Sunday, March 24, 2024

Pratik Noir Issue Highlight: American poet DAVID LEHMAN's "The Double Agent: A Screenplay for Michael Caine"

 

DAVID LEHMAN

The Double Agent:

A Screenplay for Michael Caine

 


1.

It was going to snow and then it didn't snow.

He loved her like a dying man's last cigarette.

 

2.

The dog was planning his next betrayal.

It was, he reasoned, in the nature of dogs

to betray their bitches. The man at the bar

was wearing a dark suit and tie as thin

as the excuses given by an unfaithful mate

to her homicidal husband on the phone.

 

3.

“You want results, you have to pay for them.”

“All right, but are you sure this is the guy?”

“This is the guy.” And in he walked, wearing

eyeglasses and speaking with a Cockney accent.

He had made his bones when he killed his wife

with a lightbulb in the cellar, made it look like

an accident, got away with it, and celebrated

by pushing a man in front of a speeding train.

 

4.

The assignment was to convey a private message

by public means, as in the headline of a news story

of seeming insignificance whose secret meaning

only his London controller would understand. 

 

5.

The dog was dead. That was the message.

 

6.

Lights out. His name on a list. And beside

his name, a sum: fifty thousand dollars.

They had lied to him, put his life in danger,

only to test him. Yet he delivered, though

it meant he had to cross from West to East

Berlin and back in the back of a hearse

in a dark tunnel, a live body inside.

 

7.

In that second, he had to make up his mind:

was he bluffing, or would he pull the trigger?

“Three men have been killed for those papers,”

the chief barked, indignant at the cost

of this little operation. “Sorry, boss.”

The agent held up four fingers.

The chief crushed his cigar. “Four!”

 

8.

“Enlighten me, Mr. Lane, if that is indeed your name.

Why didn't you leave at once when you could?”

“Loyalty,” he replied with sarcasm so thick

you could be sure he was carrying a false passport.

 

9.

The man reading the paper in the hotel lobby

heard every word. There was a short silence.

Suddenly he put the paper down.

“I am the stranger of whom you speak,” he said

in the formal English of a Spaniard

in a Hemingway novel. That was the tip-off.

 

10.

Even the girl was a ruse.

Only the money was real.

 

11.

He could see it from the balcony:

freedom; there it was, across the river,

in the brown haze of dusk:

a row of dead birches like the bars of a gate

with blue water and green hills behind it.

 

12.

Was it worth it? You didn't ask yourself.

You just grabbed your case and went.

You didn't even know the date, the month

and year, until you got there. Afterwards,

if you were lucky, there would be time

to remember. Well, he would have to do

the remembering for the whole unit. And once

a year, in a hotel room in Switzerland,

he would take out the girl’s photograph

and shake his head.

 

 

Born and raised in New York City, American poet David Lehman is Series Editor of The Best American Poetry anthology. He is the author of The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir. In 2019, he and Suzanne Lummis engaged in a season of exchanges on noir for The Best American Poetry blog, for example: https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2019/08/the-images-of-noir-by-david-lehman-and-suzanne-lummis.html

 

 

 

 

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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Pratik's Noir Issue Guest Editorial : SUZANNE LUMMIS -- Darkness in Style : Introduction to Noir

 

SUZANNE LUMMIS


Darkness in Style

Introduction to Noir

 


Noir—it’s a style, usually spare, devoid of sentiment, pity, especially self-pity. It’s atmosphere, a mood, with hints of transgression in the air, and maybe the scent of burning cigarettes, classic era Camels or Lucky Strikes, pre-Surgeon General’s Warning. And the subject? Crime. If no crime’s in progress, recent or eminent, then some sense of danger will do, unease. If no specific danger, then a sense of inevitable failure will do. 


In this exploration of noir, I’ve made a few choices that push the definition to its outermost. Lawrence Raab’s poem “Why It Always Rains in the Movies,” and the late C. Natale Peditto’s memoir of Philadelphia in the 50s, early 60s, are as free of violence and mayhem as a thing can be but still be noir. Lynne Thompson’s recollection of two murdered women is as close to a social justice poem as a thing can be and still be noir. (In fact, it straddles both sensibilities, and were it to appear in an anthology of social justice poems the editor might note that “The Ways of Remembering Women” is as close to noir as a thing can be and still be a social justice poem.)  Virgil Suárez’s “The Lion Head Belt Buckle” speaks in a language as relaxed and natural as it can be and still…  Well, you get the idea.

And all along I’ve had reservations about this realm that’s absorbed me for some decades. Film noir festivals, private eye and crime-story fast-reads, book series gathering short fiction set in various cities, Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Bagdad Noir… just to name a few of the “B”s. It sounds like fun. It’s not. In life it’s not. When you yourself are the victim of violence, or someone close to you is, the entertainment value drops precipitously. Both Christina Cha’s shattering non-fiction piece and—though technically it be fiction—Lou Mathews’ story, remind us of the darkest side of the darkest art—the real-world side. 

Then, there’s the smack-on, straight up noir style, many examples here, such as Kim Addonizio’s fiction, “The Wishing Well”— note the abbreviated voice, telegraphic speed, sentences that seem shot from a handgun. 

Ironically, paradoxically, I end this anthology of crimes or reflections on crime, true or imagined, on film or in poetry, with dancing. The word dancing. Noir loves paradox— so does poetry. My students have heard me avow it: Poetry loves paradox.


That’s where I end, but I begin with a premonition of doom. That’d be another Lawrence Raab poem. And with truth. You bet I do—feels like truth to me, though I have no ties to espionage or jewel heists, or whatever game the speaker’s cast his dice in. And I have never eyed a bullet in midair heading my way. However, certain days, certain hours of certain days, I’ve felt something of what the speaker expresses. 

I dedicate this assortment of noir writings to those who have ever, for a moment or two, or many, felt a wee bit doomed, so that they’ll know they’re not alone. And, I dedicate it to those who’ve never in their lives had such a notion, so that they can consider—once again—how lucky they are. 

 

 

American poet Suzanne Lummis has been variously associated with The Fresno Poets, the Stand-Up Poets—a Los Angeles based uprising in the 90s that allowed for irreverence and a performance-driven version of literary poetry—and poetry noir, both the writing and defining of it. Poetry.la produces her web series on film noir and contemporary poetry, They Write by Night. She is the editor of The Pacific Coast Poetry Series (imprint of Beyond Baroque Books), and editor of the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Another Chicago Magazine and elsewhere, and her poems in Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Plume, New Ohio Review, The New Yorker, etc. She has published three poetry collections; her plays have been produced in three cities; she’s taught through the UCLA Extension Writers Program for some decades; she was a 2018/19 COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellow; she viewed the Great Sphinx of Tanis in the Louvre when she was five—or so she’s been told.


 

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Friday, March 22, 2024

Pratik Current Noir Issue Highlight: Celebrated American poet Yusef Komunyakaa's The Cage Walker

 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA


The Cage Walker

Photo credit: Nancy Crampton


He shoves the .38

into his coat pocket

& walks back into

the dark. Night

takes him like a conveyer belt.


For a split second

he’s been there

in the ditch,

hood pulled from over a death’s-head.


He sits on a park bench.

Blue uniform behind every elm,

night sticks. He thinks how a man

enters the deeper, darker machine.


His fingers touch gun metal.

He stands & walks down

toward the wharf; ships rock

in white foghorn silence.

Water slams, steel doors

closing in a tunnel.


The quarter-moon goes blank

behind a cloud. He frames a picture

in his head, retraces footsteps

to Shorty’s Liquor Store.

He will go in this time.


He stands under a street lamp.

Moths float by

& he counts cars:

1, 2,3, 4, 5, aw shit.


A woman walks past & smiles.

Her red dress turns the corner

like blood in a man’s eyes.

He stares at his hands.

They say August is a good time

for a man to go crazy.  



Yusef Komunyakaa’s honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, The Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the William Faulkner Prize from the UniversitĂ© de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular. He has named his most important poetic influences as Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman.  


Thursday, March 21, 2024

Pratik: Darkness in Style, The Noir Issue, Vol XIX No 4


Pratik: Darkness in Style
 The Noir Issue
Vol XIX No 4 

Edited by Yuyutsu Sharma
Guesr Editor : Suzanne Lummis 




POETRY

Yusef Komunyakaa 
Dorianne Laux 
Lynne Thompson 
Elya Braden 
Tony Barnstone 
Mehnaz Sahibzada
Lynn Emanuel 
David Lehman 
Tim Seibles
Marilyn Robertson 
Carol Ellis 
Tanya Ko Hong 
Eric Priestley 
Peggy Dobreer 
Charles Harper Webb 
Cece Peri 
David Lazar 
Tim Seibles 
Alison Turner 
Nicholas Christopher 
Suzanne Lummis 
Susan Aizenberg 
John Allman 
John Challis 
Alexis Rhone Fancher 
Marilyn Robertson 
David Lazar 
Lawrence Raab 
Susan Aizenberg 
Virgil Suárez 
John Allman 


FICTION & NON-FICTION 

Kim Addonizio 

Lou Mathews 

C. Natale Peditto 

Wiktoria Klera 

Suzanne Lummis 

Christina Cha 


NOIR ART  Plus all regular Columns

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Amazon India :https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CMDGKY9P?ref=myi_title_dp




Wednesday, January 10, 2024

EDITORIAL : Pratik's Special Australian Issue

 

EDITORIAL

Pratik's Special Australian Issue

 


Welcome to the Australian edition of the international, Nepal-based magazine, Pratik. Fire and Rain is brought to you by a partnership between Pratik, Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT), and Red Room Poetry. We are very pleased indeed to present a collection of diverse and exciting writers to the international stage, and to present the issue at several venues, including the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in October 2023, the Nepal Launch at Australian Embassy, Kathmandu on 11 January, 2024 and the Indian launches at ILFK, Kerala and New Delhi World Book Fair, in February, 2024.

Looking over this collection as a whole, there is a sense of anxiety, a precarity, about relationships with both the natural and urban worlds. Two dominant themes emerge: that of the violent and of the tender. From the linguistic dexterity of Dan Disney’s Unentitled, where a fractured colonised presence emerges as paper-thin, to the deftly controlled rage of Bebe Backhouse’s impressive i want to know what you did with my memories, we can observe intimations of violence signalling a tragic colonial disquiet, a disquiet explosively pursued in Christopher Raja’s story Red, a heartbreaking account of a massacre of indigenous people. This dominant trope of violence appears in another guise in Gay Lynch’s In-Train, where family violence hovers over the story like a chilling dark cloud.


Just as violence is shown in these pieces to manifest in various forms, the theme of the tender is defined within subtle differences. Stephanie Green’s Disruption, a moving tribute to a lost friend, weaves a sense of time past with a lyrical sweep through time, location, and event. Mags Webster’s linguistically deft poem Salt & Sulphur brings speaker and oyster together in compelling imagery, while Jill Jones’ Testament is exemplary of her customary gift in bringing forth the imminent, being of and not of nature in its abstract glory. Annie Te Whiu’s sensitive response to the natural world and ancestral memory in angled is echoed in Alison Barton’s attentive evocation of the natural world, implying more than it states, in How to grieve in the open air. While to conclude, Jude Aquilina’s Heat Wave, Koolunga reminds us of the environmental damage wrecked upon this country by the colonial practice of Terraforming, as country currently used for grazing sheep bakes in an unrelenting sun.

Finally, we would like to thank Her Excellency, the Australian Ambassador to Nepal, Felicity Volk, for her engagement in this project, and the Australia Council for The Arts for their generous support.

 

– Yuyutsu Sharma, Sally Breen & Jennifer Mackenzie,

Editors

 

 

 


 

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Kathmandu Launch of Pratik Magazine's Special Australian Issue

 

KATHMANDU LAUNCH

Her Excellency Ms. Felicity Volk,

the Australian Ambassador 

looks forward to hosting you at the launch of

Fire and Rain

Special Australian Issue of Pratik Magazine

Edited by Yuyutsu Sharma with

 Sally Breen & Jennifer Mackenzie as Guest Editors

Date: Thursday, 11 Jan 2024

Time: 3 pm

Venue:  The Australian Embassy, Kathmandu, Nepal

Entrance by Invitation Only

To confirm invitation, write to

whitelotusbookshop@gmail.com or call 9803171925



 

 

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Pratik's Special Australian Issue to be launched at Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, Bali in Oct


Pratik: Fire and Rain Special Australian Issue 

Artwork credit: Aaron Chapman

Edited by Yuyutsu Sharma 

Guest Editors: Sally Breen & Jennifer Mackenzie

 

POETRY by 

Alison J Barton Dan Dinsey Dan Dinsey Emilie Collyer Jill Jones Jude Aquilina Peter Boyle Rozanna Lilley Anne-Marie Te Whiu Leanne Betasamosake Simpson Samuel Watson Bebe Backhouse Stephanie Green Jennifer Mackenzie

FICTION AND NON-FICTION BY

 Mags Webster Chris Raja Dean Kerrison Gay Lynch   Indy Horobin  Patrick Allington Sally Breen  Stephanie Green  Shelley Kenigsberg

"A Stranger in a strange land." 

Yuyutsu Sharma Interviews Australian Novelist Felicity Volk

JENNIFER MACKENZIE: Top 5 Poetry Books from Australia

SALLY BREEN: Top 5 Novels from Australia

Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing by White Lotus Book Shop, Kathmandu, in conjunction with Asia Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) present Fire and Rain – a special edition of the magazine focused on Australian literature featuring the work of 24 Australian writers, poets and artists. The edition includes a collaboration with Red Room Poetry's Fair Trade initiative to highlight the work of First Nations authors.

Fire and Rain features literature that evokes a sense of Australia – either geographically, spiritually, politically, linguistically, culturally, or otherwise.  Fire and Rain takes the pulse of current Australian literature offering unique contemporary perspectives from established and emerging contributors.

Fire and Rain is supported by Creative Australia

Fire and Rain will be officially launched at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in October 2023. The edition is available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CK8MSDBN?ref=myi_title_dp



EDITORS FOR THE SPECIAL ISSUE


Dr Sally Breen is an Australian writer, editor, and academic. Author of the iconic grunge memoir The Casuals (2011) winner of the Varuna Harper Collins Manuscript Prize and Atomic City a neo-noir novel (2013) shortlisted for the QLD Premier’s People’s Choice Book of the Year 2014. Sally’s short form creative and non-fiction work has been published widely both nationally and internationally with major features in The Guardian London, Asia Literary Review, Griffith Review, The Age, Overland, Meanjin, The Australian, TEXT, Best Australian Stories, Sydney Review of Books, Hemingway Shorts and The Age. She is a regular contributor to The Conversation. Sally has worked as Associate Editor of Australia’s most awarded literary journal Griffith Review and was fiction editor of Wet Ink Magazine for New Writing. She has co-edited an edition of MC Journal, three special editions of TEXT, and the book length international anthology Meridian – The APWT Drunken Boat Anthology of New Writing. Sally is Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators www.apwriters.org and Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing at Griffith University, Australia


Jennifer Mackenzie is a poet and reviewer, focusing on writing from and about the Asian region. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be some kind of artist. Having the great fortune to have the mercurial artist, Les Kossatz, as a teacher, she thought that having an inner city studio, and meeting up with artist friends in a bar at night seemed to be the perfect way to live. However, discovering that words were more her metier than paint, she took to writing.  While a student at the University of Melbourne, she had access to the best of both worlds, owing a great deal to teachers Vincent Buckley and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, with the lively world of small magazines and inner suburban poetry gatherings near at hand. Travel to Indonesia, to Java in particular, has been formative to her own sense of poetics, something that is continuing. Since the publication of Borobudur (Transit Lounge 2009), also republished by The Lontar Foundation in 2012, she has presented her work at a number of conferences and festivals, including the Ubud, Irrawaddy and Makassar festivals, and most recently at the Mathrubhumi Festival of Literary Arts in Trivandrum. Her criticism has appeared in such journals as Sydney Review of Books, Mascara Literary Review, Cha, and Cordite Poetry Review. She has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Marten Bequest Poetry Scholarship, and the Felix Meyer travelling scholarship from the University of Melbourne, and in 2016 she enjoyed a writing residency at Seoul Artspace, Yeonhui. She also works as an occasional editor for The Lontar Foundation in Jakarta. Her most recent book is Navigable Ink (Transit Lounge 2020), a homage to the Indonesian writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. She lives in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia, on the unceded land of the Woi Wurrung Wurundjeri people.


Yuyutsu Sharma is one of the few poets in the world who make their living with poetry. Named as “The world-renowned Himalayan poet,” (The Guardian) “One-Man Academy” (The Kathmandu Post) and “Himalayan Neruda” (Mike Graves), Yuyutsu is a vibrant force on the world poetry stage. He is also recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature. Author of eleven poetry collections, most recently, Lost Horoscope & Other Newer Poems, Yuyutsu has read his works at several prestigious places and held workshops in creative writing and translation at Queen’s University, Belfast, University of Ottawa and South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, University of California, Davis, Sacramento State University, California, Beijing Open University, New York University, New York and Columbia University, New York. 

Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts Creative Writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home.