Founding Editor's Visual Art Launches Online

One of Perigee's founding editors, Contributing and Advisory Editor Sue Fellows, has launched a new visual art web site chock full of her best monoprints, etchings, collograph, and mixed media work. This is seriously good visual art, and we encourage you to make your way over to her corner of the web post haste.

You can also contact the artist to purchase your favorite prints. Keep an eye on the site as it will be updated frequently in the coming days and months.

On Facebook, or the web at www.backyardprints.com.

A Note from Perigee's Founding Editor

This issue—which marks our 7th anniversary and is our 28th volume—will be Perigee's last publication for the foreseeable future. Perigee has been a great passion of mine for these many years, and a constant source of discovery and inspiration. These days, as a stay-at-home dad and full-time graduate student, my attentions are necessarily shifting elsewhere. I'd like to leave the door open for Perigee's return in the coming years and hope to revisit and rekindle this remarkable conversation we've been having.

In the meantime please accept my sincerest thanks for your support over the years. As I look back through 28 issues I leave satisfied that Perigee accomplished the goal at the heart of my decision to create this publication in the first place: To provide a quality venue for well crafted writing and art, particularly for voices who might not otherwise be heard.

Yours Truly,



Robert J Woerheide
Editor-in-Chief, Designer

Issue 28 Contributors

Perigee's 28th issue will be released on April 20th, and we are excited to present the following work:

FICTION
"Foreword to Volume 421," by Simon Barron
"Seeing the Rabbit," by Barbara O’Byrne
"Tragedy in the History of a Comedy," by Lawrence Lawson
"The Wish," by Rebecca Lawton
"'Redemption,' an excerpt from Tempest," by Robert Miltner
"The Sad Ballad of Santiago Pancho Sanchez," by Tatjana Soli


NON-FICTION
"Burying Dogs," by David W. Berner
"I Grew Up With Running Water," by Stanley E. Ely
"Brain Games," by Mike Finley
"Half-Moon Wide," by Sarah L. Miller
"Finding Fathers," by Joelle Renstrom
"Notes from 1970: A Memoir," by Claude Clayton Smith
"All the Leaves are Brown," by Sean Finucane Toner


POETRY
"I wish his swimtrunks," by Bonnie Auslander
"Formal Proof In 9 Steps That Right Now You’re Standing In A Puddle, Thinking Of Me," by Danielle Blau
"Thomas: Appoggiatura," by Gabriella Brand
"My Father Was a Wandering Aramean," by Lawrence Cronin
"What I Recall After Thirty Years," by Billie Dee
"I Had Tea with Mary Oliver," by Trish Dugger
"Completely in my own Mind," by Michael Estabrook
"Once a Dancer," by Ellen Friedman
"Answer the Phone," by Erica Goss
"Autumnal," by Erica Goss
"Bubble Cut," by Kate Harding
"Coyote Eating Apricots," by Kate Harding
"After the Rains," by Michael Hettich
"First Day of Class," by Michael Hettich
"Mouse," by Michael Hettich
"An Indication I May Be an Optimist," by Terry Hertzler
"I Love my Body," by Terry Hertzler
"Looking Glass," by David Holper
"’62 Cadillac," by David Holper
"Folding Baby Clothes with Emily Dickinson," by Una Hynum
"Matthew," by Una Hynum
"Phlebotomist," by Una Hynum
"The Son Witnesses how the World Works," by Sean Karns
"Good Deal," by Gail Levine
"Elegy for Raymond," by Sarah B Marsh-Rebelo
"If God Hath a Beard," by Gary Metras
"As Much As I Want," by Michael Nieman
"It's Early Yet," by Michael Nieman
"Especially the Bridges," by Joyce Nower
"After the Squall," by Joyce Nower
"Moon Shining on a Deserted Courtyard at the Foreign House at Beijing Normal," by Joyce Nower
"Proprieties," by Joyce Nower
"After the deep sleep," by Colby Cedar Smith
"A Walk on the Shore," by Liliana Ursu
"Strolling between Millennia," by Liliana Ursu
"Obituary," by Jon Wesick
"Outside the Vatican," by Jon Wesick

2010 Fiction Contest

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we regret that Perigee's 2010 Fiction Contest has been cancelled. Those who've submitted work to the contest will receive a reimbursement check within 7 business days.

2009 Pushcart Nominations

The Pushcart Board has nominated two works of fiction which appeared in Perigee's 2009 issues:

"A Modest Appetite," by Ellen Akins (Vol. 7, Issue 1)
"Fisher of Herms," by Rosalie Freese (Vol. 7, Issue 2)

We are very excited and pleased that these works have been nominated. The Pushcart publisher will notify Perigee by early May if either of these nominees should win the Pushcart Prize and be included in their 35th annual collection. We hope you will join us in congratulating these newly minted Pushcart Nominees.

Talk Back: Why Do You Write Poetry?

I spent way too much time thinking about what I should include in my first piece back as an official member of the Perigee tribe. So much has happened since I was last involved. I moved to Reno, Nevada with my wife, Tami. I began teaching high school English, greeted my son into this crazy world, bought a stupid house, saw my wife take hold in the high desert (where there's not much to hold on to), started experimenting with oils, acrylics and aerosols, and founded a creative arts collective called BEtheCAUSE. I'll forgo any further minutia. (Of course, if you want some minutia, you can follow me on Twitter @BEtheCAUSE. or hit up my Facebook wall.)

The focus for my first piece, "A Few Angles on the Page/Stage Poetry Quandary," emerged just after a colleague of mine launched an online discussion about outsider art and the art academy called "Ignorant Art vs. The Academy," which began as a blog post and manifested as a cut & paste print discussion at a venue in Reno that displayed two amazing artists—one a graduate from The Art Center, and the other a self-taught illustrator. Both artists have depths of raw talent, but their revisions and honing of skills make their work worth the discourse.

The brass tacks of that dialogue: there are plenty of perspectives on the subject of academic programs for the arts and self-learned arts—in all forms. Dance, visual art, poetry, the blends of accepted practices and styles—and the blends frowned upon. But people should get busy doing what they feel they need to do (or love to do). If that's in a classroom or workshop, great. If that's in a garage or an ally somewhere, keep it up. One of my stipulations: you need to study those who created before you. You can't remain ignorant forever and still expect success.

That conversation was focused on visual art, but it reinvigorated the same issue for me in the context of poetry. So if you read "A Few Angles on the Page/Stage Poetry Quandary," please continue the dialogue here.

I'd love to learn your thoughts on this page/stage quandary. If anything I've included has made you respond, question, exclaim, or guffaw at all, then please ruminate some more—and then continue this discussion in this blog.

Why do you write poetry? What do you value in poetry? Why? Why do you read poetry? Should poets who perform give up submitting to journals/publishers that publish "mainstream" poets? Should some poets be barred from the stage?

     Say something.


- Benjamin Arnold, Contributing Editor