Wilderness House Literary Review # 3/1

WHLReview

145 Foster Street

Littleton MA 01460

 

The Wilderness House Literary Review is a publication devoted to excellence in literature and the arts.

 

The WHLReview is published online quarterly with a best of annual print edition. 

 

Deadlines are as follows

March 1 – Spring

June 1 – Summer

September 1 – Autumn

December 1 – Winter

 

The annual edition will be published in October.

 

Editor & Publisher

    Steve Glines 

 

Poetry Editor

   Irene Koronas

 

Fiction Editor

  Timothy Gager

 

Nonfiction Editor

   Steve Glines

 

Book Reviews Editor

   Doug Holder

 

Arts Editor

   Steve Glines

 

Poet in Residence

  Tomas O’Leary

 

The Wilderness House Literary Review

is the result of the cooperation of the

Bagel Bards,

 and the

Wilderness House Literary Retreat.

 

 Submissions

 

All submissions must be in electronic form. Our preference is an MS Word file sent as an attachment.

 

Poetry may be submitted in any length.

 

Short fiction may be submitted in three formats:

 

1.         very short stories less than 500 words in length

2.       short stories less than 1000 words in length

3.       Short stories that don’t fit the above should be less than 5000 words.

 

 Non-Fiction is just that so lets see some interesting footnotes.

 

Book Reviews should be positive unless the author is a well-known blowhard. Our mission is to encourage literature not discourage it.

 

Non-fiction should be short, (a lot) less than 5000 words.

 

Any form of art may be submitted with the constraint that it must be something that can be published in 2 dimensions. It’s hard to publish sculpture but illustrations together with some intelligent prose count.

 

 Published works are welcome with proper attribution.

 

Please submit all works electronically.

 

Your Ad Here

 

Welcome to the ninth issue (Volume 3, no. 1) of the Wilderness House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards (who have just published their latest anthology) and the Wilderness House Literary Retreat. All of the stories, articles, poems and examples of art have been presented as PDF files, Portable Document Format. This is a format that allows for a much cleaner presentation than would otherwise be available on the web. If you don’t have an Adobe Reader (used to read a PDF file) on your computer you can download one from the Adobe website. The files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading but we think the beauty of the words deserve a beautiful presentation. 

 

Finally, the copyrights are owned by their respective authors whose opinions are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or partners. Let us know what you think in our new Letters to the Editor. Enough housekeeping.

We promised a printed version of Volume 1. Check the table of contents for your favorite author.

Ten thousand years ago, just after the glaciers of North America receded, this little patch of New England was bare rock. Tortured gouges sandpapered clean by millennia of grit transported by slow moving ice became our ponds and the ridge that includes Bumblebee Park was the terminus, for a time, of debris deposited by the melting ice flows, a small terminal moraine. Ten thousand years is barely enough time for fertile earth to accumulate over this polished bedrock so, as a result, the soil here is sandy and thin. The poorness of the soil is the very attribute that causes our sugar maple trees to shut down early in a blaze of reds and oranges.

It is spring in New England, undeniably spring. The crocuses, though late are finally in bloom. The sap has been rising in the Sugar Maple trees for over a month and the sump pumps in everyone’s basement have largely drained the first flushes of this springs thaw. In other parts of the country large rodents or songbirds serve as harbingers of spring. Here we have the rising sap in the maple trees and the rhythmic draw of the pumps bailing out our basements to announce the vernal season. The earth is so thin here that between lawn and bedrock is rarely more than a few feet so when the thaw comes the river draining our back yard and then some inevitably runs through our basement.

It’s very early spring; it’s to soon to plant, even in the cold frame. The conditions here are best described in a poetic fragment:

To the worms and bugs and field mice winter lingers
to halt the northerly progress of natures tourists.
The pair of Robins, I don’t know the boy from the girl,
prance and peck at the earth but the worm, succulent morsel,
remains frozen, imprisoned, still safe by winters grasp.

And so the migrants hold back.
Honking geese, who never left, are angry:
No fresh shoots of green, no savory salad
served fresh from the farm, yard and golf course,
only brown withered stalks of last years bounty
made dry as tinder by the winter gales.
Straw for another’s house.

Challenge:
We survived winter and although we tried hibernating our creative juices rose far earlier than the maples' sap. One morning our poetry editor, Irene Koronas, announced that she needed a challenge to stimulate her creativity. We suggested that she write a 20-minute play and so she did. Thinking that a one sided challenge was not fair she challenged this editor to write a piece on feminism. And so he did too.

House of Wind, by Irene Koronas
A Feminist Manifesto, by Steve Glines

Not willing to let things be our poetry editor threw down the gauntlet a second time. This time the challenge was to work with a title: “the handwritten.”

the handwritten, by Irene Koronas
The handwritten, by Steve Glines

The next challenge which may turn into something more interesting is titled, “Why we are different from them.” No one is sure how this will turn out; stay tuned.

Art

We are thrilled to discover unexpected talent amongst our regular contributors. Tino Villanueva, noted poet, is also a fantastic artist. The Bagel Bards have asked him to contribute his art for the cover of their next anthology. We thought it would be fun to showcase his works here as well. The art of Tino Villanueva.

Essays

As usual we have an eclectic lot of essays. We don’t often look very seriously at essays with foot notes, it’s just not our style but given our editors essay about feminism we thought it might be thought provoking to publish an essay that came in over the transom.

On Equal Opportunity and Gender Elimination - Pete Crowley

We also offer a number of musings:
Saturday Afternoon - Barbara Bialick
Hearing Voices: The Art Of Teaching Literature - Mignon Ariel King

The art of the interview is demonstrated by Doug Holder:

The Interview: Errol Lincoln Uys - Doug Holder
The Interview: Ada Aharoni: An Israeli scholar of literature and peace - Doug Holder

Fiction

Our fiction editor loves Anton Chekhov and despairs the notion that there are no latter day Chekhovs submitting works for his consideration. This is not to say that the work he receives isn’t excellent … it’s just not Chekhov. To that end WHLReview announces a new prize for fiction to be called “the Chekhov Prize.” A google search reveals several other Chekhov prizes with cash. Alas we’re not offering cash. We will look for a bearded bobble-head doll.

We are pleased to announce the first recipient of our annual Chekhov prize. We haven’t been able to locate a Chekhov bobblehead doll (we’re still looking) but we have found a t-shirt with a picture resembling Anton Checkhov so that will have to do.

Our prizewinner is Marc Simon of Waban Massachusetts who’s short story I’m so Pretty was arguably the best piece of fiction we published in Volume 2.

Our new fiction editor has been very busy. In addition to publishing a chapbook (This is where yiou go when you are gone, poems by Timothy Gager) he has assembled a wonderful collection of short stories.

Hunter Moon – Now it’s a murder mystery. Anne Brudevold continues the saga of intrigue and romance in the woods of northern Maine.

Chapters 1-4
Chapters 5-9
Chapters 10-14
Chapters 15-19
Chapters 20-23
Chapters 24-28 new

On the shorter side:

What If? - DeWitt Henry
Razor Wire - F. John Sharp
Classic Adulterous Love - Ricardo Castellanos
Thunder Boating - Tomi Shaw
Girl With Birds - Susan Tepper

We have two short stories by Rusty Barnes:
The Prince of Everything
True Love

Poetry

Our poetry editor, not wanting to be outdone by our fiction editor is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry. Anyone published in Volume 3 (and beyond) is eligible. We don't have any idea what the prize will consist of - a t-shirt for sure. Perhaps we can find a Plaster of Paris bust of Julius Caesar, put a rose in its mouth and decorate it to look like Gertrude Stein. (no thank you Alice I don’t want any more cookies before dinner)

 

 

Ashok Niyogi
Barbara Bialick
Chris Crittenden
Gerard Sarnat
Hugh Fox
Jared Smith
Julia Carlson
Kelley JeanWhite
Lainie Senechal
Lo Galluccio
Lorian Brown
Marc Jampole
Martha Boss
Michael Amado
Michael Todd Steffen
Mignon Ariel King
Milos Petrovic
Richard Fein
Robert K. Johnson
Rose S. Williams
Sharmagne Leland-St. John

Reviews

In no particular order:

 

As we said when we started this is a joint production of Wilderness House Literary Retreat and the “bagel bards”.  The “Bagel Bards” have just published their third anthology. You may purchase them here:

WHLReview is brought to you by:

 

A new and exciting travelog:

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

 

Way, Way Off the Road

Louisa Solano: The Grolier Poetry Bookshop

Shadow People

Outpost - A Collection of Poems

self portrait drawn from many

Blood Soaked Dresses

Manufacturing America, Poems from the Factory Floor

Time Leaves

A Careful Scattering

Voices From The Invisible

Eleven Ways to Change the World

Circle Of Crows

Eden Waters Press HOME Anthology

 

 

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