VEXT Magazine

17/06/2024

VEXT Magazine is closed to submissions until further notice.

General inquiries may be sent to [email protected]

01/05/2024

"Every man is the author of his own life."

"It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do."

"I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity."

Paul Auster

23/04/2024

In honor of World Book Day, I repost this classic Borges story that I recorded 3 years ago (more or less)

Read from my copy of the 1962 Grove Press edition of Borges' book, Ficciones. translated by Anthony Kerrigan whose translation I preferred.

14/02/2023

Happy Happy!

This Valentine's day, get inspired by ten of the most moving love letters in the Christie's archives

23/11/2022

THE PLACE GRATITUDE FILLS IN A FINE CHARACTER
by Walt Whitman from the Philadelphia Press, Nov. 27, 1884,

—A large family supper party, a night or two ago, with voices and laughter of the young, mellow faces of the old, and a by-and-by pause in the general joviality. “Now, Mr. Whitman,” spoke up one of the girls, “what have you to say about Thanksgiving? Won’t you give us a sermon in advance, to sober us down?” The sage nodded smilingly, look’d a moment at the blaze of the great wood fire, ran his forefinger right and left through the heavy white mustache that might have otherwise impeded his voice, and began: “Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it is the source of the highest poetry—as in parts of the Bible. Ruskin, indeed, makes the central source of all great art to be praise (gratitude) to the Almighty for life, and the universe with its objects and play of action.

We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimes fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made half enough of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a complete character, man’s or woman’s—the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the main matter, the element, inclination—what geologists call the trend. Of my own life and writings I estimate the giving thanks part, with what it infers, as essentially the best item. I should say the quality of gratitude rounds the whole emotional nature; I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality without it. There are people—shall I call them even religious people, as things go?—who have no such trend to their disposition.

Happy Thanksgiving!

06/07/2022

A hearty thanks to all of our contributors: present, past, and future!

Our Contributors

05/07/2022

A tribute to James Crafford, to whom this issue of VEXT is dedicated - in memoriam. ❤️

05/07/2022

Happy Birthday, America.

Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet ... He is America." On July 4th, 1855: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was published by Whitman - using his own money. Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass, revising it multiple times until his death. There have been held to be either six or nine individual editions of Leaves of Grass, the count varying depending on how they are distinguished. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades - the first edition being a small book of twelve poems, and the last, a compilation of over 400.

The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C. and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the death of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he wrote his well known poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures

The collection of loosely connected poems represents the celebration of his philosophy of life and humanity and praises nature and the individual human's role in it. Leaves of Grass focuses primarily on the corporeal and material world.
It was written in free verse - following no standard meter or rhyme scheme.

Whitman, who chose his idealized self as the subject of the book, was the progenitor of the style in which it was written (working hard and intelligently to perfect the free verse style over a period of six or seven years). He created the personality of the proletarian bard - the narrator of the poems.

Walter Whitman ( May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality, was highly controversial in its time. Whitman's own life came under scrutiny for his presumed homosexuality. Over time, however, the collection has infiltrated popular culture and became recognized as one of the central works of American poetry.

Born in Huntington on Long Island, as a child and through much of his career he resided in Brooklyn. At age 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. Later, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. . After a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at age 72, his funeral was a public event. Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe argued: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass ... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him."

The following excerpt is from the epic poem "Song of Myself" - arguably the most well known and celebrated of Whitman's works:

"A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.Whitman
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

03/07/2022

Poetry by the late great James Crafford. Art by Konstantin Korobov.

03/07/2022

Poetry by James Eret. Art by Warren Criswell.
Video reading by A Poetry Channel.

02/07/2022

Poetry by Bruce Fisher. Art by Quincy Tahoma.

02/07/2022

A poem by Sarah St. George - In Memoriam for James Crafford: great actor, playwright, poet and VEXT contributor. We still miss you, James.

01/07/2022

Poetry by Vincent Spina. Art by Harriet Lee-Merrion.

Vincent Spina was born in Brooklyn, NY. He currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University. His primary field of study is Andean Indigenous Literature and Culture. His dissertation on the works of the Peruvian author Jose Mari...

01/07/2022

Poetry by W Loran Smith aka Billy Lee. Art by Glenn Brady.

30/06/2022

Three poems by William Taylor Jr. with a painting by Warren Criswell

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Aw...

30/06/2022

A poem by Paul Hoy

29/06/2022

Poetry by Donna Snyder. Art by Isao Tomoda

Lock yourself in a room above a jeweler's shop. Look close in the waste bin in the alley. There is an elixir made of diamond dust, the antidote for despair born of lack. No one knows the recipe.

29/06/2022

Poetry by Rich Murphy. Art by Reiner Langer.

29/06/2022

Poetry by Layla Lenhardt. Art by Miles Johnston.

29/06/2022

27/06/2022

Poetry by Jack Henry. Art by Loribelle Spirovski.

27/06/2022

Poetry by Paul Varhola

27/06/2022

Two Poems by Christopher Clauss with Art by Avishek Ghosh

25/06/2022

Three poems from Sean Howard with an illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion

25/06/2022

Three poems from Mark Witucke and Art by Lucy Campbell

24/06/2022

Two poems from Jacqueline Henry with art by Nigel Van Wieck

you read the morning paper. (*Editor's note: Both poems were previously published in The Umbrella Factory, October 2021 issue) Jacqueline Henry is a NY-based writer/editor and creative writing instructor. Her poetry credits include: Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Clarion, After the Pause, Boome...

23/06/2022

A Not So Good Morning - A Poem by Frater Rodderz
(Click this text to read >>> )https://vextmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-not-so-good-morning-by-frater-rodderz.html

22/06/2022

Poetry by Carlos Barrera. Art by Glenn Brady. Enjoy!

22/06/2022

Story by Joe Ducato. Art by Glenn Brady.

The place where I was born was called The Highlands. It was a place, like many others, where sons and daughters inherited the labor of the parents, then worked their lives to pass the labor on to their own. The old-timers, “the goats” as they called themselves, once called The Highlands, The Lan...

21/06/2022

A few elemental truths in this cautionary poem by Thomas Piekarsaki.