Finishing with a fizzle

 kw: story reviews, fiction, poems, short stories, collections

It didn't take long to finish the last eleven pieces in 2026 Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, 50th Anniversary Edition, edited by Bill Henderson and other editors. Eight were poems, all perhaps eloquent and evocative, but most were pointless, except perhaps to insiders.

Poets, if your writing is only for yourself, your audience is limited to some (not all) of your closest friends or associates, and a smattering of others who happen to think like you do. Don't think you are quite so universal. We have only so many archetypes to go around. 

There was a time that a poem was a piece of craftsmanship. A few still are. Poetry arose before prose and even before writing, for good reason. It's easier to memorize…that is, if it has rhyme and rhythm. So-called "free verse" is too free. If someone has something worthwhile to say, even if they break the sentences and phrases in odd places so it looks like "verse", the content is the content. Too many "free verses" are free of content, or at least, of content that means anything to someone except yourself.

OK, huffiness over, I did like two of the poems:

• "Refuge" by Sheema Kalbasi. The skeletal images make the tragic almost bearable.
• "After the Fireworks" by Jessica R. Gordon. At times it is good to linger. The accompanying image is the fruit of running the prompt, "Remember to slow down and enjoy your surroundings" through Leonardo AI's Flow State, culling a few from several hundred images offered, and selecting one. FYI, most of the images Flow offered were abstract.

The one story I liked was "Lessons of the Line" by Dana Levin. It's about poetry, by someone who actually works at it, who practically coerced an established poet to mentor her.

This volume of Pushcart Prize has been better than some of the earlier ones. I'll keep looking for its successor volumes.