Contributor News: Stephen Mead
Stephen Mead’s new book of art and poetry, “Our Book of Common Faith,” is now available from Amazon.com.
Mead says, “The book is an exploration of world cultures/religions (including atheism as a form of belief) as an impetus for union as opposed to violence. (That is, if human beings would just stop to think and reflect a bit.)”
See Mead’s art on Fickle Muses:
“Circus Cave Drawing”
“Tree Dream Encaustic”
“Ode to Vulcan”
Best of FM 2009?
It’s that time again, when Leslie and I will be going back over the past year’s poetry & fiction to select our nominees for online & small press awards. Which are your 2009 favorites so far?
Originally posted April 13, 2008
On June 29, FM contributor Margarita Engle will receive the Pura Belpre Medal for “The Poet Slave of Cuba” at the American Library Association conference in Anaheim. On June 30, she will be one of the poets at that conference in the Poetry Blast, reading from both “The Poet Slave of Cuba” and “The Surrender Tree,” both published by Henry Holt & Co
Originally posted February 4, 2007
Here’s a good book of poems to check out:
“Friday and the Year that Followed” by Juan Morales
It’s not strictly mythical, but does have some mythic elements. My favorites are the poems tracing Juan’s family stories – like his mother’s family’s experience of living through the 1949 earthquake in Ecuador and his father’s war stories.
Get more info and order from Bedbug Press.
Read an interview with Juan Morales in Mirage Magazine
– Sari
Originally published January 26, 2007
When I was mulling over what to call this myth magazine a couple years ago, my search was centered around one question: What kind of name would express mythic arts without also expressing a limitation to one mythic tradition?
This led to a series of ridiculously long, dull titles (“Journal of Poetry and Fiction on Myth and Legend,” among the worst). For a while I was stumped, until one day “Fickle Muses” popped into my head. Of course, it completely violates the second condition of the question, coming as it does from the Greek/Roman traditions. But as modern myth has made the muses more the gods of art than of ancient Greece, I thought I could get away with it.
At first, I just thought Fickle Muses sounded neat, but since then I’ve given the title more thought. Aside from the obvious association for artists, the term has an interesting relevance to mythic arts. Even the ancient texts within themselves are full of contradictions, and every generation has new twists to contribute to the old tales – religiously sanctioned or not. The resulting quagmire transforms victims to heroes, tyrannical regimes to prophesied saviors, gods to demons.
Perhaps the muses are presenting us with paths as diverse as the people who follow them. Then again, maybe they’re just messing with us.
– Sari
Originally published January 21, 2007
When I write with biblical myth, I usually prefer to focus on brief asides, events and characters mentioned almost in passing – it leaves more room for invention.
I read one such poem in Albuquerque a few years ago:
Birth of Dan: Bilhah’s Story
“Consort with Bilhah, that she may bear
on my knees and that through her
I too may have children.”
– Rachel to Jacob, Genesis 30.3
Breath. Rachel’s breasts holding
my back, her legs close
around mine. Long, slow pulls
of air. Single syllables escape
my lips while my belly stretches to release
Rachel’s son. We move together
closer than sex. The pain isn’t one
I can find words for. It is not like spasm,
not like a blow. It is not like.
What I can tell is Rachel’s hands
gripping my elbows. She loved me first,
so I followed her, and bear her child
far from home in this land Jacob calls
promised. She loves me still, though she
was bartered to Jacob and barters
for him. What is he? Only seed.
Rachel is wind. I know her.
She may betray me
easy as her husband. Now we rake
together, fierce as entropy.
First published in The American Poetry Journal
I later learned that one member of the audience had responded to the poem by saying that she didn’t think the poet knew how irreverent the poem was. It was an interesting comment – not because she thought the poem irreverent, but because she saw something else in it that made her question whether the irreverence was intentional.
Since childhood, the fallibility of biblical heroes has been a strong part of their appeal to me – Moses throwing temper tantrums, Jacob tricking his family out of their property and blessings. If our highest role models can be so indecent and undignified, I thought, surely I can be pious without being perfect?
My sense of piety is a far cry from the view that to be pious is to follow the letter of religious law. But there is a kind of delight in knowing that faith can speak to faith, even for those who find it in an utterly different form.
– Sari
introducing…
Originally posted January 7, 2007
I first had the idea for Fickle Muses about a year and a half ago. I wanted to start a literary journal, but given the abundance of general literary zines, I wanted to fill a niche specific to my interests – thence the emphasis on myth.
I love both writing with myth and reading others’ creations. Some of my favorite writers in the genre are Mary Renault and J.R.R. Tolkien in fiction and Louise Glück and Anne Carson in poetry.
When I launched Fickle Muses, I hadn’t heard of any other journals focused on mythic creative writing. Since then I’ve come across the Journal for Mythic Arts. However, as they take submissions by solicitation only, I hope we serve sufficiently distinct purposes.
Though I began Fickle Muses as a matter of personal interest, I think mythic poetry and fiction can serve broader social purposes as well.
Living in the U.S.A., I’ve seen a narrowing in conceptions of religion over the last couple of decades. While the country remains religiously diverse, it is increasingly viewed as a Christian nation. Moreover, the popular conception of what it means to be religious has narrowed, emphasizing judgment over compassion.
While Fickle Muses is not a religious journal, in re-examining myths – stories born from religious traditions – in contemporary contexts, we explore how those traditions shape the world we live in.
I hope that Fickle Muses will give a sense of the plurality of traditions shaping the modern world and the complexities within each tradition. And, of course, share some funny, titillating, gut-wrenching, entertaining stories.
– Sari
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.