Monthly Archives: April 2017

by | April 17, 2017 · 10:30 am

Making Decisions: How We Choose the Pieces We Choose

Posted by Cassidy Brighton, Gandy Dancer CNF Reader for 5.2

Making decisions on what gets published each semester in Gandy Dancer is not an easy task. With so many submissions and limited room within the magazine, the selection process can get intense.

This is my second semester working to create Gandy Dancer, and my second time working to choose the creative nonfiction pieces that will be published. Each time, we have had to make tough choices and have had tough conversations about what few pieces are going to get put into this semester’s journal. Continue reading →

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by | April 13, 2017 · 10:32 am

Love and Poetry in a Dark Time: Dante Di Stefano’s Love is a Stone Endlessly in Flight

Posted by Evan Goldstein, GD Managing Editor for 5.2

I finished Love is a Stone Endlessly in Flight, Dante Di Stefano’s debut poetry collection, alone under the harsh fluorescent lamp that hangs above my dinner table. It was a frigid winter night, and the wind howled its way under the door to my house and into the living room. Earlier, I had spent considerable time looking out of my bedroom window: trash and lost milk crates skated across the concrete past the students fighting their way to campus in the wind.

It’s easy, especially on Western New York winter nights like this, to feel unhopeful. We live in an unhopeful time, as well. As we watch the authoritarian Trump administration double down on America’s long bipartisan history of war abroad and austerity and state terror at home it can be easy to forget where to find hope, or at least solace, in the day by day. Continue reading →

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by | April 11, 2017 · 10:30 am

Writing Advice from Idra Novey, Author of Ways to Disappear and Exit, Civilian

Posted by Kallie Swyer, GD Poetry Editor for 5.2, Former Contributor for 4.1 and 5.1

As a part of the Geneseo Literary Forum, translator, novelist, and poet Idra Novey came to our campus to discuss her books with in-class visits and a reading. I was lucky enough to be in one of the classes that she visited, where we got to discuss her latest novel Ways to Disappear,  and her recent poetry collection Exit, Civilian.  Continue reading →

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by | April 10, 2017 · 2:39 pm

When The Autistic Evaluates Poetry


Posted byMegan Grant, GD Poetry Reader for 5.2

When I find myself bemoaning the five hours and nine minutes between my friend Chrissy and me, I read her poetry out loud to myself.  I sit cross-legged in front of my bleached-wooden bookshelf and run my fingers across novels and memoirs until they rest on Issue 3.1 of Gandy Dancer.  Chrissy’s poems are printed on page thirty-one; the journal bends open to her.

I have memorized the degree of emphasis of each syllable, the number of milliseconds between every dash and line break.  The stanzas sound like Chrissy, despite our voices’ differing timbres.  However, no matter how many times I recite her poems, both the ones she wrote in college and the new ones she’s written while pursuing her MFA a UMass, I still cannot comprehend what it means to be, “subatomic reactions daisychained in fractals,” or to, “supernova against your stringbean cilia.”  I can’t quite figure out all of what the poems are saying. Continue reading →

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by | April 7, 2017 · 8:48 am

What am I even doing here? Writing and Existential Angst

Posted by Lily Codera, GD Poetry Reader for 5.2

So you’ve decided to write, and nothing is going to stop you. You’re going to write, and no number of soul-draining barista or restaurant server positions (on the side) can slow your momentum now. At this point, you may have developed a routine that allows you to work on your writing regularly; you may have even pinpointed your most productive time of day so as to “protect” it, like Kate Daloz suggested at her recent reading. Maybe your dad has finally come to terms with the fact that you’re probably not going to become the doctor or lawyer that he always wanted you to be. Great. So why do you still feel so unsettled about all this? Continue reading →

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