Coming to Terms

 

 

 My sonnet, "Coming to Terms" won third prize in the 2021 Better Than Starbucks sonnet contest.

HERE is the link to the top ten poems. Below is the poem.

Thank you to Editor-in-Chief, Vera Ignatowitsch.

 

Coming to Terms

 

I set aside my one-size-fits-all shirt,

my pants with the elastic tummy-panel,

as music to a silent world of hurt

strains from a distant country-western channel.

 

Still, there’s compassion. I’ve been granted leave —

a week in which to heal and convalesce,

to peel away the glow-stars, to unweave

the year I’d stitched onto your christening dress.

 

I rearrange my premises — perverse

assumptions! — gather unripe figs. Throw out

the bloodied bedclothes. Scour the universe

in search of you. And God. And go about

my business as my crooked smile displays

the artful look of ordinary days.

 

 -- Catherine Chandler

A Handful of Poetry Publications for 2022

 

 My sonnet, "Coming to Terms" has won third prize in the Better Than Starbucks annual sonnet contest. Not bad, out of over 500 entries 🙂! Thank you Vera Ignatowitsch and judges! The poem is available on the Better Than Starbucks website https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org/sonnet-contest 

Two chapters of my forthcoming verse-tale, "Annals of the Dear Unknown" are now available in the current issue of Alamaba Literary Review. Thank you, Bill Thompson! I'll let everyone know when the print journal is available online!

Two poems, an ekphrastic sonnet inspired by the painting "Rooms by the Sea" (1951) by Edward Hopper, "The Jumping-off Place" and my English translation of Pierre de Ronsard's "Ode à Cassandre" will be published in the January issue of the journal Mezzo Cammin. Thank you, Anna Evans! 

Another sonnet, "On Reading the Grand Jury Report, An Altar Boy Remembers" will be published in the journal Presence 2022 in an upcoming issue. Thank you, Mary Ann B. Miller! 

Last but not least, my epigram "Flammarion Pilgrim Woodcut Redux", originally published in my first book, Lines of Flight, will be published in an anthology titled "Outer Space: 100 Poems" edited by poet Midge Goldberg for Cambridge University Press as part of their 100 Poems series of anthologies. The poems range from Homer to the present. 

The anthology will be both print (run of 2000) and downloadable (3000) for worldwide distribution. I'm honored to have my work appear along with a fabulous group of scientists, poets & translators including Liz Ahl, Ned Balbo, Bill Coyle, Robert Crawford, Dick Davis, Martin Elster, Rhina Espaillat, Michael Ferber, John Foy, Alice Gorman, Sarah Howe, Allison Joseph, A.M. Juster, Donna Kane, X.J. Kennedy, Janet Alexa Kenny, Len Krisak, Gwyneth Lewis, Leslie Monsour, Victoria Moul, Alfred Nicol, Linda Pastan, Jay Ruzesky, Tracy K. Smith, Alicia E Stallings Yun Wang, Deborah Warren, Richard Wilbur, Anton Yakovlev and others. 

Thank you, Midge Goldberg for the invitation to have my work published in this great project!