Better Than Starbucks January 2020

By Better Than Starbucks

The Interview: Sarah Ruden by AM Juster & Five Poems. Featured Poems: Kathryn Jacobs, Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich, Adaobi Chilekezi, John Yohe, & Michael R. Burch. Free Verse: J. Tarwood, Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich, Sheree La Puma, Mary Ryan Wineberg, and more. Haiku: Nishant Verma, Hifsa Ashraf, Harris Coverley, Barbara Shapiro, and more. Sonnet Contest 2019: Tara Campbell, Sean Corbitt, Barbara Loots, Frank Osen, and more. Formal Poetry: Richard Wakefield, John Beaton, David W. Landrum, Tom Merrill, and more. Free Verse: Doug Asper, AM Roselli, Susan Richardson, and more. Poetry Translations: Peter Moltoni and Michael R. Burch. International Poetry: Kushal Poddar, Ellen Chia, Lucia Daramus, and more. African Poetry Aideloje Joshua, Nurudeen Ibrahim, Obinna Chilekezi, and more. Poetry Unplugged: John Riley, Mary Crane Fahey, Steve Denehan, and more. Experimental & Form Poetry: Kristina Robertson, and more. Fiction: Andrea Marcusa, Richard Risemberg, and Tobi Alfier. Better Than Fiction!: Mary Malleck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781794836594

Book preview

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Copyright

Copyright © by Better Than Starbucks. All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Contributing authors retain copyright to their works.

First Printing: ISBN 978-1-79483-659-4

Editor in Chief Vera Ignatowitsch

Founder & Publisher Anthony Watkins

Cover Image:

Photo by Josh Hild

https://www.joshhild.com

Five Featured Poems

Editor’s Choice

Formal Poetry

Unbroken

The bus screamed, you could hear it breaking. But

Dan couldn’t find a single yellow piece,

and no one else was worried. So maybe

you have to figure out what people mean;

sometimes they just break inside. And Dan thinks

that school-busses are foolhardy like that,

because they don’t give up on people. They

are sturdier than human beings seem,

and careful with the children, even when

they know it’s going to hurt; that’s why they hiss,

anticipating. Then the long slow squeal

of sliding into base on scabby knees

and it’s as bad as you expected but

at least it’s over. So when busses break

you have to figure out what people mean;

they’re sturdier than human beings seem.

Kathryn Jacobs is a poet, professor, and editor of The Road Not Taken. Her fifth book, Wedged Elephant, was published by Kelsay Press.

Publisher’s Choice

Free Verse

The Beggar

Pantyhose, little ones like stars,

          black fishnet.

When money ran out, we wanted to go to Mars,

          with vapid inhalations;

all night ticks in my head.

          The seaman asked

was I going dead?

Beautiful son, because I can’t hear you,

          a mirror hides on the wall made of straw;

the black flies fall from the sky too—

          like pennies from heaven drowning in icicles,

rattling the beggar on the corner,

          waiting like a first grader

on a motorcycle,

          ready to bound outward

into the snowy sand

          like a blind man, after removing his glass eye.

My lovely bright spirit, show me your sweet, sticky hands;

          fear the dead not in this life, but let them be afraid for you

sparkly one, whose great cat is dancing in absence tonight, so bye.

Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich authored Opening the Black Ovule Gate and We Are Beautiful like Snowflakes. Her poems have appeared in DASH, Nothing Substantial Literary Magazine, The Chaffey Review, and more. She mentored Prisoners at Pen America and received a MVICW Fellowship in 2016.

Editor’s Choice

African Poetry

Rain

As I watch the sky

Darken, it becomes cloudy

With the windy wind blowing

Furiously, and what next??

Rain!

Pitta, patta, pitta, pitta

On my roof as it rains

Beautiful tears of the sky

Washing away the dusts,

Washing away sorrows

The rain

Cooling off the day,

Putting smiles on the crops

Yes the rain is here.

It is for our joy.

Adaobi Chilekezi is the 14-year-old daughter of the Nigerian poet Obinna Chilekezi. An aspiring writer, she presently attends the high school in Lagos, Nigeria.

Publisher’s Choice

Experimental Poetry

jp pantyhose pics

or we could move to Kyoto and teach english

and climb Mt. Fuji like little snails

that is to say—slowly, slowly

or go farther north and soak in hot springs

w/the monkeys who know how to use coins

to buy bags of edamame chips

the point being being anywhere but here

where we have nothing but each other

and endless student loans to pay off

because college was so important

because they told us the average college graduate

makes an extra million dollars over her lifetime

than someone who just works at WalMart

but at least the person at WalMart doesn’t owe 50,000 dollars

because we studied humanities

and what being human means

which is to live poor and die if ethically

or live rich and die and screw everyone else

including your children on anti-depressants

the point being being dead eventually and soon

tho wouldn’t having a satisfying sexual life be interesting?

if we could afford all the sex toys we really wanted?

                                                or therapy?

                                                            or even a ticket to Japan?

Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe grew up in Michigan and lives in Oregon. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, deckhand/oiler, bike messenger, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. He is fiction editor for Deep Wild Journal. His website is www.johnyohe.com.

Publisher’s Choice

Poetry Translations

The Beggar’s Song

Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Michael Burch

I live outside your gates,

exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;

sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear

in my right palm;

then when I speak my voice sounds strange,

alien . . .

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:

mine or yours.

I implore a trifle;

the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes

and my face disappears;

there it lies heavy in my hands

looking peaceful, unafraid,

so that no one would ever think

I have no place to lay my head.

Michael R. Burch’s poems and translations have appeared in hundreds of literary journals. He also edits www.thehypertexts.com and has served as guest editor of international poetry and translations for Better Than Starbucks.

Original and more in Poetry Translations

The Interview January 2020

The Interview with Sarah Ruden

by A.M. Juster

Sarah Ruden, a Quaker with a PhD in classical philology from Harvard and an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, is a distinguished poet, translator, essayist, and popularizer of Biblical linguistics. She is perhaps best known for being the first woman to translate Vergil’s Aeneid into English. She has also translated Augustine, Aristophanes, and other canonical authors. She is now translating the Gospels.

AMJ: Last year Emily Wilson seemed to catch less flak for translating Homer’s Odyssey into blank verse than you did when you translated the Aeneid into blank verse a decade ago. In fact, I vividly recall two senior Ivy League classicists trying to shout you down when you were defending your use of iambic pentameter at Boston University.

What has changed and what hasn’t changed from 2008 to 2019?

Are younger classicists less doctrinaire about translation and prosody than those who came of age in the sixties?

SR: Let me start from the last of these questions. If we’re talking about actual classicists of that generation (or earlier) as translators, there’s practically no one to cite. A qualified contempt for translation and a certain obtuseness were the norm.