Dispatches and Selections from Independent Publications
Shannan Mann’s Versions of the Undefinable Other interpolates internal examination through elements of the Bhagavad-gita. This poem offers boundless deconstruction, itself inside the dharma yuddha, a beautifully complex and masterfully constructed theological, erotic scrutiny that goes through Shiva and ends with Rilke. Truly well done.
The conjectures of history on Aspasia’s character are beautifully argued by Sanjana Ramanathan; Aspasia, defamed and mocked, and ironically politically persecuted for Asebeia, has her dignity restored.
In the spirit of a metafictional Borges novel within novel within prose poem, Bryan Price’s fiery Novel Against Realism inquires literature, mythology, theology, and morality through serious verse.
Time’s Arrow is a Beautiful, learned, pedagogical resource at its finest, and using the best of printing press as available today to sift chronologically through centuries of verse. This should be a resource known everywhere.
Ed Steck pursuance of the God Within in MycoMountaineer from At The Mountains of the Mycoverse is Entheogenic Heroic Poem traversing McKennaverse, “a moment in patterns” enfolding the molecule with the ethereal. Let new pathways unfold.
Asphalte Magazine | Ed Steck
Superlatives to Roger Bloor, Vanessa Lampert, and Mary Mullholland, editors of The Alchemy Spoon, Issue 5: Unthemed, with excellent contributions from Sarah E Mnatzgen (“Gaugin Girls”), Victoria Woolf Bailey (“Last Gasp”), and Christina Buckton (“Belinda”). And all around consensus favorite of Cruellest Month.
Roger Bloor, Vanessa Lampert, and Mary Mullholland | The Alchemy Spoon
Poets Against AI is a movement to abolish the use of AI in poetry, and for poets, editors, and publishers have transparency when AI is employed to create content. Pledge not to use AI in poetry by contacting Poets Against AI.
POETS AGAINST AI | ET AL.
Reflexive and raw, Natalie E. Illum tears out her throat and lets the wounds speak. Her verse smiles up from the depths and ambushes the reader from below, blurring the lines between poem and death threat with a voice that lusts for blood.
Ginny Lowe Conners captures pandemic era chaos in the most unusual of settings; the woods. Yet this tranquil place is perfect for displaying the personal struggles that plagued our nation in a year of plague, divisive politics, and civil unrest. No, this is not a “pandemic poem”, this is a whisper of the human experience, a heart grappling with a world of mayhem.
Larkin Warren peers into a life ripped from its foundations and forces the reader to take part in the exodus. This poem is a triumph, and well worth the read.
Independent publishers and editors, let us know of extraordinary poems, essays, and criticism that you’d like to have featured in Cruellest Month. Contact us by email: [email protected]
