BURT KIMMELMAN'S A DOOR, A WINDOW RECEIVES WONDERFUL REVIEW

 Daniel Morris offers a fine review of Burt Kimmelman's A DOOR, A WINDOW on Restless Messengers. You are invited to read at https://www.poetryinreview.com

RUBEN QUESADA PRESENTS NEW "CHAPTER ONE" ESSAY

Marsh Hawk Press' accomplishments is more than its books and includes its "Chapter One" series that delve thoughtfully into poetics and other matters "behind the scenes" of the published poem. For October, Ruben Quesada contributes a unique look at poetry's traditional/normative (per how it's taught in school) conditions and how it relates, or does not relate, to those who know English mostly as a written language vs as a native speaker. It's a needed look at a topic introduced by this thoughtful opening:

"The central argument about poetic meter and rhythm is that poets have been hearing patterns of stress, timing, and intonation since infancy. I have struggled with this idea for many years. If a non-native speaker’s primary reference for the English language is written rather than spoken, the iambic rhythm embedded in English does not manifest as a sonic reality."

You can read his essay HERE.

For those who don't know him, Ruben Quesada is a poet, translator, and editor. He edited the landmark anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, which received the Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His poetry collections, including Next Extinct Mammal, and Brutal Companion, have garnered widespread critical acclaim. His writing and criticism have been featured in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Guernica, Seneca Review, and Harvard Review. Ruben is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago.

A REVIEW OF STEPHEN PAUL MILLER'S NEW BOOK, BEAUTIFUL SNACKS

 Stephen Paul Miller's new poetry collection has just released and is now available on Amazon. We than Lehman Weichselbaum for his review below.

The Portable Stephen Paul Miller

 

By Lehman Weichselbaum

 

Beautiful Snacks is a book you can take anywhere. It's the rare work that wraps the lightest possible read around matters that travel the full distance up and down the scale of consequence. You can read it between plays when you take your kid to the next Mets game. Like the game of baseball itself, the poems here alternate simmery moments that could matter (depending on the next pitch) with ringing moments that actually do (the batter hits or plays out). Either way, the game or the page never loses your willing captivity.

 

You can read it on your next flight to far coasts and skip the headphones. Like air travel, Miller's verbal nosh straps you into a negligible run of miles over an earth that mysteriously augments its reality the more it takes on the raiments of a dream. You'll finish it by the Plains States. Be sure to multiply the highs with a well-earned sample from the drinks cart. A light rye and a dark fruit juice with just enough ice would be our choice.

 

Miller traffics in the low-giggle archness of the New York School (of which he is a forthright self-admitted member) while at the same time pouring a wealth of emotional heart into his scattered-line caesura, ever-attentive chatter (in that sense more O'Hara, Schuyler, and Koch than Ashbery). Like all good-standing New York Schoolers, and like John Cage (a friend and collaborator), when it comes to subject matter Miller shuns all hierarchies of inclusivity and lets it all in. He joins his forays into "pure" language, earnest frivolity and historical speculation with warm and searching reminisces of family and friends, as well as touches of old-school lyricism ("The fiddle sways and/its profile shows/each note to be a detail/of its soft and/ infinite garden."). So on random days he'll be ruminating on Busby Berkeley, the connection between Hitler and the Beatles, the origins of the ancient Israelites, TV's "The Honeymooners," the other (evil Trumpite) Stephen Miller, a walking talking Halloween, his Staten Island pharmacy-owning parents, FDR (Miller wrote a straight-up biography of New Deal Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins) and Meher Baba (Miller's spiritual guide.) Pound for pound all are equal in the poet's eye.

 

What else in Miller's overstuffed, weightless as Wheat Thins travel bag?

 

Merry rounds of name dropping ("I'm not sure why. Does my not-greatness highlight their greatness?"): (The aforementioned) John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Jackie Mason, Bill Clinton, Gilbert Price, Sandra Bernhard, Philip Glass, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns and (his personal one-man stock company from his absurdist playwrighting days) Taylor Mead.

 

Drop-in one-liner "monostiches" ("You don't get older, you just put on layers," "Hiawatha rises above Longfellow's poetry," "Everything coming to you will get there.").

 

A class-based economics treatise, "Flight of the Physiocrats," posing as a full-length one act play (performed at the Bowery Poetry Club in 2019).

 

And, distilling everything he is and does in a kernel of shopkeeper's wisdom: "I'm personally/ and idiosyncratically producing the/ written word the way my father did a/drug store."

 

The poet brings it. Anywhere you go. Lots of freight, small baggage. A picnic, the ski lodge, the shore ("Just a purple line/a beach feeling/bad and hopeful...").

POEMS FROM THE 2026 MARSH HAWK POETRY PRIZE WINNERS

We are delighted to present two sample poems each by our prize winners Anne Champion, Eugene Gloria, and Cassie Burkhardt. They can be read at https://marshhawkpress.org/poetry-prize/2026-marsh-hawk-press-poetry-prizes/poems-from-the-2026-contest-winners/

MARK MELNICK ON BOOK COVER DESIGNS

Mark Melnick offers an insightful essay on book cover design and marketing as the July contributor to Marsh Hawk's "Chapter One" series. You can see his entire article HERE, but we present this excerpt because his experienced insight can be helpful to many authors:

"It is also important for authors to understand that 'graphic design' is very different from 'art.' I have worked with many authors — especially poets — who suggest a painting for their book’s cover. Often, that painting is very dense and complex (think Hieronymus Bosch), and the author will send me a lengthy explanation of their reasoning for using it, the meanings and resonances they see embedded in it, and how it reflects the text. Yet this misunderstands the purpose of a cover. A cover is not meant to be an analog to the text. A cover is not art, which is meant to invite introspection and contemplation, slowly over time. A cover is graphic design, which needs to do its job almost instantly — literally in one second. It is emotional, not intellectual."

To illustrate his points, Mark comments on the Marsh Hawk books of Eileen R. Tabios and Daniel Morris.

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Mark Melnick began his graphic design career at Interview magazine while still in college, and went on to staff positions with Tibor Kalman/M&Co, Viking/Penguin, and Vintage/Knopf, before starting his own design studio in 2002. He has designed multiple career-spanning monographs for artists Chuck Close, Chip Kidd, and Duane Michals; has worked extensively with The Library of America and The Harvard Lampoon; and has designed dozens of covers for prize-winning playwrights through Theatre Communications Group.

2026 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE WINNERS

 Congratulations to the winners of our annual poetry prizes judged by Denise Duhamel:

CONGRATULATIONS TO SANDY MCINTOSH!

Congratulations to Marsh Hawk Managing Editor Sandy McIntosh whose ESCAPE FROM THE FAT FARM has been shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Book Award!

Info on Award: https://www.hofferaward.com/Eric-Hoffer-Award-grand-prize-short-list.html

Info on Sandy's Book: https://sandymcintosh.info