Still Life With Watermelon and Peaches, by Margaretta Angelica Peale (USA) 1828
Letter From the Editor
And we’re off to the races! It’s hard to believe that for so long, The Mackinaw was just the seed of an idea, a dream- a peach pit. And now we are launching our second issue. What an incredible response we had to our first issue. Thank you so much to everyone who helped spread the word and get more readers on our writers.
How amazing that the very first issue of The Mackinaw was mentioned on the Best American Poetry blog! Denise Duhamel featured Cassandra Atherton and her poem, “Plum(b).” We’re so grateful to the site for the shout out, and to Cassandra for her brilliant poetry.
Read it here:
https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/01/wednesdays-with-denise-january-17-2024.html?fbclid=IwAR3uouFlGfM0tcgobZeqT9fNxc8H2dgEpfJUY8r97ToD9PuPlgzYdWsrb5U
The new issue is just as juicy. Start by biting into Dr. Norbert Hirschhorn’s essay “In Praise of the Prose Poem.” It’s a terrific overview and defence of this form we love so much.
We are thrilled to have Jeff Friedman featured again, this time in an interview about his new book, Ashes in Paradise, from Madhat Press. What an amazing conversation! “The prose poem is a chameleon; just when I think I know what it is, it changes shape and then changes shape again; it’s a flicker of gold on the mirror of a river, a thousand faces rising to the surface.”
Competition is already steep. It was extremely difficult to narrow down the wealth we were given in submissions to twelve poets featured in this issue. It is a stellar lineup and I know readers will be as astonished as I was by the range of voices and styles in the featured pieces. We love featuring a handful of works by each prose poet, so that you can spend some meaningful time with each writer, savouring.
It is difficult to even talk about prose poetry without mentioning Nin Andrews. Her voice is so essential to the story of prose poetry! Don’t miss these half a dozen jewels. We cannot wait for her upcoming book, Son of a Bird, a Memoir in Prose Poems.
I’m also an ardent admirer of Tina Barry’s tremendous imagination and way with words. I really enjoy sectioned prose poems and the way they can form a collage in words, and Barry is so adept at weaving different images together in ways that form an overarching story. In this issue, among other themes, she contemplates the small secrets that we believe go unseen, and how they might change us when they surface.
Amazing, too, to feature works by Gary Fincke! He is the co-editor for the Best Microfiction anthology series, along with Meg Pokrass (whose prose poems we featured in the first issue!) Fincke has won numerous awards for his writing. We are honoured to feature his beautiful new works here.
We are also excited to present a selection of prose poems by Michael C. Keith. It is rare indeed to read Keith in a literary journal. He usually saves his small stories and prose poems for his books, with 20 collections. Keith is known for writing astute, offbeat gems of prose poetry and fiction micros, but before that he wrote two dozen books on his academic specialty, electronic media. His was cited by President Bill Clinton. How wonderful that we can share his wry and witty pieces in this issue.
Our hope was that prose poets around the world would find us, so we could showcase diverse voices in this art form. In this issue, Julie Breathnach-Banwait takes us into Ireland with her words. She recently published a bilingual collection of prose poetry in Gaelic and English, Cnámha Scoilte/Split Bones. We also feature the intriguing voice of poet and scholar Saad Ali of Pakistan. Ali has contributed often to our sister publication, The Ekphrastic Review, and has also worked on translations into Urdu of this writer's ekphrases. He is known for his detailed and unusual prose poems inspired by visual art and filled with references and allusions to life and literature in both the east and the west.
Thank you to every writer here for so generously sharing your talents with the world, and to everyone reading them for listening to their voices.
Lorette C. Luzajic
