Consultants

Joe Loccisano, art consultant

Pentangle 2005 Judges

Originally from Cleveland, Philip Terman has published three collections of poetry: What Survives (1993), winner of the Sow's Ear Chapbook Award; The House of Sages (1998; second edition 2005), winner of the Kenneth Patchen Award and published by Mammoth Books; and Book of the Unbroken Days (2004) also published by Mammoth Books. He's a Professor of English and creative writing at Clarion University, where he directs the Spoken Arts Reading Series. As well, he directs the Chautauqua Writers' Festival at the Chautauqua Institute. He's published poems and essays in many journals, including The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, and Tikkun Magazine. He lives in a converted one-room schoolhouse outside Grove City, PA with his wife Christine Hood and their two daughters, Miriam and Bella.

Tom Abrams, professor at USF. Comments on his book The Drinking of Spirits: Belize's tropics, Ohio's lazy 50's suburbs, Florida's down-and-out Ybor City, Madrid's narrow streets and late tapa bar nights -- what Tom Abrams does with all these locales is almost as luxurious as what he does with the characters inhabiting them. Readers familiar with A Bad Piece of Luck will once more appreciate the down-and-dirty realism Abrams employs, but will find an added element ... kismet? Well, that implies love, and while dimestore romance is as absent as the Dow Jones Index, there is love in these stories, a love of life and a love of humanity -- no matter how mired it may at times become. So yes, kismet.

Decision for Pentangle Poetry Contest

Judge: Philip Terman

1^st place: "Rememberin" by Nancy C. Lord

This poem moved me because of its focus on sensual details--the subject [the mother] really comes alive through the way the poet describes the sights, smells and tastes of her baking bread. Good use of images and a wonderful simile ['like an albino raccoon"]. Also, most effective is the rhythm, the way each stanza builds through its natural line-breaks. Good use of strong verbs. The turn the poem takes near the end is surprising and adds depth to the poem as a whole.

2^nd place: "Forty-Something" by Nancy C. Lord

I loved the humor of this poem. The form works perfectly: two or three line stanzas, with no wasted words. Wonderful phrases that surprise and delight: "fat mid-life crisis, well done" and "smidgen of/hot flashes" are just two examples. The ending is a perfect ‘punch line’ to the poem's 'joke.' It's a subject that many can relate to. And though the poet is fully aware of the sarcasm, there's a waft of seriousness underneath that gives the poem an extra dimension. It's a poem for all forty-somethings.

3^rd place: "The Way the Senses See It..." by Randall Auvil

A poem full of strong images that successfully re-create the mood of summer and escape. Excellent use of imagery, alliteration, and the look of the stanzas on the page further the poem's theme. A delightful read.

HONORABLE MENTIONS POETRY:

"Sleep" by Darci Derr

I liked the ambition of this piece. It's a poem that moves outward from a personal sense of separateness to a larger, cultural perception of separateness. It's a poem about the existential idea of the way we live in artificial realities. Yet the poem also offers solid, crisp images: "Does [his cheek] remind him of the way my head felt resting against it?" is one strong example. The poem successfully creates a sense of love, loneliness, desire.

"The Puppeteer" by Kathy Lippard Cobb

A solid, well-focused poem that uses a smart extended metaphor. Also, good use of images, line breaks, and word choice. It's a short fairly flawless poem. I like the last line, esp. the word "reassemble."

Decision for Pentangle Fiction Contest

Judge: Tom Abrams

1^st place: "Gordon Turnmire's Aleph" by Adam Bedard

This is a fundamentally sound short story, strong in character and originality of utterance, with just the right touch of absurdity thrown in for good measure. And it made me laugh.

2^nd place: "Remembers" by J. R. Malec

There is nostalgia here tempered by insight, and a fine sense of word choice. I took it as a piece of creative non-fiction and a well-wrought example of that genre.

3^rd place: "The Believers" by Alex P. Harvey

It's said that a story will be only as effective as the characters are interesting, and this piece proves that true. It is, I believe, the most carefully thought out of all the stories I read.

HONORABLE MENTIONS FICTION:

"The Adventures of Bobby and Carl" by Eric Johnson

The realistic place detail, common speech, and the rather extravagantly impossible events recounted here mark this as a Tall Tale, and a good one.

"Corey" by Kylie Schaefer

There is a simple, honest way about this story. I kept coming back to it--the best compliment, to my way of thinking, that a story can get. The subject matter goes back to our beginnings as a race, goes forward, new, with each war. I just like, very much, the way it was handled here.

Pentangle Staff from 2005