Photo courtesy of The Bluebird of North America


December 1 postmark (deadline)

Winging their hopeful and happy way, like blue birds of happiness, through the US mail system yesterday were the 2008 nominations (with their December 1 postmark/deadline) for the Pushcart Prize from little magazine and small book press editors:

The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976.

The founding editors are Anais Nin, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles, Paul Engle, Ralph Ellison, Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, and William Phillips.

Among the writers who received early recognition in Pushcart Prize Anthologies were: Kathy Acker, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Bruce Boston, Raymond Carver, Joshua Clover, Andre Dubus, Seán Mac Falls, William Monahan, Paul Muldoon, Tim O'Brien, Peter Orner, Kay Ryan, and Mona Simpson.

Wikipedia

The nomination

The nomination itself is an honor and I am thrilled to share that one of those blue birds of happiness navigating the postal system was singing my name as it flew on wings made from one of my poems! The wonderful editor of Empowerment4Women Magazine has nominated my poem, you think, for the Pushcart Prize!

Empowerment4Women is a journal that presents arts, culture and entertainment with an emphasis on feminism that 'argues with the societal norm, which depicts those who value feminist ideals as anarchistic, angry, and radical. Empowered women are sometimes angry, sometimes radical, and, even, sometimes anarchistic. But empowered women also know that feminism can be as big as a globally-choreographed movement or as small as the individual realization that something simply isn't ... quite right.

We are not a revolution, but we dream that each and every one of our readers will create his or her own. Because empowered individuals learn to create their own destinies—and then invite others to join in.'


you think
Annette Marie Hyder
Previously published in Empowerment4Women

you think
because i don't talk
about confetti petals
parade of flowers
zephyr wind zing
that i don't see or feel them

but i do
and carry my gaze
to stems and leaves
press my ear to roots
the quiet causation
behind the loud bloom

which is a pebble
in my mouth
an impediment to speech
something to suck on

such is my silence towards you