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Keep watching our new site for updates from Volume IX of COMPASS ROSE, available Spring 2009.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize Winner Announced
Patricia Savage has been selected as the 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize winner by judge Ilya Kaminsky.
The following were finalists for the prize:
M. Lee Alexander, “Lane Bryant, 6 pm” and “The Foreclosure”
Evan Ernst, “Superman”
Claire Keyes, “Dulcinea”
Michelle Maher, “Early Summer”
Penelope Scambly Schott, “How to survive a fall through the ice” and “Fugitive Memory”
Nina Soifer, “In Julia Child’s Backyard”
Jean Tupper, “Eventually He Was Missing”
Roberta Visser, “Lines Written after Watching Kaddish: Music of Remembrance and Hope”
Matthew Williams, “i beg for rationalization”
The 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:
Rewards
Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have considered heaven
All of us, hanging out,
No worries, time on our hands,
No clock to punch,
No kids to get through calculus and college,
No one falling into my arms,
Exhausted at day’s end.
No more longing simmering
Like a pot of tomatoes
On the back burner of my soul.
I have considered this life,
When I don’t back away from choice
Or stop loosing myself on a blank page
Or in the woods behind my house.
I keep risking all I have to love better,
To see things with new heart,
Staying with my breath, constant and steady.
I have not given up on wanting more
Out of nearly every day.
When I am done, I want to be all used up.
I want to be tossed in the air, scattered everywhere.
Dust,
Imperceptible but part of the
Huge space we call empty.
The following were finalists for the prize:
M. Lee Alexander, “Lane Bryant, 6 pm” and “The Foreclosure”
Evan Ernst, “Superman”
Claire Keyes, “Dulcinea”
Michelle Maher, “Early Summer”
Penelope Scambly Schott, “How to survive a fall through the ice” and “Fugitive Memory”
Nina Soifer, “In Julia Child’s Backyard”
Jean Tupper, “Eventually He Was Missing”
Roberta Visser, “Lines Written after Watching Kaddish: Music of Remembrance and Hope”
Matthew Williams, “i beg for rationalization”
The 2008-2009 Parnell Poetry Prize-Winning Poem:
Rewards
Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have considered heaven
All of us, hanging out,
No worries, time on our hands,
No clock to punch,
No kids to get through calculus and college,
No one falling into my arms,
Exhausted at day’s end.
No more longing simmering
Like a pot of tomatoes
On the back burner of my soul.
I have considered this life,
When I don’t back away from choice
Or stop loosing myself on a blank page
Or in the woods behind my house.
I keep risking all I have to love better,
To see things with new heart,
Staying with my breath, constant and steady.
I have not given up on wanting more
Out of nearly every day.
When I am done, I want to be all used up.
I want to be tossed in the air, scattered everywhere.
Dust,
Imperceptible but part of the
Huge space we call empty.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Ilya Kaminsky to Judge Parnell Poetry Contest
COMPASS ROSE is pleased to announce poet Ilya Kaminsky will judge the sixth annual Pat Parnell Poetry Contest. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine.
In addition, Ilya writes poetry in Russian. His work in that language was chosen for "Bunker Poetico" at Venice Bienial Festival in Italy. In late 1990s, he co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization which sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad with a goal of supporting such relief organizations as Doctors Without Borders and Survivors International. To learn more about Kaminsky, please visit his website at ilyakaminsky.com.
Contest Guidelines
Please submit no more than five (5) poems between August 1 and November 15, 2008. The contest fee is $5 for each poem ($10 for two poems, $15 for three poems and so on). Please do not put any personal information on the poems themselves; instead enclose a cover letter with your name, titles of your work, and contact information. All entries are read blind. Poems that include personal information will not be read and fees will not be refunded. Make checks payable to COMPASS ROSE.
Please send all submissions via postal mail to:
Pat Parnell Poetry Contest
c/o Prof. Jenn Monroe
Chester College of New England
40 Chester Street
Chester, NH 03036
We will not accept email submissions, but are happy to answer questions that way. Contact us at compass.rose@chestercollege.edu.
In addition, Ilya writes poetry in Russian. His work in that language was chosen for "Bunker Poetico" at Venice Bienial Festival in Italy. In late 1990s, he co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization which sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad with a goal of supporting such relief organizations as Doctors Without Borders and Survivors International. To learn more about Kaminsky, please visit his website at ilyakaminsky.com.
Contest Guidelines
Please submit no more than five (5) poems between August 1 and November 15, 2008. The contest fee is $5 for each poem ($10 for two poems, $15 for three poems and so on). Please do not put any personal information on the poems themselves; instead enclose a cover letter with your name, titles of your work, and contact information. All entries are read blind. Poems that include personal information will not be read and fees will not be refunded. Make checks payable to COMPASS ROSE.
Please send all submissions via postal mail to:
Pat Parnell Poetry Contest
c/o Prof. Jenn Monroe
Chester College of New England
40 Chester Street
Chester, NH 03036
We will not accept email submissions, but are happy to answer questions that way. Contact us at compass.rose@chestercollege.edu.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Julius James DeAngelus
Lancaster Best
Julius James DeAngelus
I read once that more than seeing, hearing, touching or tasting, our sense of smell offers us the most direct route to our past. Therefore, I hope it doesn’t sound so strange to you that whenever the scent of sharp provolone cheese reaches me, with its rich, musty, locked-away-and-forgotten aroma, I am eighteen again and madly in love. more
Julius James DeAngelus
I read once that more than seeing, hearing, touching or tasting, our sense of smell offers us the most direct route to our past. Therefore, I hope it doesn’t sound so strange to you that whenever the scent of sharp provolone cheese reaches me, with its rich, musty, locked-away-and-forgotten aroma, I am eighteen again and madly in love. more
Friday, May 9, 2008
Lauren Scharhag and Ashley Cowger
West Side Girl
Lauren Scharhag
I wear my skin like some reject from the Tribes of Ham,
Pale and transparent as skim milk. I can never go home.
My father imparted to me like a curse:
“You’re just like your mother. You’ll never
Be able to live more than thirty miles from the West Side.”
And I think, Of course. He’s right.
He’s always right when I don’t want him to be.
And I wonder if it’s this curse, his curse,
Which also gifts him to be able to see into me,
And I to endure the pain of being seen. After all, my skin is his skin.
Ah, Marìa, Marìa, Marìa-- las très,
Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother,
And I am the break in the rosary beads.
I think of the placenta from my grandmother’s birth buried on the hill,
The hill, which I can never go back to.
Instead, I toe the thirty-mile mark.
“¡Bolilla!” They say. “¡Gringa!”
At nine, I saw myself as naked as Eve,
And hurried to cover up my whiteness.
Now I go, bearing my flesh like shame,
And the neighbors ask who the white girl is who comes and visits.
Someday, I will take a grater to my skin.
I shall cast it off. Flayed, I shall anoint myself with cuminos and cilantro.
In blood I shall make my pilgrimage.
On the Boulevard, I shall hail, Marìa.
Peter Never Came
Ashley Cowger
I was sitting on the edge of the counter, my feet dipping recklessly into the dirty sink, and he was sitting on the side of the bathtub, compulsively rubbing the soap grime along the rim with his thumb.
“I used to believe in Peter Pan,” I told him, leaning the side of my head against the bathroom mirror and closing my eyes. more
Lauren Scharhag
I wear my skin like some reject from the Tribes of Ham,
Pale and transparent as skim milk. I can never go home.
My father imparted to me like a curse:
“You’re just like your mother. You’ll never
Be able to live more than thirty miles from the West Side.”
And I think, Of course. He’s right.
He’s always right when I don’t want him to be.
And I wonder if it’s this curse, his curse,
Which also gifts him to be able to see into me,
And I to endure the pain of being seen. After all, my skin is his skin.
Ah, Marìa, Marìa, Marìa-- las très,
Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother,
And I am the break in the rosary beads.
I think of the placenta from my grandmother’s birth buried on the hill,
The hill, which I can never go back to.
Instead, I toe the thirty-mile mark.
“¡Bolilla!” They say. “¡Gringa!”
At nine, I saw myself as naked as Eve,
And hurried to cover up my whiteness.
Now I go, bearing my flesh like shame,
And the neighbors ask who the white girl is who comes and visits.
Someday, I will take a grater to my skin.
I shall cast it off. Flayed, I shall anoint myself with cuminos and cilantro.
In blood I shall make my pilgrimage.
On the Boulevard, I shall hail, Marìa.
Peter Never Came
Ashley Cowger
I was sitting on the edge of the counter, my feet dipping recklessly into the dirty sink, and he was sitting on the side of the bathtub, compulsively rubbing the soap grime along the rim with his thumb.
“I used to believe in Peter Pan,” I told him, leaning the side of my head against the bathroom mirror and closing my eyes. more
Friday, May 2, 2008
Jessica Silver and Yvonne Garrett
Bella
Jessica Silver
My sister if I had one
Would dress in red
Would star in porn films and lie about her day job
My sister if I had one
Would start bar fights
With beautiful girls
Walking away with rage in her eyes
My sister if I had one
Would dance alone in the bathroom
While I waited to shower
She would breathe alcohol
Swearing she was an addict
Promise to be there
But forget where there was
Break mirrors
Daring bad luck
She would chain smoke to the edge of dreams
Setting her bed on fire
She would wake from her inferno
Sneaking into my room
Mumble she was there just for the night
Like A River
Yvonne Garrett
Built in 1908 on a hill overlooking the mouth of the Columbia, the house stands huge against the sky with multiple rooflines, projecting bays, balconies, a widow’s walk and a two-story tower. Its dark peaked roof and chimneys are creeper-twined with open overhanging eaves. more
Jessica Silver
My sister if I had one
Would dress in red
Would star in porn films and lie about her day job
My sister if I had one
Would start bar fights
With beautiful girls
Walking away with rage in her eyes
My sister if I had one
Would dance alone in the bathroom
While I waited to shower
She would breathe alcohol
Swearing she was an addict
Promise to be there
But forget where there was
Break mirrors
Daring bad luck
She would chain smoke to the edge of dreams
Setting her bed on fire
She would wake from her inferno
Sneaking into my room
Mumble she was there just for the night
Like A River
Yvonne Garrett
Built in 1908 on a hill overlooking the mouth of the Columbia, the house stands huge against the sky with multiple rooflines, projecting bays, balconies, a widow’s walk and a two-story tower. Its dark peaked roof and chimneys are creeper-twined with open overhanging eaves. more
Friday, April 25, 2008
Joanne Lowery and Marie Stern
Muse Weeping
Joanne Lowery
What she provokes could flood Babylon
or rot the foundations of Alexandria.
Here in America, suburbs stay high and dry.
Our poets walk city streets inspired
by soot and taxi horns, the staccato
of fast walkers passing them by.
Anyone waiting at a crosswalk
needs a handkerchief for staunching.
She looks up, remembers the 41st floor
where she pushed a lover out the window.
For the seconds it took him to land
she felt his fear and weightlessness.
Her tears lubricate the description
of that head-over-heels plunge.
On the sidewalk is a puddle of her undoing.
The Dying Sounds
Marie Stern
The light from the TV made Jason’s face look biliously gray, anemic. “I didn’t think you could get through the biological clock anymore. There just aren’t those kind of loopholes. That’s gotta be faked. There’s no way.” more
Joanne Lowery
What she provokes could flood Babylon
or rot the foundations of Alexandria.
Here in America, suburbs stay high and dry.
Our poets walk city streets inspired
by soot and taxi horns, the staccato
of fast walkers passing them by.
Anyone waiting at a crosswalk
needs a handkerchief for staunching.
She looks up, remembers the 41st floor
where she pushed a lover out the window.
For the seconds it took him to land
she felt his fear and weightlessness.
Her tears lubricate the description
of that head-over-heels plunge.
On the sidewalk is a puddle of her undoing.
The Dying Sounds
Marie Stern
The light from the TV made Jason’s face look biliously gray, anemic. “I didn’t think you could get through the biological clock anymore. There just aren’t those kind of loopholes. That’s gotta be faked. There’s no way.” more
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