Contributor Interviews

Wendy Cannella’s poetry has appeared in Phoebe, Free Lunch, and Southern Indiana Review; her article “Angels and Terrorists” is featured in The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn (Syracuse University Press). She earned her MFA from Vermont College, PhD from Boston College, and has taught at Boston College and Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in Coastal Maine with her husband and two daughters. Her prose poem, “Immortality,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Will I receive partial credit for a haiku?

To live forever
is to endure much housework;
consider a maid!

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

“Immortality” represents my first attempt at a prose poem. The subject begged this particular shape, demanded it, really, the way a clean shirt demands to be folded squarely. The concept arose through dialogue and scraps of drifting commentary, and involves more quotations than I would ever dare press upon a lyric poem.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I thought, oh no, does this mean I have to write more prose poems? There is something in me that, like the speaker of “Immortality,” just might equate a long prison sentence with a long prosaic sentence, especially one I myself have written.

I also thought, wow, this is the journal I have loved since encountering Stephen Dunn’s poem about seagulls in its pages in the mid-1990s (what I have long considered to be the greatest decade of all time, a belief recently made official in the New York Times). That poem by Dunn is titled “Radical” and ends like this:

Then the gulls began quarreling
as if what was happening
could be a matter of opinion,
but they were merely experts,
there every morning, not to be trusted.

Merely experts. I love that paradox, and I was hooked on MAR.

What was the best feedback you received on this piece?

A good friend told me that after reading “Immortality” she now dumps her clean silverware, unsorted, into a kitchen drawer. So, poems can bring change.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Oh, I see you haven’t met my young children yet…

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I find myself returning repeatedly to Jennifer Sweeney’s piece, “Parenthetical at 35.” The poem performs a number of remarkable balancing acts, not the least of which is its form—which teeters between stanza and paragraph, lyric and narrative. The question of form is related to the poem’s problem of the parenthetical, as Sweeney writes: “What to place in this raw absence, this […].” I love a poem unafraid to tell its own story and this one is spoken by a central “I” who is wise enough to step aside and allow the poem’s own logic to determine how events unfold. In this way, the “I” occasionally gives way to information which seems to rise up from the groundswell of the speaker’s world: “For headaches, feverfew. For cold womb, false Unicorn root. To ward off hibernating insects, Osage oranges in the windowsills. For twin ghosts, divide fire in two equal parts.” By the end of the poem, the reader must go back to the beginning to understand just what is missing, what is finished.

Thanks for the interview, Wendy!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of three poetry collections: Little Spells (New Issues Press, 2015), How to Live on Bread and Music, which received the James Laughlin Award, the Perugia Press Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, and Salt Memory. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, American Poetry Review, Linebreak, New American Writing, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. Her poem, “Parenthetical at 35,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

winter, abundant with losses, no baby, wringing my hands

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This poem was one that steeped for a very long time. Though the time of the poem was at age 35, I wrote it three years later when I was out of the fire, no longer living a daily prayer that I would finally succeed in getting pregnant, no longer living in a perpetual Michigan winter but in the California desert. I was napping with my baby boy, and I just heard the poem. It entered the room, my body, entirely. I said lines over and over so as to not lose them and eventually was able to get to a pen and paper. I had most of it down after that afternoon, but worked in the next months fine-tuning its many different movements; there was such a lot to contain. I didn’t show it to many people and sent it out only a few times. It just felt like such a dense poem for an editor to take on, I wasn’t sure if it would get picked up.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I was so happy to find out this poem would be published, but by MAR? That was wonderful. I had admired the journal for a long time, and I felt particularly read and witnessed by the editors regarding a poem that felt so different from anything I had ever written. I received a kind note about the correlation of the “35-ness” of my title and the anniversary of the journal and was touched that my poem opened this issue.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

My most surprising and successful moment as a writer was finding out that my second book had won the James Laughlin Award. I was in Prague for the month and unreachable by phone or email for about five weeks. At the end of the trip, I asked a secretary in our apartment building if I could use her computer to check my emails. When I opened the weeks-old message from the Academy of American Poets, I let out such a joyful shriek that the secretary knew something wonderful had happened and brought out a bottle of wine even though it was only 9 am. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone yet, but I told that woman who gave me one of the warmest toasts, and we drank to it together. So unexpected. Perfect moment.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

After college, I spent six months in Siberia, Indiana, town of 25, as a volunteer. I lived in a mobile home across from a tiny church with an old rectory and convent on either side which now housed adults with severe disabilities who lived under the guidance of a Benedictine nun and a lay houseparent. Beyond the homes, there was an organic farm with goats and chickens. I was there to assist both homes and help with the farm. There was no computer or tv; I only spoke to those ten people on that plot of land and little else. It was an incredible time full of tenderness and longing, deep silence and doubt.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I was on an artist residency at Hedgebrook in mid-February, and on Whidbey Island, the barred owls were mating. They nested in tree holes lined with feathers or grass along the path I followed each evening to eat dinner, my head spinning the day’s new fragments around. It was on such a walk when I was struck upside the head and brought down to the forest floor. Disoriented and dazed, I assumed fallen branch only to look up from my knees and see a female barred owl flying off, her three-and-a-half-foot wingspan sweeping slowly and silently through the alders. I found out later that barred owls have fenestrated wings which make no sound, and I can affirm this is true. The owl incident caused a stir among the other writers who were not as interested as I was in being hit in the head with an owl, but I appreciated the desire to have an intimate experience with nature and being met with an ambush. It seemed the perfect instruction for the writer, some totem of wisdom smacking any comfortable notions of progress upside the head, and saying Wake up, get with it.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

This is a tremendous issue. The poem selections are wonderful, and the feature of prose poems/short shorts/flash nonfiction is truly a treat. I love the urgency, dislocation, and surprise of Clare Wahmanholm’s “Theory of Primogeniture: Barn”; the poem itself seemed to incinerate as I read it. Sarah Burke’s “The Rock Has No Children” is a deeply affecting poem in which the grief and refusal to surrender are portrayed exquisitely. It is also very much speaking to my poem; it’s a lonely conversation to live, and I was moved by how her poems and mine bookend the issue and perhaps provide a larger parenthetical relationship. From the feature, I especially savored “Immortality” by Wendy Cannella, “Diving Deep (My Father as Octopus)” by Bryce Emley, and “Violet on a Plane” by Lisa C. Krueger. I’ll say it again—I love this feature!

Thanks for the interview, Jennifer!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Claire Guyton is a Maine writer, editor, and writing coach, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Hunger Mountain, The Journal for the Compressed Creative Arts, River Styx, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and the anthology Summer Stories (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2013). Claire has been awarded the Maine Arts Commission’s Literary Fellowship and earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She wrote a short story every day for a year and blogged about the experience at dailyshorty.com.

Claire’s piece of flash fiction, “Three Things,” was a finalist in the 2014 Fineline Competition and appears in MAR 35.1. (This year’s Fineline deadline is June 15!)

Quick! Summarize your piece in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Man loses wife, gains life.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

I wrote this piece as part of my project of writing a short story every day for a year. This story completed my 46^th week, and I was surprised to have written something I liked a lot so late in the year because by then I was so mentally tired. I changed almost nothing, later, when I polished it before sending it out. It’s just one of those lucky pieces that comes to mind and then to the page almost whole.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I laughed out loud, then kissed the husband, then fired off an e-mail to a couple of really good writer friends. I have admired MAR since my first days of serious writing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better home for this little fiction.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Nothing. I point to my full mouth, shrug, smile, chew with exaggerated labor, point again, shrug again, smile again, chew. What if I’m not eating, you ask? Of course I’m eating. The only way to get through a family reunion is by carrying at all times an overspilling plate of my aunt’s baked beans and my cousin’s brownies. Plus potato chips. You can always fill a gap in a paper plate (and your mouth) with potato chips.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

I wrote a short story every single day for a year. And blogged about it. It was very, very, very hard. But it was writing bliss.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Hands down that I didn’t start writing much earlier. How I wish I could have a do-over.

Your biggest non-writing-related regret?

That I didn’t get good therapy while my brain was sleek and flexible and more willing to listen. I can see that I really needed good therapy then and would benefit from it now, but my brain is too stiff in the knees, too attached to streaming Netflix. Tired of all the chatter.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

For many years when I was a kid, an adolescent, a teen, a young adult… not sure when it stopped, actually… every time I got into a car with someone else or into my own car, I wondered if the car would blow up when the key turned in the ignition. I hoped it wouldn’t, of course. And I’ve been lucky so far.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I almost never use a semicolon because I find the mark unattractive. It’s such a shame, because the work a semicolon does is so quietly lovely—its whole sentence-aura is understated elegance, inviting thoughtful, well-constructed sentences. Yet that blotty speck over the comma… ugh. I just can’t.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

This sounds so fake, but it’s true—I love it all and couldn’t believe I was allowed in such good company. If I have to choose, then I crown those you’ve already crowned, the winners of the short-short contest I entered.

Thanks for the interview, Claire!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Sean Hammer was born in 1988 in Washington, DC and raised in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland. He holds degrees from Boston University and Johns Hopkins, and is beginning his MFA in Fiction at Hunter College in September 2015. His work has been featured in various journals, and his monthly column can be found online at The Prague Revue. He lives in New York City and kneels at the holy altar of validation, so if you like his work, follow him on Twitter and boost his ego.

Sean’s short story, “The Charity Diet,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your story/poem/essay in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

After meeting Rasputin (maybe), a lawyer obsesses over charitable giving.

What can you share about this story prior to its MAR publication?

I’d planned on “The Charity Diet” being a much longer story. In the original draft, I’d made it to the scene in Central Park (top of page two in the final, published version) at page 10. At the time, I worked for the public transportation system in New York City. To distract myself from the soul-depleting bureaucracy, I wrote stories while I was supposed to be writing construction proposals. (You didn’t hear that from me.) Realizing the story I was working on didn’t merit the bloated length it was leaning toward, I decided to spend the afternoon writing quick paragraphs plot point by plot point from my original, longer outline. The promise I held myself to was that I would “get something done” in every single paragraph, and in that way would move the story along as quickly as possible. I wrote the draft in an afternoon, revised it a number of times, and here we are.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

Pumped. Really, really pumped. I’ve had a number pieces published online, some of which have sold/been read in far greater numbers than I’d ever expected, but this is my first story in print. To have that milestone come in such a long-standing, respected journal is special. Then when I went through MAR’s author index and saw names like Aimee Bender and David Foster Wallace I vacillated from feelings of inadequacy to outright ecstasy. I think that’s about as good as it gets for a writer. Side note: the afternoon I received the MAR acceptance, I’d been at The Whitney Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I’ve only been to the museum twice, and each time I came home to an e-mail telling me I was having a story published. (The other was in The Prague Revue, where I now write a monthly non-fiction column.) Needless to say, I’ll be returning to the Whitney next time my desperation reaches critical mass.

What was the best feedback you received on this piece?

My good friend John Miller told me to take out some of the specificity I’d included. Normally I hate this note (I don’t believe in the “overly specific references date a work” school of thought) but in this particular piece, he was right. I’m glad I listened.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Most of the time people ask, “what kind of stuff do you write?” I start broad, answering simply, “fiction.” This answer is almost never sufficient, despite my prayers. If pressed, I’ll upgrade my response to, “I always have a number of things going at once, usually a few stories and I’m working on some ‘longer’ projects, too” – sometimes people just nod here, and I’m off the hook. If they call my bluff and ask what the mysterious “longer projects” are about, I’m forced to admit it’s nearly impossible to talk about a work-in-progress without hyperventilating. I’m not sure why that is – maybe because it feels like cheating somehow, as though announcing the existence of a draft is promising a finished, published project. Unsolicited advice for everyone: never, ever tell your grandmother you’re writing a novel.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my family and I love talking about writing with them. It’s just difficult to discuss your own projects a) before they’re finished and b) without sounding self-congratulatory. Pretty much the only person I can do that with is my dad (he gets me about as much as anyone is going to, I think) and even then, it’s rare.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

My first published short story, “Cornbread.” It was pulled from the slush pile by the intern readers at Kindle Singles and then championed by the editor-in-chief, Dave Blum. I was young for something like that (24), it sold well over 10,000 copies, and was named one of the “Top Ten Kindle Singles of 2012” by Amazon.com against some incredibly stiff competition from Big Name Writers. It still sells a few copies every day, a fact I’m certain of because I remain vain enough to return to the website regularly.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Any wasted time. Something I love about writing is that it turns the all-time greatest leisure activity – reading! – into homework/research, but something I hate about writing is that it makes me feel guilty for pretty much any downtime unless I’ve already written a significant amount that day. It can be hard to enjoy things when there’s a voice in my ear telling me I’ll never get where I want to be if I keep wasting time. You can’t write twenty-four hours a day, but you can certainly obsess over it every waking moment.

Your biggest non-writing-related regret?

Not picking up my phone the time Bode Miller called me. It’s a long story.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

Bode Miller called me, once.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I’d have to go with “The Girl Who Not Once Cried Wolf” by George Choundas. One of those stories I read with my jaw on the floor. I don’t want to spoil much for anyone who hasn’t read it, but I will say that it’s a nearly impossible task to take a story everyone already knows and not only make it your own, but make it riveting and shocking. That’s what Choundas has done here. My eyes raced my heart to the ending.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Thanks for the interview, Sean!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Matt Maki writes, teaches, edits, and freedom-fights in tumultuous Kyiv, Ukraine. He has served on the editorial staff of Passages North, on the poetry staff and as fiction editor for Black Warrior Review, and is currently Greatest Lakes Review‘s editor-in-chief and Flywheel Magazine‘s fiction editor. His work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including Dunes Review, The Way North (Wayne State University Press), and Tuscaloosa Runs This (Broken Futon Press). He was named a finalist in MAR‘s 2014 Fineline competition for his piece “How to Use a Map,” which appears in issue 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your story/poem/essay in 10 words or fewer.

A series of unexpected uses for a map.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This is my favorite piece. The late poet Craig Arnold attended my first public reading of it and generously shared his analysis of it during the Q&A, which made me particularly guard and care for it over the years. The original version was, in fact, ten pages long. Each time I performed it, I recognized areas of weakness that would be hacked off before the next performance. This final version combines the original last two sections. I cut this from the first paragraph/stanza immediately before submitting it to MAR; consider it a previously unreleased B-side.

“Gently lay the map on the table, face up, if you know which side the face is. There aren’t the typical eyes and nose to indicate the map’s face, nor a mouth for it to correct you. If one side of the map is completely blank, you are lucky since this is the ass and it is easy to tell the ass from the face. If both sides of the map are blank, you have been taken; it is a double-assed sheet of paper, not a map. The face is the side that is one complete picture. Do not spend time examining the non-face side of the map to determine if it is some other part of its anatomy as it is bashful, much like you were when you undressed in front of your first lover, and the map is liable to perspire some panic if you commence such an examination, which might be an unwelcome thing.”

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I gasped and told my non-writer boyfriend, who looked at me blankly, so I posted my news to Facebook where I got the ego-stroking I sought.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

Sincerely, this publication. I’ve been admiring MAR for the past twenty years, particularly the between-genre works it features as part of the Fineline competition and otherwise. I was deeply honored to be selected as a finalist for this contest and included in the special feature on cross-genre writing for its 35^th anniversary issue. If I weren’t included in this, I’d still be eagerly reading and loving all these pieces as a highlight of my year, so you can imagine how I feel about being included among them.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Not pushing myself enough to get my work published despite having a whole toolbox of routine, organization, and other techniques that I have shared with my students and has been effective in bringing them success. Do as I say, not as I do.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that involves writing.

I’m immune to writer’s block. I usually have more to say than I have time in a day, but even if I hit lean creative times, I have a daily practice based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way that gets me unstuck. I have moderated workshops utilizing this book, and it has always been inspiring to see participants unleash their inner writers/painters/photographers/whatever.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I admire Rebecca Foust’s “Dynamic Response of Multi-Layered Soil Media in the Frequency Domain” (page 137) for its ability to carry narrative across fragmentation and collage.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Yes! Here I am not far from my home at Maidan Nezhaleznosti, the site of the three-month long protest in Kyiv that eventually earned freedom from a corrupt, Putin-controlled puppet government, but which triggered Russia’s war on Ukraine for the past year. This place translates to “Independence Square” and is truly the heart of Ukraine.

Thanks for the interview, Matt!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor