Euphony Spring 2011 Cover Contest
Euphony’s Spring issue is currently in production, and we need cover art! Anybody who does photography and other art media is welcome to send us submissions for our cover contest. The requirements are simple: 1) We’re looking for artwork somehow related to the theme of “Spring” (no black and white submissions, please); 2) Submissions should be able to crop to 414 X 630 pixels. You may send a low-resolution sample for now, and if we’re interested we’ll contact you about a high-resolution image. Photography/art of different dimensions is also fine, but will be cropped to our discretion.
The selected work will grace the cover of our upcoming issue, and the artist will receive a publication credit with Euphony. Take a look at our past issues (links in the above menu) for an idea of what we’ve chosen in the past.
Interested in participating? Submissions accepted until May 11th to euphony@uchicago.edu.
Good luck!
- The Editors
Fiction: “Grace” by Jason M. Jones
Then turning to the spirit once again,
I said: “Francesca, what you suffer here
melts me to tears of pity and pain.But tell me: in the time of your sweetest sighs
by what appearances found love the way
to lure you to his perilous paradise?”-The Inferno, Dante, Canto V, Circle Two
I. Francesca
Paolo threw himself from the window last night, but it might have been the night before or the night before that. It might have been a hundred years ago, and it’s quite likely he’ll do it again tomorrow. Time means so little when the same monotonous moonbeams have streamed through these broken panes for years on end and all I see is night.
He returned inexplicably, and that’s what matters. I woke (who can say how long I slept?) and there he was, sitting across from me. We never share a word, but lacking that mad look, the snarling smile and arch of his brow, this room would lose meaning, the shadows wouldn’t take form, and our story would dissolve.
When I close my eyes, I can see his face—not Paolo’s, but a replica—a round, olive orb, curtained by twisting black locks, his brazen scowl as he crept the corridors before our death, his eyes like flames in the bedroom’s hearth. He clutches a long knife below the blade’s silver glint—his lips a demonic curl—and he springs through heavy wooden doors to catch us off guard.
Winter 2011 Issue
The Winter issue is on the way from the printers. As promised, today we’re releasing the PDF of the issue online: Dowload the Winter 2011 Issue. Look out on campus or around Hyde Park to pick up a copy. Enjoy!
Sneak Preview: “Against Elegy” by Adam Tavel
We know you’ve been waiting, and soon your patience be rewarded: The Winter 2011 issue is off to the printers and will be available very, very shortly! Watch out in the next couple of days for the release of the PDF on this website.
In the meantime, enjoy a sneak preview from the issue, the poem “Against Elegy” by Adam Tavel. We’ve posted it here.
Important Message From the Editors: Updated Submissions Guidelines
As many of you may have noticed in the past week, we recently revamped our website to be more accessible in anticipation of Euphony’s forthcoming Winter 2011 issue. In keeping with the theme of change, we would like to take this opportunity to announce an update to our submissions guidelines. Due to the high volume of submissions we receive, electronic submissions must receive priority in our reading pool, and so as of March 16th 2011, we no longer accept print manuscripts. That means that from that date, we only accept literature submitted electronically to euphony@uchicago.edu.
We will, however, continue accepting print submissions from writers who have absolutely no access to the internet—meaning, if you are reading this now, this exception does not apply to you.
Thank you for your understanding, and we hope to see more excellent work in the future!
- the editors
Welcome to Euphony
Welcome to the online version of Euphony Journal, the biannual literary magazine of the University of Chicago. Please feel free to have a look around: use the navigation bar to the right to browse through our web-exclusive content, or refer to the above menu for information about the journal, past issues, and submissions guidelines.
Poetry: “Casting” by Noel Sloboda
From between toppled logs, spider legs and
mouse droppings spill, as wood downed once
again falls like fate, and I prepare to
rebuild. Scanning the wreckage, I search
for a catch to release the base row
committed to ripening in place.
The rotten logs must be wrestled loose,
carted to the deep woods to be forgotten—
I know from years past, they won’t go
without a fight with the living, clinging
to muddy March ground, as if to suggest
the recently dead dream of roots.
Poetry: “Incarnation” by Anthony Opal
A by himself crow
is picking at the bark
on a log
on top of a rain wet
woodpile,
black feathers glinting
white,
an allover misting
of december rain
on christmas lights—
this incarnation
as viewed from my office window—
a father-forsaken shadow
taking flight
among us, lonely moving.
Greetings from the New Editors
Hello! I’m Keith Jamieson, Euphony’s new Fiction Editor. I and the new Poetry Editor, Yini Shi, are hoping to make the website a more integral part of Euphony than it has been in the past. That means more unique content and more frequent updates. To start off, you’ll find below a new, web-exclusive story by Raphaela Weissman. Please check back to find out more in the coming weeks, as well as to download a copy of our upcoming Winter 2011 issue!
Fiction: “I Thought I Was Going to Die” by Raphaela Weissman
i. In The Elevator
I heard a rumbling. I thought the other guy heard it too, the old man with the shopping bag, wearing a sweater vest and a hat that used to have some kind of special name when he was younger, before my time— fisherman’s cap. No, sandcatcher. Something like that.
It was a special rumbling. It’s always a special sound, when I think I’m going to die. I wanted to ask the old man, can’t you tell that there’s something different about that, that it’s coming from the bowels of the elevator shaft? He’s older than I am and has probably been riding elevators since they were made differently. Maybe rumbling louder than this was what an elevator ride used to sound like; maybe you were taking your life in your hands every time you set foot inside one of these, and they had a cute name for them, death boxes or the devil’s dumbwaiter. I’m just guessing. I would have asked him. It would have been the last thing I ever learned.
