Posted by Christine Davis, GD Nonfiction Reader for 3.2
The time has come readers, writers, and lovers of words. Gandy Dancer 3.2 is almost here, ready for consumption! After months reviewing wonderful submissions in the categories of poetry, fiction, art, and non-fiction from students all over New York State, we have whittled down our numbers and emerged with a collection of some of our best work yet!
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Posted by Britina Cheng, GD Art Curator & Fiction Reader for 3.2
In our upcoming issue of Gandy Dancer, we are proud to introduce James Mattson, junior biology pre-med major at SUNY Geneseo, as our featured artist. His photography captivated the art editors. One, “Bridge to Fall” will grace the cover of our Spring issue, fitting with its bright and welcoming colors. He appropriates color differently in each of his photographs. “Bridge to Fall” emanates an Alice in Wonderland playful and curious tone. “Glow” a gentle photograph of a dock, has a deep everlasting glow that contrasts the bright lights of a city on the right. In contrast, the lack of color in “Nevermore” supports the ominous presence of a lone raven and silhouetted tree branches. Here, Mattson answers questions about his interest in photography and some of his influences.
Nevermore
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Posted by Devin Stabley-Conde, GD Poetry Editor for 3.2
As a native Buffalonian, I grew up immersed in all of the rich culture that the greater Buffalo area has to offer. From concerts at Town Ballroom to the bustle of small businesses on Elmwood Avenue, there is always something new to discover in the city. So when I discovered the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair (BSPBF) through a creative writing class, it came as no surprise.
The BSPBF was founded in 2006 by Chris Fritton and Kevin Thurston after organizing zine and art fairs in NYC and Toronto. In a blog post about organizing a fair in Buffalo, Fritton states, “Buffalo has such a rich literary tradition, but an even richer tradition of progressive work, experimentation, and cultural innovation … I wanted to create an event that reflected that ethos-something where DIY ethics and handmade objects were privileged, but also something that was affordable, inclusive, democratic, and egalitarian. I simply couldn’t believe that our city didn’t have one … if there were no venues to peddle our own work, we’d make the venue ourselves.” Continue reading
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Posted by Christie Tiberio, GD CNF Reader for 3.2
After many weeks of deliberation, the student editors of SUNY Geneseo’s Gandy Dancer have narrowed down submissions to our final selected works for the upcoming Spring issue! We are excited to present our sixth issue, particularly because of the extended effort of time, energy, and creative problem solving that was needed in order to bring the magazine to completion. As a writer, I learned a lot about the selection and editing process. It was interesting to see how a piece would or wouldn’t work in the context of the selected submissions, due to issues of style or format. In some cases, small revisions were needed—the placement of a space break or description, a more precise title. Once these small edits were made, the piece was ready for copy-editing. Continue reading
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Posted by Rachael Kelly, GD CNF Reader for 3.2
Creative nonfiction reader Rachael Kelly chatted with GD’s very own Rachel Hall to get an in-depth look at the past, present, and future of Gandy Dancer.
Rachael Kelly (RK): What are three of your favorite things about being the faculty advisor for Gandy Dancer?
Rachel Hall
Rachel Hall (RH): There are so many things that I love about teaching the Editing and Production Workshop and being the Gandy Dancer faculty advisor. It’s great to work with the class and staff to build something together. As a writing teacher, I’m often in the position of critiquing students’ work, slapping grades on their efforts, so that it can feel as if we are on opposite sides of the enterprise: Critic versus writer. But with Gandy, we’re working together to build something and I love that collaborative work. And I get to see talents the students have that might not show up in a regular classroom, skills like social media savvy or an eye for design. I also love seeing the journal come together—each semester, it feels a bit magical, though, of course, there is lots of hard work involved. That may be four things, but all are important! Continue reading
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Posted by Christy L. Agrawal, GD Poetry Reader for 3.2
“Led by language, led by intuitive leaps of thought, a poem does not presume.” – Kazim Ali
When I was younger my mother and I used to play something we called ‘the poem game’ every night before I went to bed. There were two versions of the poem game, the mom’s-tired version in which we would take out a Shel Silverstein book, place it between us on the bed like a sacred object, and take turns closing our eyes and pointing to random pages, delving into poem after poem and reading them aloud in an unspoken competition to draw the most laughter out of the other.
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Posted by Brendan Mahoney, GD Poetry Reader for 3.2
There’s a website that has a URL with sixty ones in it. Not the phrase “sixty ones.” The number one sixty times. Upon arriving at 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com, you’ll be asked to “go to Rupert Murdoch’s Myspace page to be my friend.” The entire website is just one page, as far as I can tell. One page plastered with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face superimposed onto the bodies of what I think are Sailor Moon characters and phrases in both English and Korean. If you take the time to hover around the website you’ll find a few other treats, like .gifs of ‘90s Arnold and other Korean and English phrases like HOLY PLASTIC BEEFY, which flash onscreen when you mouse over certain sections of the page. The best part about this page, in my opinion, is that this whole display that I just described takes up about three-eighths of the browser.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Superimposed
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Posted by Chrissy Montelli, Poetry Editor for 3.2, Contributor for 3.1, & Reader for 2.1
It seems like every three months or so, I find a new article that declares poetry is dead—or at least questions how long it will take for poetry to die. The Washington Post did so two years ago. Newsweek did the same ten years before that. Heck, Thomas Love Peacock claimed poetry was dead in “The Four Ages of Poetry” all the way back in 1829! It doesn’t really make sense to me, especially since the majority of people who shout from rooftops about poetry’s death rarely explain why poetry is supposedly dead, except “nobody reads it anymore.” But with every declaration of the “death of poetry,” hundreds of poets fly in to defend the genre and prove the naysayers wrong. By 1989, poetry had been declared dead so many times that Donald Hall called for “death to the death of poetry”—and it’s been sixteen years since then, with more and more declarations each year. There are so many people on both sides of the argument that poetry might as well be characterized as the Schrödinger’s cat of the literary world.
Our solution, then, is to open the box. Continue reading
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