Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. If You Are Absolutely Certain, I Get Suspicious by Mimi Schwartz Unreliable narrators are everywhere: On Fox News or MSNBC, depending on your politics. In film, theater, and of course literature, which was the original focus of a term coined by critic Wayne Booth in 1961 to refer to a fictional ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. After Making Love by Stephen Dunn No one should ask the other "What were you thinking?" No one, that is, who doesn't want to hear about the past and its inhabitants, or the strange loneliness of the present filled, even as it may be, with pleasure, or those snapshots of the future, different heads on different ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Excerpt from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. A Murmur of Growing Intensity from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele That bright, sunny morning seemed like just another day. I had moved to California seven years earlier and had only recently committed to staying longer, having just turned down a good newspaper job in New Jersey. That summer I was in the throes of finishing a graduate ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Abduction from the Seraglio by Roberta Clipper
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Abduction from the Seraglio by Roberta Clipper I met her in London. In my cousin Shawn's favorite black and tan. We're the only cousins the same age. Our mothers are sisters. We were always begging them to fly us to each other's houses—him to visit me in Nairobi, me to spend school holidays with him in London. I was staring at her long, ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Poems by Kim Addonizio
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. "What Do Women Want?" by Kim Addonizio I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Learning my Place from Nature’s Graveyard
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Learning my Place from Nature's Graveyard by Amanda Morris Splintered fence. Shattered shrubs. Shredded trunks. And pine needles. Everywhere, pine needles. Destruction with the scent of Christmas. As I made my way into the barely accessible remains of yard, gingerly pulling back heavy pine branches to expose anything left ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: The Funnies by Peter E. Murphy
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. The Funnies by Peter E. Murphy I read before I learned to read, or at least I pretended to. I looked at the brightly colored comic strips and made up the words I thought the cartoon characters were saying. The funnies came on Sunday when my father put his music on, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and the rest of their friends. Our small apartment sounded like a cathedral. Every Thursday night ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by James Richardson
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Big Scenes by James Richardson And what was King Kong ever going to do with Fay Wray or Jessica Lange, but climb, climb, climb, and get shot down? No Wonder Gulliver’s amiably chatting with that six-inch woman in his palm. Desire’s huge, there’s really nowhere to put it in our small world that it will stay put: might as well just talk. Rage also, and fear, and elation are ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Crossing the Milky Way by Anndee Hochman
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Crossing the Milky Way by Anndee Hochman Here is the baby: smell of sourdough, brown butter, mown wheat, warm earth. Moist anemone hands, the toes you nibble as if they are nubs of maple sugar. Behind the closed bedroom door, talk ripples up from downstairs. You rock in the hand-painted chair. Here is the hunger, legible in her wide blue eyes, garnet blossom of a mouth, the cry that bubbles ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, a weekly e-mail series curated by Stephanie Cawley that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Don't Do That by Stephen Dunn It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red along with some resentment I’d held in for a few weeks, which was not helped by the sight of little nameless things pierced with toothpicks on the tables, or by talk that promised to be nothing if not small. But I’d consented to come, and I knew what part of the house their ... Read More...