Authors Electric

Writers sometimes talk about poems as though longer automatically means deeper. We admire ambitious epics, book-length projects, and intricate sequences. There is certainly a place for all of those things. But every now and then a tiny poem arrives and quietly reminds us that a few words can carry an astonishing amount of weight. Take this poem, "Second Grade," by Merilee Johnson: That's it. Three lines. Eight words. And yet, the poem opens an entire world. I immediately find myself wondering about the child in the poem. Was she shy? Outgoing? Did she look forward to hearing her name each morning? Was the bus driver teasing, greeting, or celebrating her? Was it a song repeated every day, becoming part of the rhythm of childhood? The poem never tells us. Instead, it trusts us. One of the remarkable things about very short poems is how much they rely on the reader. Longer works often have room to explain, develop, and elaborate. A poem like this succeeds because it provides...

  This is an essay about the United Sates election. The topic of this essay is the grip of grievance, and what it is doing to our country and what it can do in our lives. So I want to present my essay  interspersed  with some art (some written, some visual) to maybe give you a bit of energy to keep going and striving, or to maybe unlock the death grip grievance has on your heart. So here are a few wonderful poems, and some of the USA's more beautiful monuments, and my thoughts on the election of grievance. The United States has just had an almost 50-50 split on the concept of what our country is, of what our country should be, but, more than that, of  who  our country should be. America, before the Europeans got here and began the great experiment of a country of the people by the people and for the people, probably was primarily native Americans and people from what is today Mexico, and parts south. Europeans (including Spain in that) forcibly brought more peop...

Hi lovely   AE   readers, Dianne here. I run the publishing company Current Words Publishing, which is partner publishing company. In addition to doing partner publishing my company also founded and supports Old Scratch Press (OSP), a poetry/short form collective. In 2025 OSP and its members are going to open up more opportunities for people not in the collective to have a chance to have their work in poetry or short form published. Currently there are opportunities remaining this year through Current Words Publishing’s literary magazine INSTANT NOODLES . Recently Morgan Golladay, an author I have worked with many times, has recently won a few awards for both her fiction and her poetry,  and through OSP has just published her first book, THE SONG OF NORTH MOUNTAIN which she both wrote and illustrated.  I sat down to talk with her ( https://www.facebook.com/morgangolladayfineartist )  about her book and her work.   Current Words Publishing (CWP):  Wha...