A good sonnet is hard to find. Here’s one from Leslie Schultz, who is currently helping us with reading for the winter issue of 3rd Wednesday. One of our editors commented: “”Memorial Day. . .”: Well-constructed sonnet, filled with what comes across as genuine emotion. YES.”
Summer’s official end was yesterday but the memory of it lingers. Here’s 3rd Wednesday’s poem of the week from M. J. Iupppa. It’s from our autumn issue, avialable now at Amazon.
All the world’s a page, and originates on the stage? That is the provacative question posed by James B. Nicola’s Stage to Page.
Bravo! The marvel of James B. Nicola’s substantial collection is how his superb craftsmanship never once muffles the voice of his exuberant stage-struck heart. A warm-hearted, cold-eyed ode to the business known as show. —John Guare
Stage to Page is an exhilarating tour of show business, informed with the poet’s deep and lively involvement in theater. A master of meter and rhyme, James B. Nicola has the power boldly to experiment besides. All of us who care for staged comedy and drama, movies, music, and dance (and who doesn’t?) will cherish this unique and fascinating collection. —X. J. Kennedy
James Nicola’s Stage to Page…is a book for anyone who has waited in the dark, either backstage or out in the house, for the magic to begin, and Nicola’s spells, like Prospero’s, are powerfully transporting. This book is a delight! —David Yezzi
This collection is, like its author, a Shakespearean clown.… Thanks for allowing me the pleasure. The book is great. —Rob Corddry
Sprightly, graceful, often wise, these poems both study and inform. James B. Nicola is a light-spirited teacher with much to impart about the stage that is the world. —Rachel Hadas
James Nicola reminds us over and over that live theater is ephemeral… and I think all stage actors live with a quiet terror that, after we strut and fret our hour upon the stage…no one will remember. I think it’s something all human beings wonder. Stage to Page sure made me wonder. —John Cariani
James B. Nicola…entices the goddess of our subconscious lives to “emerge from the sea foam” and holds us spellbound about what goes on behind the scenes and in front of the curtain as he teaches us what it means to be both an actor and an audience. —Christina Zawadiwsky
Stage to Page is the kind of book you will want to relish a few pages at a time. —Philip Fisher
An incredibly insightful, truthful and entertaining series of poems that feels new and familiar at the same time. —Larry Pine
Stage to Page…is irreplaceable. There isn’t anything remotely like it. It’s beautiful. —Austin Pendleton
James B. Nicola’s full-length collections include Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), and Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award./
Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater
published: Word Poetry/WordTech Communications, 2016 (Cincinnati)
https://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/nicola_stage.html
Over the course of the 20th Century, T. S. Eliot’s “Hollow Man” finally learned to Howl with Ginsberg, but has since evolved into the 21st Century’s Empty Man—and Woman. Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond is about a certain hope to answer the existential quagmire of daily life we find ourselves surrounded by: a poetic reminder that the same miracle that made Something to begin with, recurs every moment of our lives. These poems attempt to illuminate, investigate, and celebrate the mysterious place-that-is-no-place where the Center does hold: the moment that brings us from Chaos to Cosmos, from Void to Creation, from Nothing to Everything. . . . Hence the subtitle, for Quickening is a collection of Poems from Before and Beyond –plus what lies between.
James B. Nicola’s full-length collections include Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), and Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award.
published by Cyberwit.net, 2019
Order at https://www.cyberwit.net/publications/1217
TW Volume XIII, No. 4 – Autumn 2020
The fall issue is in the mail to contributors and subscribers. Guest associate editor for this issue is Jude Dippold of Concrete Washington. Jude is a poet and his nature photos have graced several issues of 3W.
This issue features the winning stories from the 4th annual George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest (thanks go out to this year’s judge Lisa Lenzo).Our 50/50 Poetry Contest winner is Notes from the Field by Alexandra Wade.
Other highlights: A flash piece by Ron Koertge (Yes, that Ron Koertge), poems by Marge Piercy, Jack Ridl, Claire Rubin, James Crews and many others, as well as student poetry from Inside/Out.
The print edition is available now at Amazon.com.
The sky over Santa Ynez, CA today (in an email from poet Dan Gerber).
Third Wednesday’s Poem of the Week:
California poet Claire Rubin, a favorite of ours, penned this poem for our upcoming fall issue, a wonderful example of a persona poem, one that conveys its message with wry humor. It’s also qualifies as an ekphrastic poem.
Joseph Hardy is the author of the poem “Trial and Error” published in Third Wednesday’s Summer 2020 issue, and that appears in his new book of poetry, The Only Light Coming In. He is one of a handful of writers that live in Nashville, Tennessee, sho does not play a musical instrument; although a friend once asked him to bring his harmonica on a camping trip so they could throw it in the fire. His wife says he cannot leave a room without finding out something about everyone in it, and telling her their stories later.
This, his first book of poetry, and can be found on Amazon at:
Amazon.com : joseph hardy the only light coming in or at josephhardypoetry.com
Page turner, The Only Light Coming In, will make you both smile and reflect. This collection of poems has some unforgettable lines. The last line of “Two Stop Lights, One Diner” reads “Her feet must be killing her,” came as an unexpected twist and shows a great empathy by the author. The opening line of “Once Love, In An Italian Restaurant,” reads “At a table for two, Love threw hot escargot at me,” and so makes it an impossibility not to be immediately drawn in. While “I’m thinking of going bland” may be a poetic device, it is not easily forgotten. A seamlessly flowing and intriguing debut collection by Joseph Hardy. — Kay Thompson Fields, journalist
Entangled with the ghosts of his past, Mr. Hardy works to make sense of his past. He moves toward understanding his failures, and the self-destructive decisions of those he has loved. His memories are fluid, unsparing. The universality of relationships, an irony of daily life, is what grips the reader as events of their own lives come to pass. This is no simple despair. Each day raises specific, a struggle with his inner life, sometimes troubling, always trustworthy. — Stellasue Lee, Ph.D., author of Queen of Jacks, New & Selected Poems
It may sometimes be too early, but it’s never too late, to come of age. In wise lyrics and compelling narratives, Joe Hardy’s The Only Light Coming In gives us hypnotic eloquence mixed with intricate truth. Logic isn’t good enough—“beating a drum with no hand / as logic tries to do”—but the art of waiting, of honesty’s eventuality, is praised. Hardy’s poems remind us constantly that we’re “full of waiting;” they are quirkily meditative, populated with dreams both real and imagined. The poet tells us “I should go to bed and dream, / catch whatever comes into me, / up from me, // acknowledge / I am a stranger to myself / in this place.” In poems accessible but rich in music and implication, Hardy desires to capture what can be held of what’s most slippery. Hardy’s is an expansive, profound debut full of one man’s quest to be both broken and fiercely alive. — Gary McDowell, author of Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020)
I come to poetry for arresting imagery and for phrases that make me grin or that stop me in my tracks. I come to poetry to sit with a familiar feeling like an old friend, and to leave with a fresh thought like a new companion. I come to poetry wanting stories I can follow and that transport me back to stories of my own. I come to poetry hoping to feel the wonder of “Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of it like that before,” and to feel the envy of “Damn, I wish I had thought of that!” This collection of poems by Joseph Hardy possesses an abundance of all these elements. And as happens to me when I enjoy the gifts offered in generous poetry, I left this book feeling blessed and grateful. — Ramon Presson, author of When Will My Life Not Suck?, The Roles of a Lifetime, I’m Not (Totally) Making This Up, and Voice Lessons
Our editors were captivated by the subject of this poem from poet Michael Steffen of Buffalo, New York. This poem of the week is a preview from the fall issue of 3rd Wednesday Magazine, due out at the end of September.
The fall issue featuring:
