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May/Summer 2013 Cover Image

Shine in that Vivid Isolation: A Case Study of the Ghazal in the Contemporary American Lyric

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Tyler Mills
"The poems of this anthology by and large remain true to the form's conventions, where the first couplet rhymes in an exact word repetition (aa) with itself and the second line of each couplet rhymes with this first couplet by repeating the exact same word: (Xa), and the a word becomes a kind of refrain."

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The Partial Glimpse: Perspective & Dynamic Plotting

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Catherine Brady
Every story stands as a kind of tantalizing biography too, in which the pressure of plot exposes the inner life of character in momentary, ambiguous ways: we are both tantalized by the partial glimpse and stymied by it.

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Audrey Niffenegger on Point of View—How to Choose and Use It: An Interview

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Liz Radford
With third person point of view, you have many more options. Sometimes you can be very close, sometimes farther away, and you don’t have to stick with a permanent vantage point.

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Halfway to Symbol—Andrew Hudgins on American Violence, His Newfound Love of Rhyme, & The Writing of Lasting Works: A Conversation

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Andrewy McFadyen-Ketchum
I am doing different things, working more with rhyme than I ever have before, even obsessively, and enjoying working with lusher language than I’ve indulged in before.

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Power of the Word—Foreign Influences

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Jessica Chace
Literature has the power to transport readers across cultures, and as many authors pointed out, the best books give readers a sense of place, even if they are not natives of that place.

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Teeming with Villains & Villainesses or Taking Sides

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Sarah Stone
Our contemporary aesthetic generally trains writers toward empathy, away from moral judgment; toward an immaculate surface of vivid detail, away from abstraction and interpretation; toward fairness to all characters, away from taking sides, in either personal or political matters.

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An Interview with Sue Wootton

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Usha Akella
Composition of my own poems usually involves extensive and time-consuming tinkering as I try to better express that elusive feeling or mood.

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Humanitarians at the Grate: The Writing Group at Graterford Maximum Security Prison

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Thomas E. Kennedy
Looking through the open door and gate, I see prisoners and guards milling around inside the mouth of a long, wide hallway dotted with metal detectors in front of other doors to the left and right.

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