1. I learned almost simultaneously about Burnside Review through the link to poetry journals Professor Pimentel-Chacón sent us and through some fairly random research I was doing on poetry contests. Matthew Dickman’s name came up as a judge in an upcoming chapbook contest, so I decided to check out the journal.
2. I don’t feel well placed to comment on the respectable nature of the journal, but I was attracted to the mix of familiar and unfamiliar names in the table of contents. While it appears to be open to new writers (at least writers I’m unfamiliar with), it also attracts many established writers. To name a few: T.E. Ballard, Ray Gonzalez, Michael Dickman, Rob Carney, Alan Shapiro and Kate Nuernberger.
3. The aesthetic arc: The journal does not have a mission statement or aesthetic statement on its website. They suggest poets read the journal or at the very least the poems that are available to read on the website. It is predominantly a journal of freeverse, though I did come across a sestina. Fiction is also published in the journal, but they do not accept unsolicited submissions for that. (Get an agent or wait for an invitation!)
If you look at the selection of poems I’ve included below, I think it’s fair to say that the editors go for poems with arresting images and descriptive details. Although it’s not clear from my selection, from all the poems I read, there seems to be a bias for poems of about 20-30 lines (a page, roughly) and of single stanza pieces. The poems I’ve included below show more of the variety they publish. They also publish translations but there is nothing about their preferences on the website.
4. A selection of poems from Burnside Review:
A PIGEON SEEKING YOUR PROTECTION
by Marlys West
Seriously, j’adore the French; their early automaton
built in 1738 by Jacques de Vaucanson, a duck able
to eat and digest grain, flap wings, excrete. Jacques,
Jacques, I, too, have wished for company. When
you wake up and the doves coo, you have yourself
to thank. Her hair is three distinct colors and held
in place by wax. She is asking her friend a question
about fashion; both too skinny, wearing all black.
These girls, L’Americains. I love them, too. We
are a little bit common, it’s true; skinny and pale;
Long Island Ducks, Rock Doves. Big triangular
head of the Belted Kingfisher vs. the fat ass of a
California Quail. Urban but really more suburban,
I don’t speak Pennsylvannia Dutch. A rural people,
the Amish skill in farming is exemplary. The rest
of us? What the fuck? Good at shopping? Good
at yapping on the phone? Good at people-watching
in the coffee shop and never going home? If only
I could sew or cook. If only I did something worth-
while. At least birds do not submit; they fly off like
pretty, young girls who inherit money but haven’t
married yet. They look at us and scoff. You who
budget for your second cars. The truth is cocaine
is fun. Everyone knows it. Press your hair between
the hot, metal plates of a flat iron. I mean before
you go out. I mean to look good. Why feed birds?
Buy seed? Because look! It eats! From my hand!
Now they will dig up Houdini; a dark day, my friends.
Was he not a bird? Nimble and light? El milk dove?
Crows fall from the sky looking like the working
end of small, black brooms. Each penny its pocket,
they say. Each minute its clock. I’ve seen desperate
men drinking eau de cologne, aftershave. Take them
under your wing, the criminals, fools. Once in a hotel
they followed a trail of red petals to the tub and there
she was, resplendent in grayish feather, head bobbing
up and back, white breast bared and love call crackling
though the damp. He sings it now; kack-kack-kack-kack.
---------
FORK
by Larissa Szporluk
Today I found an egg
and broke it open.
It’s trailing me now,
the cartoon of a bird,
its oversized eyes and fetal curl.
It isn’t love if it’s banging away.
It isn’t love if it’s incendiary.
It isn’t love if it leaves traces.
Today I am a giant ignoramus,
the stopped flight
of a warbler’s life
in the palm of a hand I can’t explain.
What loves loves to ravish.
What is loved loses consciousness.
There’s love in the fiery river.
There’s love in the furious house.
I did without thinking.
I did it like a mortal.
I took the left-hand road
and now I’m out of lightning
and the ear has fewer notes
and I wonder when they’ll figure out
I murder when I’m normal.
-------
5/28
Noel and Tarisai come to my house
after basketball. They have an idea
how to earn school fees that they’d like to discuss.
Please sit, I say. No, we should walk to where
we can make US Dollars. They tell
me to bring my camera. We go for a walk
through the woods. Noel has a plastic ball
and we play pass, pick wild fruits, talk
in Shonglish, share jokes. We stop at a cave
and they ask if I’ll take a photo of
them. Is this how you’ll make money, I say.
Of course not, says Tarisai, zviri fun
chete. I take a few and we continue
on our way. Noel has questions about
America. I want to know is it true
that every one has a water spout
and that they eat dogs in China. He throws
a rock at a tree. A bird flies away. This
is it, Tarisai says. We wanted to show
you this. He points at a young, naked
boy – dirty and covered with flies. Come, take
a photo of this one, he says. Send it
to USA. Tell them to send money – save
a poor, dirty boy’s life. They are having fits
of laughter, slapping each other five.
Send them my name, says Tarisai. No, wait,
first let us go and gather some more flies.
I take a picture of them laughing. Take
one of this half-built hut. Show them how poor
we are. Let’s go, I say. We walk to Noel’s
house and have sadza with his grandmother.
His aunt gives me roasted corn and boiled
groundnuts.
Ben Berman
--------
pour another round for the fiddle player
she's the best I've ever heard.
One of her hands is a sparrow in the house
and the other's a bad-ass cat,
and the flying feathers are her music,
and her music is a zigzag flight--in one ear
and out the other, in my mouth
and out again; it's an open smile right now.
It's a damn good reason for teeth.
She's up there, kicking, in her cowgirl boots
and quick with her bow as a ricochet
off the banjo, bass line, drums, and lead guitar.
She makes me lie down in green pastures,
makes me sidearm the moon like a boomerang,
makes the Moose of Tomorrow
come down out of Canada
and set a rack of antlers on my head.
She makes me lie down in green pastures,
stuff dirt clods in my pockets,
dirt I'll carry home to sift around my plants.
They'll grow to the ceiling like the tune she's playing,
tall enough for a bird to nest in.
I'll call it the Bird of Tomorrow.
And hope it's got half the voice
she keeps finding in those strings.
Rob Carney
---------
EATING HIGH SCHOOL
by Dennis Caswell
There’s nothing like the sound
of cheerleaders on a hot griddle,
though you do have to keep them
covered until they quit kicking,
or there’ll be grease everywhere,
and that fishy smell can linger for days.
Before you coat the football team in beer batter,
arrange them on a flat surface,
leave them alone for an hour,
and they’ll tenderize each other.
Any remaining pretty and popular girls
should be boned and ground to pink paste,
the paste pressed into a brick,
and their boyfriends inserted, supine and whole.
Then thinly slice, for a piquant pimento loaf.
And what do you do with the left-over bushels
of faceless pupils and faculty,
abundant as summer zucchini?
You can’t even give them away,
so you shred them and bake them
in breads and casseroles.
If you add enough butter or cheese,
you can make anything go down.
--------
Puke
by Norman Dubie
John Law is eating hot purple beets
in the poor house
in a dark corner of Alsace-Lorraine
where the lamps weaken
while he suffers a vision of complexity,
of paper money falling
upon rats
swimming in the long canal
of next winter’s early rains.
John Law is a membrane
of least fact—the idea of paper money
is Chinese, just
as animal crackers are Sumerian and puke
to most dogs
is a late least fact of appetite
all over again—
it is strange
that the financing of the American Revolution
and John Law’s printing machines
led to the bankruptcy
of the entire French nation
and hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of headless aristocrats
as if money were a kind of contingency
like rain.
5. Submission information (from the website):
“Submissions for issue 6.1, due out April 2010, are now closed. After the release of the issue we will be announcing a theme for issue 7.1.
Please read through our guidelines before submitting.
Burnside Review Please send 3 to 5 poems and a brief bio. Poems and bio should be sent as single attachment (this means everything as a single file). Word documents or Rich Text Files are the only acceptable format for attachment (no PDF’s and DO NOT paste poems into the body of your e-mail). The subject line of the e-mail should read: Poetry Submission-Your Last Name (i.e.: Poetry Submission-Miller).
Send them to: submissions@burnsidereview.org
Average response time is 2-4 months.
Simultaneous submissions are fine. No previously published work.
Please note that we do not accept unsolicited fiction submissions.
Payment comes in the form of one contributor’s copy. Burnside Review assumes the right to publish poems on their website as well as in the physical issue. All rights revert back to the author after printing.
We suggest reading a copy of the issue before submitting. At the very least you should read the poems here on the website, to see the kind of work we’ve published in the past.”
6. Pertinent deadlines:
There seems to be no deadline for submissions, though a notice on the website notes that submissions for the upcoming issue (April 2010) is closed.
The 6th Annual Burnside Review Poetry Chapbook Competition is accepting manuscripts from 15 March to 30 June 2010. (Please see the website for guidelines.)
7. Contact information:
submissions@burnsidereview.org
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