radicalism -- but heartbreak keep its sting?

*     *     * 

(The Pulitzer Prize is an annual award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, poetry, music, and photography in the United States, funded since 1917, as an incentive to excellence, from the will of publisher, passionate crusader, and visionary Joseph Pulitzer. List of Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction here.)

 *     *     *

From Bacopa Literary Review Editor in Chief Mary Bast:

As many talented writers have insisted, the best way to become a better writer is to read, read, read. Have you read every novel that's won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction? That might be a good place to start. During National Poetry Month 2013, I participated in "Pulitzer Remix," a project of The Found Poetry Review. Eighty-five poets from seven countries each wrote a poem a day from one of the 85 Pulitzer-Prize-winning works of fiction published to that date, and posted on the Pulitzer Remix website. Toward the River is a collection of my Pulitzer Remix poems from Michael Cunningham's The Hours.

The Light of the Flash: Short Stories and Shorter Stories

by Editor in Chief Mary Bast

The novelist ... does not convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fireflies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing we can be sure of - the present moment. Nadine Gordimer (quoted by Karen Lazar in "Writing by the flash of fireflies," 20 Nov 2013, Mail & Guardian)

Last year our short genre was Flash; this year's Short Story genre could also include something very short (at least 250 words), as long as it revolves around a central story core, with tight writing and a powerful voice.

Short Story Editor Kaye Linden has written, "You want the reader to get in and get out, the emotional impact of the words resonating beyond the words." In Chapter 2 of 35 Tips for Writing a Brilliant Flash Story (also included in a former blog post), she describes the House Theory: 

The Novel Analogy: You approach a house in the neighborhood. The family invites you for dinner. The evening offers stories, entertaining characters, conflicts, discussions, and new people. After going upstairs to the bathroom, you sneak a look in the closets and find out how these people live. Are the clothes organized and meticulously hung or are they crammed together in disarray, piles of dirty laundry on the floor?

Short Story Analogy: One evening, you notice the house living-room windows are open and the lights are on. You peer in, able to view only one room, let's say the living room. You hear the conversations and arguments, and witness the character interactions and current events as the characters sit around a coffee table. You recognize a few of the people from dinner the other night and remember one or two of their stories. Your view is limited to the living room.

The Flash Analogy: Tonight, like a voyeur, you peer into the keyhole. The lights are on. Observe the living room happenings through the narrow keyhole frame that limits your view to one tiny fraction of the room.

Here's an example from last year's Flash genre that meets the above criteria and would work just as well for this year's Short Story. Kaye Linden described Chelsea Ruxer's "Purple Light" as "lovely in its pale imagery and nostalgic mood, a small piece that suggests with power."

Purple Light (287 words)

by Chelsea Ruxer

Bacopa Literary Review 2017

The walls won't stay one color. The light changes them through the day, and the whites we started with in their fresh little squares have turned grey and green, and even brown up in the creases of the crown molding.
     I hold the paint card under the lamp, remember buying it the night we closed on our first house together. We ran our fingers along the bumpy edge of the shade, hundreds of triangles of colored glass I thought could go anywhere.
     I look around the room, hold the little white cards up to the mantle and imagine what this should be. The lamp brings out the blues in my sisters' bridesmaids dresses and Angie's graduation robe, dark greens from Ka'ala, pinks in our smiles there and in Angie's first picture, her skin blotchy against the crisp sheet of the hospital bed.
     The painters will come again in the morning. Maybe we'll change the trim this time, or the ceiling. They won't stay long enough for the light to change.
     I hear his phone ding in the kitchen just before a flash of turquoise illuminates the wall behind it. It's a color that doesn't go. The light brightens for a moment, a notification box on the screen. Then it disappears. It always does, if you just leave it alone.

     The sun through that window is blinding now, but the light will soften. I stay long enough to watch it turn from the slanted golds of late afternoon to sweet reds that get sucked into amber and then those few, funny moments of purple before a shadow falls across the table and the sky sinks into the deeper blues of the night, when the window just shows me.

 *     *    *

(Chelsea Ruxer is an MFA student at the Bluegrass Writers Studio. Her work has been published in 5x5, Adelaide, Flash Fiction Magazine, Jellyfish Review, Hermeneutic Chaos, Jersey Devil Press, Maudlin House, New Pop Lit, The Airgonaut, and others. One of her short pieces was nominated for 2016's Best of the Net)