The Mon Review's (Monongahela that is) Magazine Issue # 5 is out. In Issuu or Pdf here.
The Monongahela Review is a pdf literary magazine attempting to coalesce various voices that excel in expressing the truths and mysteries of life with great emotion and depth.
Editor
Luke Bartolomeo
Past/Present Staff
Justin McGeary
Jenny Pichura
Jessica Rudmin
Margaret Welsh
Zachary White
Jumbled Notes on Fire
Everything in art depends upon this, its varieties. Some say it is amorous passion. Others a suffering. Others the Spirit.
Sprouting expression—genius or madness or both. Perhaps the fleshing out of all other things it can said to be. Fire undergirds, a moving thing that never moves.
For this is what happens when the fire burns brightly and cannot be contained: the necessity to do what is present, right there in your mind to do, damming all other thought, wanting to flash out, lick everything to ash. Sprouting expression.
Part and parcel of the process.
A poem is a fire, a flickering thing that heats and disposes, melts away awareness: gets at everything but what the thing is. Burns away just to build up. Makes the mind the realest the thing, the images like figments and yet like flesh: moving in the mind is still movement; images created are from brains that jolt out life and blood to welcome them.
Stories: torches. Their fire elongates, make sure to burn every part clean through, endure long enough to explain. Their fire makes us see. Their replication is a reality: things are not lost in projecting who we are and what we see, what emanates from everything around us. Things are not lost: it is just expression cannot contain. And things spread like wild flames. Something burns beyond the fire that is burning.
And one bears it at the tip of a brush or a pen. Part and parcel of the process.
Come Fire: let us play with you.
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Notes on Contributors
Eric Arnold lives in Dallas, where he studies medicine. Two of his poems recently appeared in The Labletter and others are pending publication at New York Quarterly. His short fiction has appeared in Elimae, Pindeldyboz, and Monkey Bicycle.
Michael Baccam holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University where he served as an assistant managing editor and assistant fiction editor for Willow Springs.
Jade Blackwater is a writer and artist from the Pacific Northwest. She writes copy by day as the owner of the Brainripples creative consultancy. By night, Jade is a prolific poet and fiction writer who encourages others to pursue their own, unique voice. Find her at: www.brainripples.com.
Katie Cappello lives and works in a small farming town in Northern California.
She is the author of the collection Perpetual Care (2009) and A Classic Game of Murder, a forthcoming chapbook. Her work can be found in journals such as Boxcar Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Fourteen Hills, and Cave Wall.
Chris Crittenden teaches environmental ethics for the University of Maine and does much of his writing in a hut in spruce forest. A featured review of his work appears in the latest issue of Arsenic Lobster (20). He blogs as Owl Who Laughs.
Mason Brown DeHoog divides his time between his beloved central Philadelphia
and south-central Texas. He has work forthcoming in Berkeley Poetry Review.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical
studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.
Tray Drumhann’s work explores the dimensions and depth of human nature.
His goal is to communicate the personal and cultural dynamics that
condition how we view ourselves and others as well as how our individual
experiences condition such perception. Notable publications featuring Drumhann’s work include: The Pinch Journal, Switchback and The Emerson Review.
Cyndi Gacosta was born and raised in San Diego, California spending only a few years of her early childhood in Sorsogon, Philippines. She studied literature
at UC Santa Cruz.
Nels Hanson’s fiction has received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and a citation in its Joseph Henry Jackson competition. His stories
have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Long Story, Short Story, South Dakota Review, Starry Night Review, and other journals. Stories are currently in press at Caveat Lector, Ruminate Magazine, The Avatar Review, The Write Place at the Right Time, and the Overtime Chapbook Series at Blue Cubicle Press.
Ruth Josimovich has lived in New York City since 1978, but spent her childhood
and teenage years in Pittsburgh, walking in the woods and going to the Carnegie Library on Forbes Avenue. She now teaches literature and writing at School of Visual Arts, a four-year arts college in New York.
Sergio Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His poetry has appeared in over 200 online and print journals. He has been recently published, or his poems are forthcoming in: The Battered Suitcase, Zygote in my Coffee, Right Hand Pointing, Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing, Writers’ Bloc and Temenos: Central Michigan University’s Literary Journal. Flutter Press published his chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009).
Mary Packett spent her childhood equally in suburbia and the countryside. To this she directly relates her indecisiveness. The most important thing she ever learned was from her grandmother: how to float in water. Scared to ever forget anything, as a child she started taking photos of what she did daily, and never looked back. Mary now resides in Brooklyn and by day works as an assistant photo rep. She is still focusing on her own projects while not at the office.
Tania Runyan’s chapbook, Delicious Air, was published by Finishing Line Press and awarded the 2007 Book of the Year citation by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. In 2011, her full-length collection of poetry will be released by WordFarm. Her poems have also appeared in several journals and anthologies, such as Poetry, The Christian Century, Atlanta Review, Willow Springs, Indiana Review, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare.
Joel Solonche is coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). His work has been appearing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the 1970s. He teaches at Orange County Community College in Middletown,
New York.
Yvonne Valenza graduated with a BFA in 2006 from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and concentrated in Printmaking. Most of her work takes on relationships: the struggle of bondage and freedom between one another, with God, and with the self. An integral part of processing relationships this way is discerning what is known, tangible, or visible, and what unknown, mysterious, or invisible. What we see, how we act in our relationships with people and the world around us is wound up in intangible variables such as history, spirituality within and without, and the way we think and feel. Yvonne is married and lives with her husband, two cats, and two turtles in Philadelphia.
Brian Wilkins is the editor of Scarab, a literary magazine for the iPhone. He holds a MFA in Poetry from the University of New Hampshire. His work is available or forthcoming in Two Review, Permafrost, Pure Francis, and Sententia.
Changming Yuan authored several books before emigrating out of China and currently teaches writing in Vancouver. Yuan’s poem have appeared in Barrow
Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, the London Magazine and nearly 200 other literary publications worldwide. His debut collection (Chansons of a Chinaman) and monograph (Politics and Poetics) were both released recently, and he has had work nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
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The Pittsburgh Art Blog
The Pittsburgh Art Blog features selected pittsburgh artists and upcoming exhibits with photos from the artists and galleries. since the major press outlets do not go beyond a directory listing of exhibits, blogs are needed to promote pittsburgh artists and their work. the blog also calls attention to the inferiority complex of pittsburgh art and how it's perpetuated by the major players in town. Started on August 20, 2007.pittsburgh area galleries and art venues are listed at the sister site www.PghGalleries.com.the blog and website are volunteer projects from fine art photographer and pittsburgh art advocate rick byerly, www.RickByerly.com.
