On Loss
by Julie Benesh
[Editor’s Note: Click on the triptych below to view it at full size.]
Julie Benesh is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She has published stories, poems, and essays in Tin House, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Hobart, Cleaver and many other places, and she has poems forthcoming in JMWW and Proem. She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Read more at juliebenesh.com.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “On Loss”? We had an assignment for a poetry MOOC and I wrote two lipograms, “On Loss” and another called “Endlessness,” as well as a tautogram, “Acknowledgement (After Parker),” where every word included an A, and every line started with a different word beginning with A. I loved them all so much, but they didn’t fit with other poetry I wrote or journals with whom I was familiar. They almost came across as light verse, but the subject matter was quite serious and utterly sincere. I realized that I needed to incorporate some explanation, but the form could not accommodate an organic one within the poem itself …and the last thing most poets ever want to do is to feel a need to footnote a poem! So a triptych was the perfect solution for “On Loss.” I am still working out the means of adequately framing the other two unobtrusively while still maintaining the constraint of my chosen form, and feel confident some solution will emerge as it did with this one.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
10/13 • Joseph O’Day
10/20 • Carolyn Zaikowski
10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
11/10 • Liz Abrams-Morley
11/17 • Alison Colwell
11/24 • Lucy Zhang
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD
11/17 • TBD
11/24 • TBD
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD