The story is fascinating, but the prose is somewhat transparent and overwrought in places. The writing is definitely a means to an end but not an end in itself. The book is not about the way it is told, but what is told... juliawendell.substack.com/p/review-of-...

If you're one of our authors and are planning a transition please let us know so we can change your name and gender in your online bio.

We don't need no point of view. We don't need no tense control. No dark star chasm in the class room...

Something is beginning to worry me about how we refer to The Speaker in a poem. It puts words on a higher level than action, or motion. I wish we could call her The Mover. The Doer. The Engager.

"I had a dream with symbolism so transparent that it makes me want to write a scathing review of my own unconscious." (Robin Meyer, poet, translator)

Crane's 1895 Red Badge book is a good example of cinematic writing (when descriptive nouns become sentient), but before there was actual cinema: "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."

Lights. Camera. Inaction.

Characters are people. They do shit for no reason. Not everything they do has to be explained. (Jessica Bonder)

"The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.” Edwin Arlington Robinson

Plot points are not plot

I like to know whether someone is the kind of person who eats broccoli before I knew whether she's been to hell and back. A teaspoon of portraiture, all I'm saying.

A sonnet is only the expectation of a sonnet, whether or not a sonnet 'actually' happens.

Not sure about people who say, "That's hilarious," instead of actually laughing. That's what we want in your poems, actual out loud laughing and singing. Come rave with us.

Is that a single line or is it a half-couplet?

C. I. Marshall reviews Davide Dodd Lee's The Bay, out from @broadstone16.bsky.social freestatereview.com/2025/09/03/a...

All my poems are about you. The "I" is just a mask.

If you're a right handed poet try writing a poem with your left hand now and then just to use the other side of your head.

A coffin lined with memory foam. That too much to ask of a poem?

Always hearing in workshops that an author should trust the reader but I never hear how readers need to trust the author.

“She was so tired of the old way of telling stories, all those too worn narrative paths, the familiar plot thickets, the fat social novels. She needed something messier, something sharper, something like a bomb going off.” Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies, but also what we're looking for.

Actually take all these turns and swerves somewhere or it's just a merry go round

New poem up @galileopress.bsky.social freestatereview.com/2025/07/08/r...

Having pub credits in your bio is cool but one reason we started this journal is that we didn't like anything else out there

Van Gogh painted a painting a day for the ten years that he painted. He sold one painting in his lifetime. Keep writing. Keep at it.

"All around you is dialogue already perfectly written. All you have to do is listen. It's actually pretty amazing." (Jessica Bonder)

"If you're an instructor, smol press lit is an excellent weapon to wield against ChatGPT, since the chatbot can't make arguments about stories that aren't canonical." (Kathy Pratt).

Do playlists work the other way? Do musicians have 'read' lists to go with each song?

If everyone knows who is behind the mask then why are you wearing a mask?

What do our sign-offs mean? "Sincerely" = you're earnest, I'm earnest. Here we are being earnest. Things could not possibly be more earnest. "Kindly" = please o please please o please come back

The 'draft' folder is your friend

Waking up, feeling like a compound sentence gone awry

Today's food fight in the cafeteria: If you write a memoir do you need to write a bio?

what kind of poem to send us? One that's complete without an end.

LOL sounds like a lit mag-- "In February 1977, Sex Pistols' manager McLaren announced that Glen Matlock had been "thrown out of the band" because "he liked the Beatles", and that he had been replaced by Sid Vicious."

When someone begins a revelation by saying "Full disclosure:..." I become generally suspicious it's only a partial one.

@carolynroliver.bsky.social is in the bubbler freestatereview.com/2024/12/21/m...

"I want to be seen, but I don't want to be watched."

Two questions: What makes a poem a poem? And, what makes a dog a dog. Answer: the wolf.

what a writer needs to write in order to write a difficult personal story is not always what a reader needs to read in order to feel engaged with it. The first draft is to protect yourself. The second is to free yourself. The third is to draw the reader in. The fourth is to free the reader.

Smart interview--2 authors on each other's books--Anna Mantzaris and Jeff Alessandrelli writeordiemag.com/author-inter...

Wild poem by Quebec author Mary Dean Lee in @hamiltonstone.bsky.social www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr52poetry....

"she tries to connect with me by slamming the door to the room where I’m teaching, over and over" --Linda Lamenza is in the Bubbler. Check it out @wrath-bearing-tree.bsky.social freestatereview.com/2025/05/22/t...

"writing is not publishing— it’s a way to live in the world. It’s watching, observing, noticing. I have to be a noticer. It’s how I am present in my own life. That has to be the point and the reward." brevity.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/s...

Resolution is cool but what if your ending gives a resolution to a tension that wasn't completely clear leading up to it, but was nonetheless engrossing? Answer: stick a knife into it and if it pulls out wet give it five more mins at 350 degrees.

Giving two images feels binary, but giving three images feels like "image stacking." How is it possible to describe anything??

Abstract phrasing is a chord, concrete phrasing is a note. You need both to make a song. Everything else is a light show and a fog machine.

Not all of our contributors use keyboards to write poems. Whatever is best for you is cool.

The thing to always remember about poetry: it can take ten years to write a book that should only take an hour to read. Be at peace with that idea.