Nine Poems

Nine Poems by Gavin Craig

"Nine Poems' minimalism isn't austere, but intimate and guarded, like fragments from a whispered, feverish conversation. Each poem withholds more than it gives. You read them as you would read a bruise hidden under a shirtsleeve, guessing that the discolored surface signals a story that's unlikely to be told. But there's also something bracing and reassuring about their silence, their insubstantiality; the signs of secrecy, a shared moment, a conspiracy."
—Timothy Carmody, author of The Bridge and the River

Poetry, 11 pp. Click here to download PDF.

Gavin Craig is a graduate student at Michigan State University, where he co-founded The Offbeat, and served as Editor from 1999–2001.

Pure Pop

Pure Pop by Tim Lane

"Pure Pop is just that—a little bit of Coke, a little bit of homage to the Pops of the New York School, and a lot of heart. Tim Lane's gracefully fluent lyrics are celebratory, immediate, full of feeling, and full of life. Without falling into sloppy sentimentality or clunky derivation, Lane conjures his own world while stealing fire from the masters."
—Lisa Jarnot, author of Black Dog Songs and Ring of Fire

Pure Pop delivers all of the delicious, unmitigated pleasure implied in its title. Tim Lane's poems, jubilant and experientially engaged, prove that joy too is serious stuff.

Poetry, 27 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Tim Lane lives, writes and paints in Lansing, Michigan.

The Bridge and the River

The Bridge and the River by Timothy Carmody

"In the years I have worked with Timothy Carmody I have been frequently amazed and occasionally annoyed by his habitual production of really outstanding work. If The Bridge and the River sometimes betrays its influences—Charles Simic, James Baldwin, Frank O'Hara—it must be conceded that the poet's choices are admirable, and the raw materials are always his own. These are early poems, and in them Mr. Carmody experiments with imagery, narrative, and voice, but his experiments are never simply academic, and the results are both sophisticated and affecting. Place matters. Memory persists. The pleasures of the world, slow and hard-won, are worth savoring. The same can be said of this collection."
—Gavin Craig, editor of Offbeat/1

From Detroit and Chicago to Harlem to Dublin, The Bridge and the River gives us a poetry as notable for its geographic exploration as its literary ambition. While Timothy Carmody's poems create new landscapes of the temporal, linguistic, and structural, it is, in the end, Carmody's empathy that makes his writing so powerful.

Poetry, 25 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Timothy Carmody was born in Detroit, Michigan. He currently lives with his family in Philadelphia, where he studies Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Letters to My Sister

Letters to My Sister by Angela Vasquez-Giroux

Composed as a series of letters to a family member serving in Iraq, Angela Vasquez-Giroux's first poetry chapbook is a vivid evocation of the fear, displacement, and uncertainty that war imposes on those who are left behind. Through images of fragmentation and fragility—misreadings of scripture, partial glimpses of a loved one in a news report—Letters to My Sister speaks of the challenges of survival, both for those in the field and at home.

Poetry, 15 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Angela Vasquez-Giroux is a textbook middle child. Her fascination with words began at age three, when her mother taught her to say extraordinary. She lives in Lansing with her partner and daughter.

The Nijinsky Poems

The Nijinsky Poems by Meg Sparling

In The Nijinsky Poems, Meg Sparling has crafted a sensitive and insightful revisiting of the life of one of the 20th Century's greatest artists. Combining the biographical with the lyrical, Sparling's writing embodies the power and contingency of the dancer. The Nijinsky Poems is a haunting tribute to a delicate and beautiful man, and a nimble, unerring performance of its own.

The artist in light

Nijinsky stands in a room of glass—
the laughter of light around him.
Color is absent here,
but makes its absence known.
(In this room his mind is crazed with color.)
Three chairs line the far wall—
the middle facing opposite the others.
His daughter sits in this chair,
swatting playfully at nothing.
"Papa, a bee, Papa," she shrieks.
Her sound is a fragile surface here.
Silent Nijinsky stands in the light,
clothed in gravity’s love.

Poetry, 19 pp. Click here to download PDF in new window.

Meg Sparling grew up in a small town in northern Michigan. She attended Michigan State University, where she was general editor of Red Cedar Review. She has been writing stories since the first grade; in third grade she plagarized a story about dragons from her teacher, but she promises that everything written since has been completely original. She lives in New York City.

Also by Meg Sparling: "On a recent rainy Wednesday"