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Archive for September, 2010

Hint Fiction

Posted in authors, publications on September 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I rub shoulders with greatness in Robert Swartwood’s forthcoming anthology of Hint Fiction.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:
A story collection that proves less is more. The stories in this collection run the gamut from playful to tragic, conservative to experimental, but they all have one thing in common: they are no more than 25 words long. Robert Swartwood was inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s possibly apocryphal six-word story—”For Sale: baby shoes, never worn”—to foster the writing of these incredibly short-short stories. He termed them “hint fiction” because the few chosen words suggest a larger, more complex chain of events. Spare and evocative, these stories prove that a brilliantly honed narrative can be as startling and powerful as a story of traditional length. The 125 gemlike stories in this collection come from such best-selling and award-winning authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Peter Straub, and James Frey, as well as emerging writers.

(I’m one of those “emerging” writers.)

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Terribly Clever Double Dactyl

Posted in authors, Martyrs Mirror, publications on September 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Because I don’t have enough else to do, and to break my ten-year poetry-writing block, I’m auditing a poetry course this semester with the inimitable Michael Ann Courtney. She has us playing with all sorts of forms. Last week, one of the (many) assignments was a “terribly clever double dactyl.”

Besides constraints of rhyme and meter, the doubt dactyl requires an opening line of repetitive nonsense and a second line that consists of someone’s name. One of the lines in the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. The whole thing should have some snooty literary or philosophical allusions.

Mine, naturally, dealt with the Martyrs Mirror.

I’ll publish it here, since it certainly doesn’t deserve a broader audience.

    Toothsomely, gruesomely

    Thieleman J. van Braght

    drafted his indices:

    martyr parades.

    Gougings on drownings on

    tongue screws on flames for their

    Mennohistorical

    last escapades.

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