https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

A journal for poetry, criticism, reviews, stories and essays published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998.
See our guidelines.   Mail queries and contributions to: [email protected]
Offcourse gratefully acknowledges the server support provided by The University at Albany.

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Issue #83, December 2020

PLUME has just published a rich collection in honor of Stuart Friebert. It includes offcoursers Ute von Funcke and Diane Louie among many distinguished writers.

We –Ricardo and Isabel– never met Stuart in person, but his temperament, delightfully informal and accessible, shone through all his quick letters, full of “grins”.   For Issue #81, we had received poems from Diane Vreuls. She had written, “Stuart Friebert suggested...” in her cover letter; we thought it was a student of his, as he had sent us several.  We accepted quickly, and Diane shot back “Fastest acceptance ever!”  When we wrote to Stuart to let him know we had liked his “student’s” work, he just said to be sure to write “Diane” with only one N, with a funny story about a student in one of his classes who spelled her own name with THREE Ns. (She explained “My mother wanted me to be different”.) We began to suspect gato encerrado, and looked up Diane Vreuls: she was Stuart's wife! Classic Stuart.  He then told us it was the first time he and Diane had appeared in the same issue of any publication.

• "Bartering your Soul for Salvation" and other poems by Rose Mary Boehm
• "Time's Wonders" and other poems by Philip Fried
• "Shrieking Girl", a poem by Lou Gallo
• "What's Left" and other poems by Ian Ganassi
• "Fog and Glare" and "After, and Before", poems by Judy Kronenfeld
• Four Poems by James Miller
• "Louis Nirenberg in a Dream", by Ricardo Nirenberg
• "Old Flames", a story by Ricardo Nirenberg
• Poems by Simon Perchik
• "Some of the World is the World", a poem by Louis Phillips
• "Road Ends", a story by Richard Risemberg
• "Sipping Grief" and other poems by Claire Scott
• "Searching Away" and "Another Portrait", poems by Tim Suermondt
• "Triptych: Ninety Versts", poems by R.L. Swihart
• "Work Makes Freedom", a story by Dennis Vannatta

 

Congratulations to:

• Louis Phillips, whose 4: 4 stories, 4 plays, 4 poems, has been published by World Audience and is available at Amazon. com as a paperback or e-book. His new collection of poems, Sunlight Falling to the Lake, is also available from World Audience Inc.
• Richard Merelman, on his new poetry collection, A Door Opens, published from Fireweed Press, Madison, Wisconsin.
• Charles Rammelkamp, whose new chapbook, Mortal Coil, can be obtained from Claire Songbird Press, https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/charles-rammelkamp/
• E.M. Schorb, for Transit: Tales of Mystery, History, and Crime (Hill House, NY, 2020), with an introduction by Pat Mullan. Available from Amazon.
• J.R. Solonche, for Guide to the Perplexed (Serving House Books) and The Moon is the Capital of the World (David Robert Books/Word Tech Communications), both books coming out in 2020.

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Issue #82, September 2020

We mourn the loss of Stuart Friebert, whose poems, stories, and translations have enriched these pages since 2014. Here is Ute von Funcke's memorial, "Meeting Stuart, a Personal Tribute to Stuart Friebert", and a list of Friebert's contributions to Offcourse.

• Three Poems from "Broken Glosa", by Stephen Bett
• "Vagrant Noon" and other poems by Mark DuCharme
• "Spiritual Pork Chops" and other poems by Lou Gallo
• "Is It Possible that It Doesn't End in Death" and other poems by John Grey
• "Superstar Haircut", a story by Aditya Johri
• "Marshall", a story by Steve Legomsky
• "The Great Flood Myths: from a School Play to the Pandemic", by Jiayi Liao
• "Paul Valéry and Some of His Contemptors", by Ricardo Nirenberg
• "Kvelling", "Romance", and "Disapproval", poems by Charles Rammelkamp
• "The Urn", a poem by E.M. Schorb
• "Hammer and Nails" and "Missing", by Claire Scott
• "First Novels in Drawers" and other poems by Steven M. Smith
• "Dylan Blues" and other poems by Travis Stephens
• "Hsi-Wei and the Murders in Licheng", a story by Robert Wexelblatt
  
• "A Beetle's Tale", a story by Fred D. White
• "Three Sonnets", by Sarah White
  
• A review of Joachim Frank's novel Aan Zee, by Suresh Somnath Raval.
  More information about Aan Zee here.
• A review of Sarah White's Iridescent Guest, by J.R. Solonche

Congratulations to:

• Ute von Funcke on Shadows of Shadows, translated from the German by Stuart Friebert, just out from Black Mountain Press.
• Charles Rammelkamp on Ugler Lee, just out from Kelsay Books.
• E.M. Schorb, on Once Upon Each Time, Collected Poems, out in August 2020 from Hill House, NY, with an introduction by Ricardo Nirenberg. Several of the poems appeared first in this journal.
• Sarah White on Iridescent Guest, just out from Deerbrook Editions. Several poems in Iridescent Guest appeared first in this journal.

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Issue #81, June 2020

• "exodus" and other poems by Tony Beyer
• "Petrels" and other poems by Francis Blessington
• "It was Illegal Then" and other poems by Rose Mary Boehm
• "The Wind", a story by Joachim Frank
• Poems by Ute von Funcke in German, with English translations by the author with Stuart Friebert
• "On Memorial Day" and other poems by John Grey
• "12", a poem by Michael Krüger in German, with an English translation by Stuart Friebert
• Poems by Stuart Friebert
• "Daughter", a story by John P. Kristofco
• Two Poems by Judy Kronenfeld
• "Two Slits to the Measure..." and another poem by John Marvin
• "P and Q: a Geometric Noir" by Ricardo L. Nirenberg
• "The Last Picture Show" and other poems by Louis Phillips
• "The Ideologues", a poem by E.M. Schorb
• "Lines of Descent" and other poems by Ian C. Smith
• Short Odes and other poems by J.R. Solonche
• "Solace" and other poems by Tim Suermondt
• "Alchemy Series", poems by R.L. Swihart
• "On the Origin of Games" and "How It All Came Out", poems by Diane Vreuls

Congratulations to:

Charles Rammelkamp whose Catastroika was published in May: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/catastroika-by-charles-rammelkamp-available-for-pre-order/, and to Sarah White whose Iridescent Guest appeared in April: https://issuu.com/deerbrookeditions/docs/iridescent_guest_preview

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Issue #80, March 2020

"The Viking from Brooklyn": remembering Stan Johannesen.

• Six Prose Poems by John Amen
• "A Form of Destruction" and other poems by Rose Mary Boehm
• "The Hapsburg Lip" and other poems by Stuart Friebert
• "The Planck Limit of Desire" and other work by Lou Gallo
• Poems from The Misprision of Agon Hack, by Daniel Y. Harris
• "Artocarpus" and "butea", poems by Irene Koronas
• "Four-Poster Bed" and other poems by Richard Merelman
• "The Sin Against the Human Spirit", an essay by Ricardo L. Nirenberg
• "Access", a poem by Fred Pollack
• Three Poems by Claire Scott
• "Instructor", a poem by Lois Greene Stone
• "Prime Mover", a poem by Daniel Sundahl
• "Baby on Board" and other poems by Richard Weaver
• "Hsi-wei in the Gardens of Shun", a story by Robert Wexelblatt
• "I, Who Never Learned to Long" and "Once, the Troubadour", poems by Sarah White

 

Joachim Frank's novel Aan Zee is now available at The Book Loft, in Great Barrington, MA. Please visit  https://www.thebookloft.com/product/aan-zee

 

Congratulations to:

• E.M. Schorb on his illustrated collection of light verse, Muddling Through, Hillhouse, NY, 2019
• Fred Skolnik on his novel The Nightmare (written as Fred Russell) published by Moonshine Cove Publishing, 2019.  The book is available from Amazon.