Tag The Main Street Rag

Magazine Stand :: The Main Street Rag – Summer 2022

The Main Street Rag literary magazine Summer 2022 issue cover image

If you’ve ever wondered about what goes on behind the scenes at NewPages, now might be your only chance to find out. The Main Street Rag Summer 2022 Featured Interview is Casey Hill, Founder and Publisher of NewPages in conversation with TMSR‘s editor M. Scott Douglass as he digs into NewPages history and speculates about the future. Also featured in this issue: Essay by Gail Hosking; Fiction by Melissa Benton Barker, Judith T. Lessler, Anthony Mohr, Elaine Fowler Palencia, Timothy Reilly; Poetry by Alan Berecka, Joan Barasovska, Bonnie Bishop, Brenton Booth, Joanne Fay Brown, Deborrah Corr, Stephen Cramer, Mirana Comstock, Douglas K Currier, David Dragone, Matthew Duffus, Brenda Edgar, Frederick Foote, Jane Ann Fuller, Elton Glaser, E. J. Evans, Carol Hamilton, W. Luther Jett, Robert Lee Kendrick, Ulf Kirchdorfer, George Longenecker, Vikram Masson, Richard L. Matta, Jim McGarrah, Jeff McRae, Cecil Morris, Norman Unrau, Robert Parham, Elizabeth R. McCarthy, David E. Poston, Harriet Shenkman, Kevin Ridgeway, Laura Sobbott Ross, Victoria Royster, Andrew Taylor-Troutman, Rodney Torreson, Richard Weaver, John Walser.

New Book :: Breaking Down Familiar

Breaking Down the Familiar poetry by Donald Levering book cover image

Breaking Down Familiar
Poetry by Donald Levering
Main Street Rag Publishing, May 2022

Donald Leverings’s 16th book of poetry, Breaking Down the Familiar, grapples with a host of harrowing assaults to the narrator and his family: illness and accidents, addiction and madness, estrangement and divorce. Yet as mind and body falter, as faith is undermined and relationships sunder, as aging parents can neither be changed or saved and former athletes tally their infirmities, previously obscured strength emerge – as a ruined golfer in one poem says, “Your character is revealed / in the handicap you claim.” Finally, the poems re-enact the family’s reconstitution, the way in the eponymous poem, shattered bottle pieces are refashioned into artisan’s sea glass crafts. A former NEA Fellow, Donald Levering won the Tor House Robinson Jeffers Award, selected by Eavan Boland; the Carve Poetry Prize, judged by Carmen Giménez Smith; and the Literal Latté Poetry Award. Levering’s work has also been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac podcast.

Magazine Stand :: The Main Street Rag – Spring 2022

The Main Street Rag Spring 2022 literary magazine cover image

The newest issue of The Main Street Rag (v27 n 2) starts off with “Painting In, Painting Out: An Interview with Michel Tsouris” by Don Bertschman, and is followed up with fiction by Linda Buckmaster, Robert Garner McBrearty, Skyler Nielsen, Richard Risemberg, Terry Sanville, and Frank Scozzari; poetry by Michel Tsouris, Chris Abbate, Frederick W. Bassett, Stephen Benz, C.D. Bailey, Cindy Buchanan, Brian Builta, J.I.B., Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, John J. Ronan, Margaret Diehl, Irene Fick, Regina YC Garcia, Karen L. George, Alison Stone, Cordelia M. Hanemann, Marci Rae Johnson, Genevieve Fitzgerald, Donald Levering, James Lineberger, Christopher Louvet, Kim Malinowski, Richard Merelman, James Miller, Michael Minassian, Daniel Edward Moore, Benjamin Nash, Rikki Santer, David Sapp, Gordon Taylor, Matthew A. Toll, Tom Wayman, Jeffrey Thompson, Riand chard Widerkehr.

New Book :: Singing at High Altitude

Singing at High Altitude poetry by Jennifer Markell book cover image

Singing at High Altitude
Poetry by Jennifer Markell
Main Street Rag Publishing, November 2021

Jennifer Markell‘s work has appeared in publications including The Bitter Oleander, The Cimarron Review, Consequence Magazine, RHINO, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Women’s Review of Books. She serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club and is a long-standing member of the Jamaica Pond Poets. For the past twenty years, Jennifer has worked in community mental health and as a psychotherapist.

Continue reading “New Book :: Singing at High Altitude”

The Main Street Rag – Winter 2022

Main Street Rag winter 2022 cover

The Main Street Rag Winter 2022 issue features editor M. Scott Douglas’s interview with Craig Johnson, author and creator of Longmire. New poetry from Margaret Benbow, Paul Colby, Pablo Patiño, and Rachel Mauro. New fiction from Burt Beckman, Valerie Gilbraeth, George Looney, Shoshauna Shy, and more. Includes a new batch of book reviews.

Find and buy the Winter 2002 issue at The Main Street Rag website.

The Main Street Rag – Fall 2021

In this issue: fiction by Jennifer Blake, Matthew C. Bush, Nathan Leslie, R. F. Mechelke, and more. Poetry by Matthew E. Henry, Jane Andrews, Richard Becker, Kay Bosgraaf, Brenton Booth, Chris Bullard, Ricks Carson, Diana Cole, Matthew J. Spireng, Beth Suter, Kevin Sweeney, Kelly Terwilliger, Mark Taksa, Eric Weil, and others. Plus a featured interview, “Teaching While Black,” with Matthew E. Henry by Shawn Pavey. Find out more at The Main Street Rag website.

New Fall 2021 Titles from Main Street Rag Publishing Company

Check out the titles slated for release this fall from Main Street Rag. These will be release in September, October, and November. You can order an advanced copy at a discounted price, too!

  • A Flower More Enduring poems by Hellen Losse
  • A Gathering of Friends poems by Ron Lands
  • Amorotica poems by Sarah Brown Weitzman
  • Any Dumb Animal poems by AE Hines
  • Blind Green poems by Richard Carr
  • Easter Creek poems by Gary Lark
  • Floating Bridge poems by Eleanor Brawley
  • Just Off Half-Moon Road poems by Sheila Turnage
  • MAGA Sonnets poems by Donald Trump found and compiled by David Rigsbee
  • Making Payments on a Pink Cadillac stories by Robert Parham
  • Polaroids at a Yard Dale poems by Ralph J. Long, Jr.
  • Praises poems by Shelby Stephenson
  • Revised Light poems by Sharon Ackerman
  • Sainted poems by Lisa Zimmerman
  • Singing at High Altitude poems by Jennifer Markell
  • Stories of the New West short stories by Evan Morgan Williams
  • When Light Waits for Us poems by Hilda Downer
  • When There Were Horses poems by Pat Riviere-Seel
  • Wild Things poems by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose
  • Winter Bride poems by Monica McAlpine

Which titles are you adding to your fall and winter reading lists?

The Main Street Rag – Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 issue features Postscript to a Postscript: an interview with Bill Glose, Winner of the 2020 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, interviewed by M. Scott Douglass. Fiction by Abe Aamidor, Allison Daniel, Tony Hozeny, Michele Lovell, Bob Moskowitz, Robert Stone and poetry by Bill Glose, Joan Bauer, Frederick W. Bassett, Joan Bernard, Burt Beckmann, Ace Boggess, Marion Starling Boyer, and more.

The Main Street Rag – Winter 2021

In this issue of The Main Street Rag, find a featured interview with Ellen Birkett Morris by Beth Browne. Fiction by Ellen Birkett Morris, Lawrence F. Farrar, Michael Graves, Kathie Giorgio, and Steve Cushman. Poetry by Carrie Albert, Diana Anhalt, Rose Auslander, Joan Barasovska, Brenton Booth, Raymond Byrnes, Robert Cooperman, Rachel Dixon, Richelle Buccilli, Angela Gaito-Lagnese, Martha Golensky, Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ted Jonathan, Elda Lepak, Anne Hall Levine, Vikram Masson, Ken Meisel, David Mills, Randy Minnich, Harry Moore, Gail Peck, Ann Pedone, Gary V. Powell, Charles Rammelkamp, David Rock, Seth Rosenbloom, Russell Rowland, Tom Wayman, and more.

Freedom-Granting Poetry by Bethany Bowman

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

The Main Street Rag forwent their usual beautiful photographic cover art for a cartoon version of Donald Trump behind bars with the Fall 2020 issue. It seemed pretty appropriate, then, that I ended up opening the issue at random to find Bethany Bowman’s “Sometimes After Getting Off the Phone,” which begins with the speaker getting off the phone with their father “who confesses to voting for / Donald Trump to reverse Roe v. Wade” and observing a friend being confronted about her right to choose with her abortion in the 70’s.

The poem begins in a tense spot but we’re given relief, along with the speaker, in the form of animal facts given by the speaker’s son. These facts lead to biblical lessons and connections being “fed to the dogs” as the speaker realizes “you’ve always been filled with the spirit— / no external male force, no deity can grant it / or take it away.” There is power in this realization, a freedom granted from the sins stacked on women’s shoulders from the beginning of time.

While Trump may be behind bars on this issue’s cover, there is freedom to be found in the writing which Bowman graciously reminds us of.