Ephemera Newsletter Iss May.2

(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)

Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, Asdiqa! (Arabic for “friends”).

We thank you for your presence this month. Particularly, we thank May’s Poet @ Ephemera, Mark Saba.

Starting this month, if you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! (5 poems max). We will share a special portal for members at the end of each submission window and you will have a few days to submit. We thank you for your support and look forward to reading your work. Free subscribers and anyone else can submit, too, with the reading fee and can submit up to 10 poems.

Ephemera runs another program called The Write-In which is a modest grant plus 10 books of our choosing from different independent publishers. It’s a staycation residency for folks who want to upgrade their writing space and home practice, for those who can’t or don’t want to travel. Yearly subscribers can submit for free. Monthly subscribers will be comped 1 month for submitting (i.e. given a discount). Non-member submitters will be gifted a full 1-month subscription. We’re looking to choose 2 winners. Submit in the first round, extended to May 31, to be considered twice. We’ll look to choose one winner from early submissions. Read more about The Write-In. Or submit directly below:

This week’s features:
Music from Townes Van Zandt, folk singer’s singer full of melancholy and verve; Art from Dustin Yellin, large glass, acrylic, and collage sculptures monumental with tiny, brilliant details. Featuring our May poet Mark Saba. Our weekly lists of 3 magazines with open calls, 3 awards/prizes from respected institutions, 3 recent job listings. Check out an Interesante article on how science may diminish art. Book recs and bonus content and our mini-essays!

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Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.

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Ephemera

Dear Readers,

Hunker down and steel yourself against the onslaught of the awful (old world: awe + full), pulchritudinous (we’ve been wanting to use this word—is it actually useful outside of using it to use it because it’s quite the indoor frolic?) shine and sweet-smelling airs. Things to do and reasons to do those things being one of our worst nightmares. Far be it from us, however, to hold you back from a well-executed plan. But if you haven’t one, get your crafting schedule down, commitment to self and art confirmed and reaffirmed. Then, bless you, may you venture out without guilt or waste. We want the best for your writing and ask that you plan and not fly by the seat of yours or anyone’s shorts. Summer ventures fuel the soul, but with a practice in place, they can be extraordinarily fruitful, therapeutic, and meaningful for your craft—the notes and observations and sounds and tastes, the rare bird gleaned as a too-fast shot across the trees, the relics of a creature from the deep sea as caught on the shore, a singe from a too-close camp fire or a too-hot romance, a welcome re-union of family or friends. Be ready. Write furiously now and plan. Give to yourself as if you are important. We offer that encouragement.

“Each work is a microcosm in which the individual parts never lose their own unique identity. They also work together as a community of images to produce a larger systemic image at the same time.”
—Dustin Yellin, Interview with InteriorDesign.net

Reference this week’s artist and study the work to the fullest visceral and then psychological extent. It contains in it the phrase, ‘it contains multitudes.’ Even the simplest writing often extends from so complex a knowledge that the distillation yields and communicates with, by magic or alchemy or quanta, the larger originating solution. The microcosm contains the macrocosm. In the case of Yellin, he arranges his work to be a thought-oscillating technology: it does both simultaneously and contains both. Writing must have invented this, so it’s only fair we borrow it back. Those greatest works seem to express the totality of a thing and also particularity of a thing. Great work is both complex and simple. We must manage the individual and the universal in that same way. Hone your thoughts on your thoughts. It takes a capacious mind to be this type of balance, incredible intuition or strenuously and long-practiced development. Both can be encouraged. Try Yellin’s take: imbue each sentence or line with an individual weight that holds up under the microscope, but make sure it builds meaning as a part of many lines, many sentences beyond it’s naked intent. We want to marvel. We want to feel gutted and, in the moment, not understand why. With the multi-dimensional we can. Strive. We believe every writer has a unique access to this phenomenon. Let us read your multitudes.

Aimtinan!
(Gratitude)

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~We’re so happy you’re here!~

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Poetry by Mark Saba

Fossil Flowers

So, we’ve finally uncovered you
hiding in plain sight
for a hundred millennia.

Now we can photograph you
write poems about you
paint your portraits.

It’s no longer possible for you
to live in anonymity.
We now assume responsibility

for your looks, the way you
dandied yourself up
in a world of muted color

to say nothing of your long struggle
to become. It took fire
to preserve you, ashes

to make your bed.
But we will never know
the glory you felt

as you lifted your head one morning
and felt the sun, as you stood
proudly among others

who would greet you
with a windborne kiss
and together you would conquer

a sterile past.

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Submit Poetry to Ephemera

Apply to The Write-In

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Writers Submit: Three Magazines