LAR’s 2011 Pushcart Prize Nominations

Each fall, it’s our pleasure to select six pieces from our publication year to nominate for the Pushcart Prize. For our 2011 issues, we have chosen to nominate the following authors for their outstanding work:

Poetry:

Tim Kahl, for “Cello Suite,” Issue 9

James E. Allman Jr., for “Corpus Delicti,” Issue 10

Nonfiction:

Rick Kempa, for “Not at all Like Despair,” Issue 9

Melita Schaum, for “Constellations,” Issue 9

Fiction:

Ryan Call, for “The Walker Circulation,” Issue 9

Manuel Martinez, for “Six Hours Before the End,” Issue 10

Notes from the editors on their selections:

Tim Kahl reminds us just how good more formally constructed poems can truly be. The quality of craftsmanship and powerful use of language offer a commanding presence. Though we often see and print poems broken into sections, rarely do we see them so well-crafted and categorized with such purpose. Most importantly, the images and meaning in “Cello Suite” so beautifully echo the musical qualities of a single instrument suite. Staccato notes, lyrical phrasing, and fluidity of movement throughout the poem had us, as editors, stopping in our tracks to read and listen.

Though LAR does not often publish the more experimental forms of poetry, we were enchanted James Allman’s “Corpus Delicti” and the notably sharp, tight-fitting corners of both the poems’ lines and the author’s wit. Form, thought and rhythm come together to make a strikingly vivid and at times even chaotic masterpiece. The combination of raw, visercal details and intellectual accuracy makes this poem fodder for much haunting thought long after the page has turned. Not for the lighthearted and not for the novice, “Corpus Delicti” embodies exactly what contemporary poetry should be: powerful, well-crafted, and smart.

–Tanya Chernov, Poetry Editor

Rick Kempa’s “Not at All Like Despair” walks lightly around it’s subject, just as the friends in the essay walk around the ivy planter they’re examining. The essay’s substance echoes its style; its tone quiet and matter-of-fact, employing a lyrical simplicity to describe a tragedy without despair, and using the power of the form to share a personal, one-of-a-kind perspective, revealing vast amounts of character detail in very few words; each word chosen with precision and humble grace.

In Melita Schaum’s “Constellations,” the structure supports the theme. Diagramming the contemporary essay, the piece speaks the language of poetry, leaping from thought to scene to image; invoking quantum mechanics, sex, Beethoven, the tides, and more. Details resonate, imagery haunts, and the segments flow into one another in both logical and surprising ways. In the end, the piece achieves its metaphor, inviting the reader to consider “those imagined connections between points of light … the points between people or moments, lines drawn or imagined.”

–Ann Beman, Nonfiction Editor

Ryan Call’s “The Walker Circulation” is one of those unforgettable pieces of fiction in which the one must pause frequently for the mind to catch up with the cascade of fantastic ideas: “People had only recently begun to carry about them their own private weather.” A family’s recent addition, a temperamental baby named Walker who has a “disposition toward inclement weather, an unfortunate consequence of his parents’ colliding fronts” causes havoc as he thunderstorms “terribly each night” and the parents struggle with how to raise him. “The Walker Circulation,” with its highly original prose, plays on humanity, exposing our will to control, personalities, communities, even the weather.

In “Six Hours Before The End” by Manuel Martinez, there is just little time prior to the end of the universe. Here we watch one man plan his final speech, “something appropriate to say in those last few moments,” while begging his woman to stop doing laundry. His wife organizes everything, even hermetically sealing underwear. The piece is reflective, ingenuous, and provocative, making every reader wonder: what would I do with only six hours left until nonexistence?

–Stefanie Freele, Fiction Editor