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Welcome to Facets! Since the publication of our last issue, we have heard from playwright Kevin Harvey and poet James Whitley about recognition of work originally published here. Harvey's "The French Impressionist Wrestler" (April 2003), by turns surprising, funny, and poignant, received a $5,000 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Whitley's chapbook, The Golden Web, featuring work first appearing here, was published earlier this year, and his collection, The Iron Door, just won the Ironweed Press Poetry Prize. We are thrilled to hear about their success. (Details can be found in "News About Facets Writers.")
Shelley Ettinger's stunning "Skydiver" (October 2001), about the people in the World Trade Center who leapt to their death after the terrorist attacks, was her first published poem. In this issue, she gives us another piece set in New York City with quite a different feeling.
Janet Buck's "Portobello Road" shows us a child's intimations of mortality at an antiques fair in a dense weave of distinctive imagery. Ward Kelley seeks the spiritual in dusty refractions in nature in "Waiting for the Light."
Susan Rawlins makes fresh and pointed use of the saying, "having your cake and eating it too," in "Three-Layer Robber Baron," one of four new poems. In one of Donna Spector's pieces, "The Course of Criticism," she wittily reflects on the difference it would have made if the Romantic poets had dealt with the birds she finds in her house instead of the nightingales and skylarks they praise in their poems. The relationship with a literary predecessor is likened to a troubled love affair in Rebecca Radner's remarkable "Now That I'm No Longer Channeling Rilke," one of five pieces by this new contributor. Other new contributors include Jeffrey Hantover ("Streets of Jakarta" and "Fragrance of Oranges") and Summer Lopez ("Beautiful Woman, Rome," "Village Women," and "A Dance with You").
In the fiction category, Robert Louis Bartlett's "Lincoln" tells the poignant story of a young girl freeing herself of festering remnants of racism she finds still alive and well in her middle-American town. Kitty Beer's prescient tale of environmental havoc and governmental breakdown, "Refuge," is a particularly timely warning, as we look around and see our world increasingly beset by deadly weather. It is also a story that probes into the complexity of human survival and the human heart.Finally, on the "Writers' Resources" page, we have our first advertisement from Toni Amato, whose work appeared in our inaugural issue in January 2001. Advertisers on this site will reach an international and growing audience of aspiring and established writers, teachers of literature and writing, as well as avid readers of literature. We look forward to advertising the small press, writing programs, conferences, workshops, and other offerings of interest to writers.
Thank you very much for visiting our site. In our next issue, Janet Buck's Gival Press Award-winning collection, Tickets for a Closing Play, will be reviewed. Please share the link with your friends and visit again for further previews of the next issue, scheduled to appear October 31st.
Anne Hudson and William Routhier
July 31, 2003
