In mid-August, I was invited by C. M. Mayo, gifted author of
Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (Milkweed Editions) and
Sky Over El Nido (Univ. Georgia Press, Flannery O'Connor Award), to guest-blog on her blog, Madam Mayo. She is also the founding editor of
Tameme and editor of
Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press). Check out her Web page at
www.cmmayo.com and her blog at
Madam Mayo. Here's the post, starting with Catherine's introduction:
Guest-blogging today is New York poet and visual artist Christine Boyka Kluge, the author of Teaching Bones to Fly (2003) and Stirring the Mirror (2007), both from Bitter Oleander Press, and Domestic Weather (2004), which won the 2003 Uccelli Press Chapbook Contest. Other awards include winning the 2006 Hotel Amerika Poetry Contest and the 1999 Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award and receiving several Pushcart Prize nominations. Christine Boyka Kluge has "guest-blogged" for me back when I didn't even have this blog--- back when I was doing the "daily 5 minute writing exercises" (a kind of blog). Hers was definitely one of the most original. You can read it here (scroll down to October 22nd, "Falling Mirror").
Thanks for the lovely words, Catherine! These were my literary Web site suggestions for Madam Mayo's readers:
Since I love hybrid writing (prose poems, flash fiction, lyric essays, etc.), collaborations, and experimental work, I was delighted to discover the following Web sites. For summer entertainment and enlightenment, here are links to five extraordinary, inventive literary sites:
1. Born Magazine: Art and Literature Collaboration
They describe themselves as “an experimental venue marrying literary arts and interactive media.” The editors arrange collaborations between writers and artists, and the results are fascinating. Sometimes a musician gets into the mix. You’ll get lost in these creative masterpieces as you click your way through new little worlds.
2. The Diagram
How can you resist an electronic journal that claims to “value the insides of things, vivisection, urgency, risk, elegance, flamboyance…. Ruins and ghosts. Mechanical, moving parts, balloons, and frenzy.” The Diagram is chock full of odd diagrams and art, innovative poetry and prose, and everything in between.
3. Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts
From Virginia Commonwealth University, Blackbird is a feast of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art, interviews, streaming audio, and video. There is always something new to intrigue and educate the visitor. Try the “browse” button.
4. Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction
Double Room’s goal is “to explore the intersection of prose poetry and flash fiction.” You’ll find a wealth of topnotch hybrid writing here, as well as discussion of the forms. Contributors answer questions about prose poetry and flash fiction. Art, too!
5. Bound Off: A Monthly Literary Audio Magazine
Bound Off releases a new podcast of short stories (and short-short stories) every month. Pieces are read aloud by their authors or the editors. Some musical interludes as well. Fun listening!
As an antidote to this brilliant (but cold) spring sunlight, here's a small serving of poetic darkness. The editor of RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities asked to reprint "Arms of the Snake," a piece of mine that first appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. This is a poem that arrived unbidden, a duende-fueled surprise, even to me. Read on:
