Get Involved at The Worcester Review!

The Worcester Review is currently seeking a copy editor to join the editorial team. Like all editorial positions at The Worcester Review, this is a volunteer opportunity and is ideal for a candidate looking to build copyediting credentials and references at a literary journal.

Copy Editor Position Description:

The primary role of the Copy Editor is to help the Managing Editor prepare The Worcester Review for publication. The Worcester Review is the annual publication of the Worcester County Poetry Association. Most of the work of the Copy Editors is done independently; however, all editors are invited to attend twice-yearly staff meetings, usually held in January and June.

The Copy Editor timeline is as follows:

From Volume 37: A poem by Jonathan Blake

VIGIL
By Jonathan Blake

Heavy flakes of snow float
Beyond the windows that overlook
The valley. The hills of the horizon
Are blue. I have forgotten what it is
I must do in this world, and the voices
That trouble me are still. I grow
Old, but the winter light in my small
Room grows and fades like the breath
Of god. I do not need science to know
It enters me, lights the holy marrow
Of my bones. I am not the dark wings
Of those birds coming to rest
In the bare oak like the blind eyes
Of a woman who knows night
Comes on. No. When the long mirror
Of the world grows opaque, I am
Nothing. And nothing more.

From Volume 37: A poem by Sarah Brown Weitzman

MONET IN WINTER
By Sarah Brown Weitzman

Though he must have longed for summer gardens
at Giverny, hot light flaring off water-glazed lilies,

From Volume 37: A poem by Henry Walters

MILKMAN*

By Henry Walters

Not till this old-fashioned morning, Son House singing
through fifty pushups, fifty situps, some pain-
ful stretches into lower registers

that can’t be reached, on a skipping record,
Got a letter this morn-, Got a letter this morn-,
not till I rifled every kitchen cupboard

& poked through sacks of nothing but dry goods,
& the fridge the same, no eggs, no meat, no greens,
& I, who have never been poor, sat down, tired,

not till then did I think about the milkman,
a real man to my parents’ generation
but myth to mine, who’d come in the dawn & leave

two bottles on the stoop beside the door,
uncapped, they said, & frothy, &, sometimes, warm,
narrow-necked bottles that flared out like the bell

of a gramophone, like the mouths of changeling twins
you found each morning, unswaddled, unexplained,
& take in full, & put out empty, & think

no more about than mail arriving twice,
or papers by evening, or kids after school, or sun
going up & down by everybody’s watch.

But now your bottle floats up into mind,
milkman, minstrel, waylaid messenger,
without a message, without milk, without

even a sun to slip slow through your glass,
& you say, Hush—I thought I heard her call
my name, & suddenly your being gone

delivers me a second time into the world,
brimful, & fuller, maybe, than before,
having had no taste of what there’d be to lack.


*reprinted with permission from Field Guide A Tempo (Hobblebush Books, 2016)

2016 Pushcart Prize Nominees

The Worcester Review has selected its 2016 Pushcart Prize Nominees. 

In no particular order, the nominees are:

Karen Sharpe, "Neutrals"

Henry Walters, "Milkman"

Renee Bibby, "Than All the Treasures"

Heather Treseler, "Voyeur in June"

Judy Kaber, "Elvers"

Hu Xian / Zhang Ziqing / Rodger Martin, "Chinese Wolfberry"

Best of luck to all our nominees!

From Volume 37: A poem by 李白, Li Po

秋日登扬州西灵塔

宝塔凌苍苍，登攀览四荒。顶高元气合，标出海云长。
万象分空界，三天接画梁。水摇金刹影，日动火珠光。
鸟拂琼帘度，霞连绣栱张。目随征路断，心逐去帆扬。
露浴梧楸白，霜催橘柚黄。玉毫如可见，于此照迷方。


Climbing the Xiling Pagoda [1] in Yangzhou, Autumn [2]
By 李白, Li Po

The pagoda points into blue sky,
and I climb on its top, looking at distant landscape.
The top merges with the sky’s vigor
and towers above the clouds like a brilliant sign.

Volume 37 Cover Reveal

Coming November 2016!

Volume 37 Featuring the 2016 Frank O'Hara Prize Winners, the Manuscript Winner of the 2016 WCPA College Poetry Contest, New poetry and fiction from emerging and established writers, and a Feature Section on Scofield Thayer.