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As you know, we’ve been relatively quiet on the blog front lately, and for this we apologize; our “blog staff” has been away on “business.”
So you ask: What’s new? The answer: A lot of things.
First on the list, we’ve decided to add an “Interview” section; every issue an artist of our choosing will be interviewed, their work displayed. For those of you seeking fame and recognition, this couldn’t be a better opportunity.
We have reorganized the website – everything should be easy to navigate now. We also added a “Submit” page. Find it here.
Last, we’re coming out with our 8th ISSUE!!! – We’ll keep you posted.
We are moving into the final month before we go to print with the Spring quarter. It goes without saying that we’re stoked about the stuff we’ve gotten. We’ve received some excellent poetry submissions, and our visual arts section is looking strong. In fact, we’ve been thoroughly surprised over the last few quarters by how big a part of our publication visual art has become; honestly, it wasn’t something that factored heavily into our initial plan for what the magazine would publish. We tried it out early on, as we kept receiving submissions even though we hadn’t made them an intrinsic part of our sales pitch. No matter. The artists made their voices heard. Sometimes these undertakings have awesome, if unintended, consequences.
Of course, we believe you can never have too much of a good thing. We’d love to see more submissions, whether visual art, poetry, or prose, for our Spring Quarter. I’m hoping you arts-folks keep on sending your work. The Spring edition ought to be as vibrant, colorful, and fresh as the season it represents.
The primary purpose of this blog is to link our readers to one another, and to give them a chance to follow us more regularly than a quarterly publication allows. Nick has been doing a great job with the site updates, which I’m sure some of you are interested in.
However, we also started this blog to share with our readers articles, links, and literary news… Here are a few links I thought our readers might find interesting:
Article: “Literature for the Imminently Dead”
Source: Rum and Monkey (a British humor site)
Summary/ Highlights: Odd British fellow summarizes famous literature for the dying i.e. those without much time to read… which is one way to look at it, I guess. The author writes that what one in this unfortunate state (dying, and with little knowledge of the classics of Western literature, but the desire to experience it) wants “is some means of sampling the cream of the crop without reading, or indeed encountering at all, tedious quantities of unnecessary words.” His solution to the dilemma…. Great Books, summarized in five words or less. For example:
“ROMEO AND JULIET (William Shakespeare)
Hormones conquer Verona. Cast expire.”
Take a peek at the rest. It’s good stuff.
http://rumandmonkey.com/articles/207/
Article: “Coming of Age, Going to Pieces”
Source: The New York Times
Summary/ Highlights: This link leads to a more serious work, a 1985 New York Times ‘Books’ article by minimalist author Raymond Carver. The article deals with the literary influence of Ernest Hemingway on the school of minimalism, and on American literature and culture itself. Carver writes, “Who was this man – by his own admission, ”a son of a bitch” – whose novels and books of short stories changed forever the way fiction was written and, for a time, even the way people thought about themselves?”
This following link is to one of my favorite literary essays of all time; George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language.’ It was published in 1946 in the journal Horizon, a British literary magazine in publication in London between 1940 and 1949. In the article, Orwell calls for a clearer and more straight-forward use of language instead of the willfully misleading politicized mode of speech and writing we so often find ourselves falling into. Unsure of what I mean? I’ll let Orwell explain it:
“I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one.”
I side with Orwell; the first is by far a more evocative, and straight-forward, use of the English language.
Article: ‘Politics and the English Language’
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
I hope these links get the attention they deserve. I believe all three highlight some of the intrinsic beauty and love of language which we all share. There’s a bit of humor, a bit of introspection, and a bit of objectivity in each of them.
I also invite readers to share their own links. You can share them in the comments section below, or send some to us at submit@hcquarterly.com We’ll try to publish as many submitted links as we can in upcoming posts on this blog.
Also, the newest edition of Hidden City Quarterly will be available on our website on January 31st, 2010. We are still accepting submissions, both for this upcoming Quarter, and those after. Poetry, Prose, and Graphic/Visual Art. Visit http://hcquarterly.com/howtosubmit.html for more information.
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