Kallisto Gaia Press is proud to announce Natalia Treviño has chosen Poetry Submission Guidelines by Yiskah Rosenfeld as the Runner-Up for the 2019 Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. Ms. Treviño had this to say about the poem.
I first saw “Poetry Submission Guidelines,” thinking they were misplaced in my packet, and I quickly realized I was in the hands of another very wise and skilled poet. I selected this poem for Honorable Mention with a big thank you to the poet because it is much more than a poem describing painful and elusive language used to describe such guidelines, giving aspiring poets and readers aspiring to “get” poetry something honest, imaginative, and unforgettable. Much like Billy Collins’ poem, “Introduction to Poetry” this poem helps readers see poems as alive, as beings capable of their own human dignity, capably also of envy, human need, reading to each other at night, and of “being students of blood and wind/ before they graduate to paper.” Sigh. It is hard to articulate the space between the poem and the poet, and this poem breathes life into that very tiny space.
Poetry Submission Guidelines
they should be the color of a loved one’s shadow
printed on a clear sky at dusk
etched and chiseled from stone
each word a day’s work
they should be students of blood and wind
before they graduate to paper
they should be edible
they should read themselves to each other at night
rub off when pressed page to page
run like a stampede of mice
or milk river between stanzas
they should envy our three-dimensional shapes
need us as much as we need them
let their corners grow wild
overgrown with white moss
as our mouths will one day be quieted
belonging to the damp earth
as they never belonged in us
they should unknot themselves
word by tangled word
and let us down
tenderly down
tenderly
in the
end
Yiskah Rosenfeld balances solo parenting of her 9-year-old daughter with teaching workshops on spirituality, feminism, and creativity around the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds an MFA in poetry from Mills College and an MA in jurisprudence and social policy from UC Berkeley. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry awards include the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, the Reuben Rose Memorial Award, and the 2019 Jeff Marks Contest Honorable Mention. Her manuscript was a top five finalist for the Wheelbarrow Prize through Michigan State University. Yiskah has taught poetry at Temple University and the Brandeis Collegiate Institute, and launched a writing program for youth in underserved communities through the SF Arts Commission.
