David Lehman

Maryann Corbett

Alexander Pepple

Stephen Kampa

Wendy Videlock

Rachel Hadas

Ned Balbo

Annie Shepherd

David M. Katz

This is the annual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2023/2024 issue, Number 31. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). Includes the winning stories and poems from the 2023 Able Muse contest (Able Muse Write Prize) winners and finalists. ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry."-Dana Gioia. "Able Muse is refreshing to read for its selection of poetry that adheres to form . . . a quality magazine offering the reader informed and unexpected views on life."-NewPages. CONTENTS: WITH THE 2023 ABLE MUSE WRITE PRIZE FOR POETRY & FICTION - Includes the winning story and poems from the contest winners and finalists EDITORIAL - Alexander Pepple FEATURED ART - An Active Family Theme FEATURED POET - Ned Balbo; (Interviewed by Stephen Kampa) FICTION: W Goodwin, Annie Shepherd ESSAYS: Dylan Night, Roy Isen, Jean Rover BOOK REVIEWS: Brooke Clark, Maryann Corbett, Reagan Upshaw POETRY: Hilary Biehl, E. Hume Covey, Malcolm Farley, Kelly Scott Franklin, Rachel Hadas, David M. Katz, Jennifer Keith, David Lehman, Forester McClatchey, Jane McKinley, Susan McLean, Matthew Buckley Smith, Maura Stanton, N. S. Thompson, Christopher R. Vaughan, Wendy Videlock

a review of poetry, prose & art

Able Muse, Winter 2023/24 (No. 31 - print edition)

Stephen Kampa’s poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. The poems also revel in the prosodic possibilities of English’s high and low registers: a twenty–one line homage to Lord Byron that turns on three rhymes (one of which is “eisegesis”); a sestina whose end words include “sentimental,” “Marseilles,” and “Martian;” sapphics on the death of Ray Charles; and intricately modulated stanzas on the 1931 Spanish–language movie version of Dracula. Despite the metaphysical seriousness, there is always an undercurrent of stylistic levity — a panoply of puns, comic rhymes, and loving misquotations of canonical literature — that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.

Poems

Cracks in the Invisible

This is the annual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2020/2021 issue, Number 28. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). Includes the winning stories and poems from the 2020 Able Muse contest (Able Muse Write Prize) winners and finalists. ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry."-Dana Gioia. "Able Muse is refreshing to read for its selection of poetry that adheres to form . . . a quality magazine offering the reader informed and unexpected views on life."-NewPages. CONTENTS: WITH THE 2020 ABLE MUSE WRITE PRIZE FOR POETRY & FICTION - Includes the winning story and poems from the contest winners and finalists EDITORIAL - Alexander Pepple FEATURED ART - An Exotic Theme INTERNATIONAL FICTION SPECIAL FEATURE - L.M. Brown, John McLennon, Nageen Rather, Guadalupe Sexto, Treena Thibodeau ESSAYS - N.S. Thompson, Christopher Rivas BOOK REVIEWS - Travis Biddick, Luke Hathaway, Matthew Buckley Smith POETRY - John Beaton, Bruce Bennett, Catharine Savage Brosman, Dan Campion, Richard Cecil, J.P. Celia, Terese Coe, Barbara Lydecker Crane, Anna M. Evans, David Galef, S.R. Graham, Julia Griffin, Elise Hempel, Vera Ignatowitsch, George Kalogeris, Garret Keizer, Quincy R. Lehr, Amit Majmudar, Eileen Malone, Tim McGrath, Susan McLean, Estill Pollock, Anne Delana Reeves, Rainer Maria Rilke, J.C. Scharl, David Southward, Wendy Videlock, Marly Youmans

Able Muse, Winter 2020/21 (No. 28 - print edition)

Stephen Kampa

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