Tag Archives: Issue 3.1

Former Contributors: What They’re Doing Now

Posted by Sara Munjack, Arts Editor and Poetry Reader for issue 6.1, Former contributor for issue 4.1.

A quick glance at where former Gandy Dancer contributors are now is all that is necessary to confirm that the literary journal acts as a spring board which propels emerging writers into the writing trajectory Poet Yael Massen, who just finished her MFA at Indiana University is currently working on a poetry manuscript, which she says is “emotionally exhausting.” Her poems can be found in Gandy Dancer’s inaugural issue. Since, she has been published in several literary journals including Columbia Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, The Journal, and has a couple of poems forthcoming in print issues of Colorado Review and Fifth Wednesday Journal. She has also begun working on contemporary Hebrew poem translations—two of which have been published in Waxwing. Continue reading

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When The Autistic Evaluates Poetry


Posted by
Megan 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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