Creative Nonfiction

IN RELATION TO THE NATURAL WORLD …

Ragazine’s creative nonfiction section brings together the kind of writing I like most:  grounded, compelling first-person narration set in a concrete time and place that reflects thematically some way on the human relation to the natural world and the ways we’ve transformed that world, and in the process, transformed ourselves.  Creative nonfiction is an expansive genre that spans narrative history, literary journalism, narrative nonfiction, the personal essay, memoir, and probably many other sub-categories I’m forgetting. The kind of writing I welcome you to submit to Ragazine should focus on the previously mentioned themes in some broad sense — what is the meaning of contemporary lives and, although they might seem to be detached from nature in our highly mediated, technologically-driven world of the hyper-real, how are they nonetheless grounded in that material reality that surrounds, supports, and enables us?

FICTION 

The Fiction Editor at Ragazine welcomes your prose and will work diligently and honestly in reading (and sometimes offering critiques of) your work.

We’re like work that will sit well on the screen. Take a moment, please, to decide for yourself what this means. We can say, for example, that we’d like work to “pop,” to be “imaginative,” “sharp,” “tight,” etc., but we’d possibly be limiting the variety of work that we love to publish. Simply put: Send us your best work that is completely revised and well-edited .

Guidelines:

• Submit no more than one piece at a time; each submitted piece should be no more than 4,000 words, although most of what we publish falls in the 1,500 to 3,000 range. Allow 1-3 months for a response. Feel free to query after 3 months. Adherence to standard submission formatting is appreciated. 
• We do not accept submissions via postal mail.

World/Travel Guidelines:

Editor is Chelsea Leigh Horne

We are looking for pieces that capture the essence of a place through explorations of location, people, culture, or a distinct something else that feels intrinsic and integral to the world you are describing. Most importantly, we are looking for an informed and perceptive point/observation/commentary about this locale. While this is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, some topics of interest include (alphabetically): arts, culture, economic, environmental, historical, political, and social themes and impressions.

In short, paint us a portrait and show us where you have traveled by immersing and grounding your reader in the setting and atmosphere. Then tell us why you needed to share and write about it. If something about a place hooked you, there is a good chance it will hook our readership too. For this reason, we highly encourage you to include your original photos (with credits to you) so that they might help frame your piece.

Note: For this section, we are usually more interested in locations outside the United States. However, if you feel that you have a travel piece situated within the U.S. that you believe tells a compelling story, you may still submit to this section.

Guidelines:
• Submit only one piece at a time.
• Each submitted piece should be between 1500 and 3000 words.
• Please follow Ragazine’s general prose formatting guidelines.
• For each included photo, please include a brief 1-2 sentence caption that describes the photo, and if necessary, its relation to your piece.
• We do not accept pieces previously published online or in print.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Please use SUBMITTABLE.

CONGRATULATIONS:

To Renee D’Aoust, whose story “The Line of No Trees” was recognized as NOTABLE by and among Best American Essays… 2016 edition. Read it here: https://www.ragazine.cc/2015/11/renee-daoustcreative-nonfiction/

To Alexis Rhone Fancher, for her poem, “When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:” … 2016 edition. Read it here:  https://www.ragazine.cc/2015/01/alexis-rhone-fancher-poetry/

To Ginger Liu, who received her Master’s Degree from Manchester University, Manchester England, in 2017

To Paul Sohar, on his recent recognitions: “The Wayward Orchard”, a Wordrunner Press Prize winner chapbook (2011).  First prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest and a second prize from Rhode Island Writers Circle prose contest (2014).  Translation prizes: Irodalmi Jelen Translation Prize (2014),  Tóth Árpád Translation Prize and the Janus Pannonius Lifetime Achievement Award (both in 2016, Budapest, Hungary).

BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES:

See Sample Book Review below for correct Ragazine formatting! [Note: reviews not formatted like the sample review below will not be included in Ragazine.] Let’s be clear, it isn’t that your review isn’t worthy; it’s that we don’t have time to gather all pertinent information and then configure it into the proper format. Thank you for understanding. We WANT to hear from you!

If you review good books (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.), send 250, 500, 750, 1,000, 1,500 words or so (previously unpublished reviews, including blogs) reviews of said books for consideration for Ragazine book reviews. Please include with your review the following info:

• Total word count of review
• jpeg of book front cover
• Book author, book title, and year of publication
• Publisher’s name and address and/or website. In other words, how/where to order book
• ISBN #
• Book size, cover type (cloth or paperback), number of pages, retail price. For example:

6” x 9”, paperback, 77 pages ($14.95)

• Please email reviews in 12 point Times New Roman double spaced with 1” margins to:
• Short 50 word or so bio of reviewer
• NOTE: Books in all genres welcome: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Alan Britt

Book Review Editor

Ragazine

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BOOK REVIEW (635 words)

Jacques Dupin
Of Flies and Monkeys (2012)
(Translated by John Taylor)
The Bitter Oleander Press
http://www.bitteroleander.com/books.html
ISBN: 978-0-9786335-4-7
(6” x 9”, paperback, 285 pages ($24.00)

When Monkeys Fly
Review by Alan Britt

Paul B. Roth is not only a poet, but also a publisher of fine poetry books. Of Flies and Monkeys by the late great French poet, Jacques Dupin, is a recent gem from Roth’s Bitter Oleander Press. Dupin’s 285 page book, which contains French and English texts, is eloquently translated by John Taylor. Dupin, although occasionally translated into English, has been somewhat overlooked by US poets and critics. He is, however, clearly a giant of his generation in France. Along with contemporaries, Yves Bonnefoy, André du Bouchet and Philippe Jaccottet, Dupin continues the amazing run of super poets in France that stretches back generations. Silly to argue who is the greatest poet among a group of super poets, but suffice it to say that Dupin is near the head of the pack. His poems, as evidenced by John Taylor’s splendid translations, are many things at once: heady, earthy, and joyously imaginative. His imagery often echoes Breton, Desnos, Eluard, and at times, even Baudelaire. Take, for example, the following from his book length poem, “Mothers”: 

The unadulterated pleasure. Of being blind. Of smelling her. A mixture of stench and
soul. With last words. Written in chalk. Planted between flesh and fingernail. The word
that rouses the widowing meadow, the white assonated pebbles, the high grass of the
shore…

Perhaps challenging to readers of English plain language poetry, Dupin’s verses require concentration and at least some cultivation of imagination. In his introduction, John Taylor says the following about reading Dupin for the first time:

Upon a first reading of several of Dupin’s volumes in a row, the references to the
semiotic notion of a “sign” per se as well as the reiteration of specific signs can actually
seem to constitute a sort of hermetic personal symbolism. Yet “symbolism” is not really
the right term, even as the apparent autobiographical allusions (such as béquille,
“crutch”) at once move the reader and perhaps deceive him. Hardly fixed or static,
these signs—represented by key words often suggesting pre-conceptual sensate or
cognitive experience—are strangely prismatic, often partly indeterminate.

With Dupin, the challenge is supremely rewarding, even if at times a little shocking. From the book length title poem, Dupin offers the following:

The panting blue pinks
petilential
monkey haunch

make the stained-glass light
of your “soul” eaten by flies

nothing—

nothing—unless
the bottom
of the dead gods’
goiters
and again,
Meaninglessness as a watermark
in the thickness of the tongue—

excess meaninglessness vaporizes meaninglessness

it loathes this theater
it flows, a self-murderer, the liquid manure

of any naked writing

aspiring to mortality

by absorbing the magnifying glass
and cracking
the crystalline lens…

a combustion of flies
a cloudery of monkeys

deep within the party-
wall.

Dupin died last year at 85 at his home in Paris. One of the great poets of his generation, he will be sorely missed. Dupin’s New York Times obituary reads,

“Mr. Dupin was for a long time one of the directors of the renowned Galerie Maeght
in Paris, which represented Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Francis
Bacon, Wassily Kandinsky and other modern artists. His poetry, which has been
described as intentionally ambiguous, emerged in a stark postwar period of re-
evaluation at all levels of French society, art included. “It’s succinct, laconic,
impersonal,” said Mary Ann Caws, a professor of French literature at the City
University of New York. In some ways, she added, Mr. Dupin’s poetry was the opposite
of Mr. Dupin himself. “I knew him as a friend,” she said, “and he was an awfully decent
and warm man.

Of Flies and Monkeys comes highly recommended. Do yourself a favor, pick up a copy and delight in the superb imagination of one of the 20^th and 21^st centuries most gifted poets.

BIO: Alan Britt is the Book Review Editor for Ragazine. He has published poems and flash fiction nationally and internationally, along with 17 books of poetry. His review for the Library of Congress can be accessed at http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3