Crab Creek Review: Notes on Contributors: 2005

LAURA BERNSTEIN, Detroit, Michigan, has appeared in The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, and Southern Poetry Review. She has work forthcoming in Rattle and Controlled Burn. “This poem is one of an ongoing series that deals with all sorts of natural disasters. Overall, I am less concerned with the events themselves than the anxiety that precedes them, or their aftereffects, how in the end, somehow, balance is always restored.”

MARC BOOKMAN, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, has published short stories in many journals; three stories have been honorable mentions in Best American Short Stories. He is a public defender in Philadelphia. “I like stories in a gambling setting, but of course this story has little to do with gambling. It’s more about the division of the world; the narrator believes that people are essentially honest and forthright, while his girlfriend knows otherwise. It’s a relationship doomed to fail, but hope springeth eternal.”

RHONDA BROATCH, Kingston, Washington, lives near Puget Sound, teaches Pilates, and sometimes dances in church. Her poems have appeared, or will soon appear, in Atlanta Review, Calyx, Poetry Midwest, Literary Salt, Valparaiso, and Tiferet. Her chapbook, Some Other Eden, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. “It was opening day of outdoor laundry season, and I was inspired by a handful of clothespins in the waking grass. As the day wore on, I realized these little reminders were everywhere. As the poem evolved, it became a sort of Lenten meditation. ‘Beyond the Window, Moon’ explores what happens when one’s meditation on the sounds of the outside world is disturbed. There are many possibilities; it’s up to us to decide what to do with that unexpected moment.”

BILL BROWN, Greenbrier, Tennessee, is the author of four collections of poems and a writing textbook. He has recent work in Southern Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry, Appalachian Journal, Slant, Atlanta Poetry Review, and The English Journal. He teaches at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. “Some mornings I drive country roads in the hills of Tennessee for inspiration. As Frost said in ‘Birches,’ Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

GASTÃO CRUZ is the author of 19 collections of poetry, the most recent being Craters. In 1975, he co-founded the Theater of Today, a repertory group that performed for over twenty years. His influential criticism is collected under the title Portuguese Poetry Today.

YAGO SAID CURA, New York, New York, is a very special no one in particular. He teaches English Language Arts to 9th graders in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. His poems have appeared in FIELD, Exquisite Corpse, U.S. Latino Review, LIT, COMBO, and Lungful! “Boca Jrs. is the NY Yankees of Argentina. They’ve been around longer than a hundred years and people either love or hate them. Boca Jrs. are a mafia of talent and there are plenty stars on their roster, so all their games are slightly mythological to watch.”

LIGHTSEY DARST lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she writes arts journalism. She has been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant and her recent work is published in The Antioch Review, Permafrost, and Cutbank.

EILEEN DUNCAN, Edmonds, Washington, has work forthcoming in Fine Madness and Seattle’s Poetry on the Buses. “I grew up in Seattle, where the weather is a very fertile and transformative force.”

STEFANI FARRIS lives in Chugiak, Alaska. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Third Coast, The Marlboro Review, and Great Plains Quarterly, and is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review. “In every small and probably not-so-small town it seems there are the ones who leave after high school and the ones who stay. We can point to economics and say that those who stay generally have no other choice, that they would get out if they could. But that explanation, though true in some cases, doesn’t account for the value or power of tradition, family, and place. Although this story started with the image of a toughened kid coming in off the boat, what emerged in the writing were questions of home. What does it take to stay in the place you’ve grown up? What does it take to want to stay? For many of the story’s technical details I am indebted to Seth Roberts, a third-generation lobsterman—and a good friend from high school who happened to leave when I did.”

KATHLEEN FLENNIKEN, Seattle, Washington, has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Iowa Review. She is a 2005 NEA Fellowship winner. “This very loose sonnet is taken from my daily walk in Magnuson Park.”

PAUL GRANT, Keedysville, Maryland, is a native of Louisiana. He has had work in Poetry, Georgia Review, and Sewanee Review, among others. He is poetry editor of Antietam Review. “This poem is about poets’ inability to stop revising a work, so that it must finally be ‘abandoned.’ This was originally called ‘Masterpiece’… until I sensed that editors weren’t catching the irony.” 

TIMOTHY GREEN recently moved from upstate New York to Los Angeles, California, where he works as Assistant Editor of Rattle. Poems are forthcoming in Nimrod, Confrontation, Portland Review, Slipstream, and Euphony. “The poem developed upon reading an article in New Scientist about the controversial work of Swiss chemist Louis Rey, shortly after a loved one had left for school in Washington State.”

JESSICA FORDHAM KIDD, ‘Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is a native Alabamian, a student in the University of Alabama MFA program, and quite fond of the local landscape. “‘Power’ was inspired by a drive through Mississippi and a rather suprising explanation of how the food chain works.”

CAL KINNEAR, Seattle, Washington, has, in the course of a now-long life, been teacher, bookseller, modern dancer, waiter, carpenter, grant writer, and development director for a social service non-profit and a private middle school – and a poet. “It strikes me rereading these two poems that the body world is powerful and mute. It acts out. It charges and discharges. It hides and prowls, loves and fears. Poetry is one of the sudden discharges, a lightning (or darkening) stroke, the traces, the burn, left along the scar of passage. Poetic language has its own power in secret and distant league with the body, about which the ego knows little.”

CASSIE KOSTY, Seattle, Washington, holds a BA in English from the University of Washington and is a recipient of the Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction. “I mistakenly found myself at a poetry reading for African-American homosexual males with HIV. You can’t leave something like that without inspiration.”

ÉIREANN LORSUNG, Minneapolis, Minnesota, fills her days with the texture of cloth and words and students. “‘Volans’ came very directly from a horticultural class I took as a Junior in college.”

JOSHUA PARKINSON writes in Athens, Georgia, where he is also a C-average waiter. “‘Cats’ is a short bildungsroman, a form for which its author apparently has a fascination.”

MICHELLE PATTON, Kerman, California, teaches at Madera Community College. Her work has appeared in the San Joaquin Review and the Atlanta Review. “As a teacher and single mom, I don’t have a lot of free time. Most of my poems originate in parking lots, grocery store lines, etc, and ‘waiting’ is a recurring theme.”

ALICE PETTWAY, lives in Houston, Texas with her husband. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Bitter Oleander, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Lullwater Review, Poetalk, and Westview. She was a Pushcart Prize Nominee in 2003 and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas. “‘A Young Seal’ was written during a trip to Whidbey Island. I had never seen a seal in its natural environment before and was struck by how childlike, how pale it was.”  

DAVID ROGERS, Horse Cave, Kentucky, teaches English at Western Kentucky University’s Glasgow campus. He writes a poem every day. His book Life’s a Joke and I Have Proof is available on Amazon. “I try to find an interesting image or metaphor and then get out of the way and let them tell the story.”

FERNAND ROQUEPLAN, Olympia, Washington, has been published in Poetry East, Indiana Review, Texas Review, Hunger Magazine, Florida Review, and Fourteen Hills. “Lost some money, as everyone has, to the legal trickery of the stock market – loathe money’s power to dominate our daily lives, as well as the ‘religion’ of evaluation.”

EMILY SINCLAIR lives in Denver, Colorado, and is currently at work on a novel. “I was fortunate to workshop ‘Crack’ with Amy Bloom, who helped me understand the possibilities the 3rd person point-of-view offers.”

MEGAN SNYDER-CAMP makes her home in Seattle, WA, and has poems in Antioch Review, LUNA, Smartish Pace, Agni, and on Verse Daily. “‘Bear Stories’” was written out of admiration for Wallace Stevens’ ‘13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.’”

PHILIP SORENSON is a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program. He currently resides in Chicago.

MARK SPITZER, Kirksville, Missouri, is a recovering narcissist, novelist, literary translator, and pesky environmentalist. See his website at www.sptzr.net. “The events in this poem sent the poet screaming back to graduate school and subsequently, the academic soft life.” 

ELIZABETH VOLPE, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a recently retired teacher, was a 2001 and 2004 Pushcart nominee and has been published in Lumina, Red Rock Review, Diner, and Rattle, among others. “This poem brings together the darkness of the time of year, a relationship at an impasse, and a literary moment: when for once the great Odysseus can make no impact on his environment and is at the mercy of horrifying and incomprehensible forces.”

TOMMY ZURHELLEN lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with his trusty dog, Sulu. He has published three stories in Crab Creek Review. “‘Love Stinks’ was inspired by my twelve years at a summer weight-loss camp, as both a camper and counselor. The story is dedicated to the memory of Carty Fox, who was my close friend there; he passed away last year.”

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