Harp & Altar
POETRY
Jessica Baran is assistant director of the White Flag Projects in St. Louis and the art writer for the Riverfront Times. Her first book of poems, Remains To Be Used, is forthcoming this winter from Apostrophe Books.  

Roseanne Carrara lives and writes in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of A Newer Wilderness (Insomniac Press, 2007), from which the poems in this issue have been selected. She is at work completing a novel entitled The Week in Radio; drafting a second collection of poems, Spectral Evidence; and, with her husband, Blaise Moritz, producing an English translation of Silènces, the poems of the philosopher and anarchist Jacques Ellul.  

Andy Fitch is an assistant professor in the University of Wyoming’s MFA program. He is the author (along with Jon Cotner) of Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse). His chapbook Island is forthcoming from The Song Cave, and his critical study Not Intelligent, but Smart: Rethinking Joe Brainard is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press. The audio recording from which Island derives has been published in a special issue of TextSound.
 

Eileen G’Sell teaches at Ellis University and Washington University in St. Louis, where she serves as publications editor at the Kemper Art Museum. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in Ninth Letter, Super Arrow, Zone 3, and Boston Review.
 

Amy King’s most recent books are Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox) and the forthcoming I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press), and she is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet Ron Padgett. She teaches English and creative writing at SUNY NCC, works with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and co-edits Esque with Ana Bozicevic and Poets for Living Waters with Heidi Lynn Staples. Please visit amyking.org for more.
 

Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Webster's Dictionary of American Authors, HarperCollins Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, and Encyclopedia Britannica, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.
 

Jesse Lambert was born in Hudson, NY, and received an MFA from Hunter College. He has exhibited his work at eyewash@SupremeTrading and Klaus Von Nichtssagend in Brooklyn, White Columns in New York, Miller Block Gallery and Boston Center for the Arts in Boston, and Joseloff Gallery and Artspace in Connecticut, among other venues. He lives in Jackson Heights, NY, and works in Long Island City. More images can be seen at www.jesselambert.net.  

Lawrence Mark Lane’s writing has appeared in Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction, Double Room, New Orleans Review, and Oxford American, among others. He lives in Missoula, Montana.  

Jesse Lichtenstein
lives in Oregon where he writes poetry, fiction, journalism, and screenplays (and helps run the Loggernaut Reading Series). His poems appear in Denver Quarterly, Paris Review, Diagram, EOAGH, Gulf Coast, Octopus, Boston Review, and other journals.
 

Dan Magers is founder and co-editor of the online poetry magazine Sink Review and runs the chapbook press Immaculate Disciples. He has poems published or forthcoming in Sixth Finch, Eleven Eleven, and Forklift, Ohio, among other places. A regular contributor of book reviews at New Pages, he lives in Brooklyn.
 

Patrick Morrissey’s chapbook Transparency was published last year by Cannibal Books and his poetry and criticism have appeared in previous issues of Harp & Altar. He lives in New York.
 

The American novelist and critic Charles Newman (1938–2006) was raised in the Midwest and taught for many years at Northwestern University, where he founded the literary magazine TriQuarterly, and Washington University in St. Louis. His books include The Post-Modern Aura (Northwestern University Press, 1985), White Jazz (Dial Press, 1984), and In Partial Disgrace, forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press.
 

Michael Newton’s gallery reviews appear regularly in Harp & Altar.
 

Leslie Patron lives and writes in Providence, RI, where she received her MFA in literary arts at Brown University. Recent poems and stories have been published in Dewclaw, OCHO, and Parthenon West Review. The work in this issue comes from a recently completed manuscript entitled The SeaMaids, a collaborative work with illustrator Margaret Powers. Her hometown is San Jose, Calif.


Lauren Russell is the author of the chapbook The Empty-Handed Messenger (Goodbye Better). Her critical writing has appeared in Scapegoat Review, and recent poems are forthcoming from Eleven Eleven. She grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Neruda.


Rob Stephenson is the author of Passes Through (FC2). He lives in Queens, NY. Visit rawbe.com.  

Stephen Sturgeon’s first poetry collection, Trees of the Twentieth Century, will be published by Dark Sky Books early in 2011. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Cannibal, Eyewear, Harvard Review, Jacket, Open Letters Monthly, Typo, and other journals. He is the editor of Fulcrum: an Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics.
 

G.C. Waldrep's fourth collection, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts—in collaboration with John Gallaher—is due out from BOA Editions in April 2011.  He has work in recent or forthcoming issues of American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Nation, and other journals. He lives in Lewisburg, Pa., and teaches at Bucknell University.
 
Sunday
Eileen G'Sell

My hair grew very short and nobody

recognized me. My wife walked out of the forest

and could not recall my name.

 

Let’s call her Marina, cut

to commercial, let everyone relax

in the limbs for a spell.

 

This means winter

has ended at last. A thousand little answers

in line for a smile.

 

What decadence cracks

with the back of its teeth

cannot be made to hearten you.

 

But the fact is, it was a beautiful time.

Petals shed from my brand new shirt

left patterns all around us.