Scary First Person
By Edward Scissorhands “Are dolls scary because they're lifelike or because they're so clearly not?” --Todd Dillard Halloween is a good time to talk about first-person. Is it real, is it a mask, or is it something darker? One problem with first...
Where Have All the Demons Gone?
The trouble with poets is that we don’t have any urban myths. No story of the mad sonneteer with hooks for hands sneaking around Lovers Lane. No legend of the cannibal food poet who ate his extended metaphor garnished with his victim’s liver comfit. Try doing a survey...
Poet Jessica Murray on Sylvia Plath, the Slippery Muse, and Creativity After Kids
The Abenaki / Huron poet Suzanne S. Rancourt sent us a stack of poems a few weeks ago, and in my reply--we accepted one--I mentioned that even Plath at her darkest in Ariel included poems of joy. For all these reasons I was eager to read Jessica Murray's...
Six Questions for Barrett Warner, Editor, Free State Review
Each poem or story is searching for freedom, but does the reader care if it can’t find the door to the emerald highway? Here are a few doors. https://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/2019/10/six-questions-for-Free-State-Review.html
Wanted!
I’d cross any river if a poem or a story were on the other side, and that’s one reason I lobbied to become an editor for Free State Review in 2011, and eventually the book acquisitions editor for its publisher, Galileo Press. Being an editor lets me walk...
Congrats, Susan Sonde!
Her poetry collection, "The Arsonist," is available on The Main Street Rag. “Arsonists are descended from dragons, and Susan Sonde is a poet with wings and teeth. She flies through centuries, blending a scriptural cadence with post-Modern shrieks. If Heaven and Hell...
CATCHING THE LIGHT WHILE IT’S STILL FRESH: AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEXA POTEET
Alexa Poteet is a poet whose only studio is the world, and perhaps enough outer space to encompass the moon and one or two illustrious planets. Her work in progress is a life in progress, small studies of a larger unfinished piece. Poteet’s debut...
Congrats to Kevin!
Cue the fanfare. Our very own Kevin McDaniel has a debut book from Main Street Rag called Rubbernecking. Click here to order! "Kevin McDaniel is keen to learn why he’s here—to know why any of us matter in our radical small towns where birth is slopping around cut...
Remembering Andy Goodman
by Nancy Jainchill "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." —Martin Luther King, Jr. A STEAMY SUMMER DAY IN AUGUST 1964, ON MY WAY TO visit family for a cookout in the suburbs, I fell in love with...
Unfounded
by David Dodd Lee We do try to speak out, voices in little bursts, the snapping of twiglets, maybe in a bustlefrom bedroom to office. As well, aghast, we sometimes overthink, estranged in themoment, estranged by the moment, a lack of imagination, of experience. It's...
About Me
Free State Review is a literary journal that comes out every 8 months. Want to know what we're into? Peruse our site and/or order a copy, then hit us up! Recent Issue
-
Issue 12
$10.61