Blog Posts

Favorites / Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Published on by Editorial Staff

I love Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem “They Flee from Me” and I find it so intriguing that I assigned it in every class I taught for many years.  “They flee from me who sometime did me seek.” Oh, well, who hasn’t felt that?  Ostracized again! He likens his courtly companions to deer, and they’re apt comparisons. I see a lot of deer. Bonus: it’s the first use of the term “newfangleness” in literature, which I thought was more newfangled than the 1500’s. Although he ends up jilted, he has made me love him. Link to They Flee from Me.

Favorites / David James

Published on by Editorial Staff

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg — Richard Hugo

Hugo was an early hero of mine. He still is. His poems are rich and thick with imagery, and they’re fun to read out loud. But he’s also a poet not afraid to journey close to the edge of sentimentality in his writing and then move away. To me, the very best poems, like this one, combine emotion with images, feeling with sensory details in a style that moves us when we read. It’s obvious that this little town, Philipsburg, triggers the poem for Hugo, but the writing takes us below the surface of the human condition, reaching toward truth.

– David James

Favorites / David Jibson

Published on by Editorial Staff

The People of the Other Village – Thomas Lux

This short poem by Thomas Lux, whom we sadly lost a couple of years ago, is one I like to read often. It is so much a poem for today and it expresses one of our least admirable human traits with just the right balance of truth and humor. His mantra “we do this, they do that” capsulizes perfectly how little we have changed in 10,000 years.

-David Jibson

Detroit Lit Magazine

Published on by Editorial Staff

A new online magazine edited by Robert Hunter features poetry and short fiction and is now accepting no-fee submissions. The inaugural issue is now available to read for free.

“I will read and respond to submissions quickly. I’ll publish the second volume when I have received enough quality writing to fill 20 or 30 pages. Submit work of any kind to detroitlitmag@gmail.com.

With my whole heart,

Robert Hunter”