Here is Third Wednesday’s Poem of the Week. It’s from the newly released summer issue.
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Volume XII, No. 3.
The summer issue of Third Wednesday is in the mail.
It’s summer at last and here is issue 3 of volume XII. This issue features the winning poems from the third edition of our popular One Sentence Poetry Contest. Once again our contributors have come through with some fantastic examples of what a poet can do with the basic building block of writing – the sentence. In addition to the winning poems, we have published a number of poems we found of “considerable merit”, our euphemism for honorable mention. This time we lead off the contest poems with a fine example of a one sentence poem from 13th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser.
Until August 15th, we’re accepting entries for the 3rd annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest (named in honor of Third Wednesday’s first fiction editor). Flash fiction is a fast-growing sub-genre with new outlets springing up daily. We’ve notice a lot of poets beginning to experiment with this art form. Perhaps that’s because poetry and flash share the obvious need to pare work down to the essential. Our guest judge for this year’s contest, Jeremy Griffin, is the faculty fiction editor of Waccamaw, A Journal of Contemporary Literature, a wonderful publication of Coastal Carolina University.
Our featured poet is Jennifer McGowan, who lives near Oxford, England. We were taken with her experimentation with a traditional form. As she says in her introduction, “My sonnet sequence starts with a perfectly traditional Petrarchan sonnet then, through the sequence, modifies form, vocabulary, rhyme, and theme, to see exactly how much violence I can enact upon them and still have them be recognizable.”
The issue is rounded out with three pieces of short fiction, our usual feature of student poems from the InsideOut Literary Arts Project, and poetry by voices, both new and familiar, to Third Wednesday’s audience.
David Jibson, Co-editor
Objects in the Mirror
Our “Poem of the Week” is a preview of the summer issue of 3rd Wednesday, now at the printer. It’s one of three winning poems from the 3rd edition of our popular “One Sentence Poetry Contest”. It’s the second win for Michigan poet, Jane Wheeler, who can pack a lot of story into a single sentence.
Estuary
Our poem of the week was worthy of an honorable mention in 3rd Wednesday’s annual poetry contest. It’s from Vol. XII, No. 2.
Working Outside
Marfa, Texas is a small desert town known as an oasis of the arts. It was the filming location of James Dean’s final film, Giant, and figures prominantly in the Ed Graczyk play and Robert Altman film, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. It’s also the home of a U.F.O. phenomenon, The Marfa Lights. Marfa poet, Daryl Scroggins, whom Third Wednesday has featured a number of times, now has produced a U.L.O. (Unidentified Literary Object). Is it a poem, a prose poem, a bit flash fiction? Does it matter how we label it? What Daryl does give us is a glimpse into the mind of an adolescent boy – a strange and dangerous place.
Insta Poets and Haiga
Instagram Poetry has elements derivative of classical Japanese Haiga, the difference being the poor quality of both the poems and the artwork. There is a similar phenomenon happening in music with electronically created “beats” replacing skillfully played instruments, and simplistic repetitive lyrics. My theory is that there is a yearning to create without the price of years spent developing craft and a medium (the internet) to spread it. Anyone can do it.
– David Jibson, Co-Editor – Third Wednesday Magazine
Today again it can be seen 
Today again I see it –
Mount Fuji.
– Inoue Shiro
Misty haze is
the blackness of the pines
on a moonlight night
– Nakajima Kaho
Haiku Checklist
This article by Katherine Raine which was posted by the New Zealand Poetry Society is short and thorough. Click to read.
The newest issue of Third Wednesday is out. Once again, I am dazzled by so many poems in its pages and proud to have one of my own included. In this issue, too, I have been especially impressed with the photography. In the Spring 2019 (Vol. XII, No. 2) issue, I find it harder than…
His Words Are Lost In Noise
This elegantly written little poem is like a photograph. Close your eyes and you can see, not only the details the poet chose, but the scene beyond, especially if you’ve been in a fishing village anywhere in The Caribbean.
Ed Note: Garifuna is an Arawakan language spoken by about 200,000 people, mainly in coastal areas of Honduras, Belize, Guatamala and Nicaragua. It originated on the island of St. Vincent in the Antilies.
If You Like…You May Also Like
Ran across this website on Reddit. Type in the name of a favorite poet and it will give you a list of other poets you may want to read. We gave it a test run and were pleased with the results.
Third Wednesday Magazine 