Short-Story Month 2012: Day 9, Concerning Ghosts by Michael Stewart

"Fan" by Mike Schmid,
Used under CC license

"My ghosts move as trees age." 

National

Short

Story

Month 

Day 9.

                                          Selection.

                                                            "Concerning Ghosts" by 

Michael Stewart

Send Giants: Maurice Sendak Left Today

Photo by Michael M. Hughes, All Rights Reserved ,
used with photographer's permission

Send Giants:

An Elegy in 2012

May 8, 2012

Dear Mr. Sendak:

Please tell the lion that you care (even if you don't), and it will maybe let you come back. Speak very loudly because it's dark in there, and according to the newspapers, its mouth is shut tight. And this lion never gets sick when it eats. 


Or maybe we can send giants. They can shake you out. 

Then the newspapers can print a correction tomorrow, like they do and nobody catches the correction because they're not looking or don't even get the paper the next day and so they keep thinking the wrong thing the reporter wrote.  But I'll look for it. 

Your Friend,

Erin, age 5 30

*

From Pierre by
Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928-May 8, 2012)

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready." 

---Maurice Sendak  

NPR interview with Terri Gross

(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 8, Roots by Chadwick Redden

"Ghost Trees" by Rosino,
Used under a CC license

Welcome to Tuesday, the eighth day of National Short Story Month.  Today's selection was recently published in the literary journal red lightbulbs, an increasingly exciting location for new and interesting poetry and fiction:




"We drove ninety miles south to watch the lunar eclipse. Light pollution and cloud cover all the way down. In a field your shoelaces forgot their knots . . ."

"Roots" 

by Chadwick Redden
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 7, All the Anne Franks by Erik Hoel

"Lone Russian Bear" by jzool,
Used under CC license

She found today's selection for National Short Story Month a few years ago when she decided to nominate a story for the annual Million Writers Award and ran across this story in Strange Horizons:

"When the aliens came and cut the sky up into golden ribbons Dan Milestone ran inside to get his daughter Margaret and put her up on his shoulders in the front yard and told her that this was history and she told him to put her down because he was embarrassing her."

"All the Anne Franks" 

by Erik Hoel
(2009)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 6, The Juniper Tree

by Paleontour,
Used under CC license

My Mama She Kil't Me

My Father He Ate Me

Oh, What a Good Boy Am I!

It's Day 6 of National Short Story month, and today's selection is the folk-story, 

"The Juniper Tree"

The following version is from the 1875 collection, German Popular Stories, edited by Edgar Taylor.

Click to 

continue reading 

The Juniper Tree! 

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 5, The Brewsters by Laura Ellen Scott

Room with a View by Rick Kempel,
Used under CC license

"We always called that rusty metal shack the Brewster house."

In continuing the celebration of National Short Story Month, today's selected story is this linguistic beauty:

"The Brewsters" 

by Laura Ellen Scott, 

from her collection Curio
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 4, Diagnostic Drift by Michael Martone

Transparent by Kasia,
used under CC license

Since 1996, April has belonged to the poets.  But it has only been a few years, at least in her memory, that May has been unofficially officially declared National Short Story Month.

So, to celebrate the art of the short story, each day of May a story will be selected and posted at What She Might Think.

Since we're four days in, rather than catch up with four different stories, here's a lyrical short story in four parts:

 "Diagnostic Drift" by Michael Martone  

The End of National Poetry Month, 2012

Hyacinth Happiness by Lachlan Rogers. (CC)

We are at nearly the end of April, which means it's the end of this year's National Poetry Month.  


And, so, a bit of a medley to celebrate poetry month in a single shot, if you haven't already been celebrating. 


One passage like a poem, one poem, one poet, one excerpt.


A passage like a poem:

1) “Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”    —Maurice Sendak

A poem:
2) Eating Poetry by Mark Strand 

A poet:

3) Also, if you haven't read the Interview with Laura Read, a poet, then there's this, too.

An excerpt from a poem.

4)

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;	35
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,	40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.                                              (from The Wasteland by our man T.S. Eliot)

How the Sun Burns: Forthcoming in The Minnesota Review

Rock Quarry
by paparutzi (CC)

 The minnesota review has just accepted her story "How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble", which will be a story in her next book Midwest in Memoriam. 

The story is slated for Spring 2013 publication.

Cheers!

To Shift & Grit: New Review of The Floating Order

"It’s Pringle’s ability to get inside the mind of a child and see the adult world from their perspective that is the real strength of this collection. Another is the shifting nature of reality from this perspective."

Faye Through Glass
by Aislinn Ritchie (cc)

~writes John Kenny, in a new review of The Floating Order. Kenny is a writer, and co-editor of Dublin's Albedo One and Aeon Press. Please find the full review at his website.