so you did read it…

below is a chapbook review written by maureen virchau, poet and regular contributor to nibble.

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it is winter is Jeff Fleming’s latest chapbook. If you read his chap falling up you will notice the same style, the same melding of poetry and fiction- a collection of poems that tells a story when read in chronological order, but that can also be read out of order and individually experienced.
 
it is winter tells a dark story. I found it to be riveting, potent, suspenseful, dense, otherworldly, intelligent, and completely accessible. I think of each poem as a work of great power and precision.
 
it is winter contains everything that I have come to expect from Jeff Fleming’s poetry. He has the uncanny ability to create dense worlds out of few words. His poetry is clean, stripped of all unnecessary decoration. He is a master craftsman of the short poem, the short story.
 
There is one poem per page. Just like nibble. Short poems. Just like nibble. Powerful poems. Just like nibble. Poems that linger. Just like nibble.
 
All I can say (well, actually I can say plenty more) is that it is winter is worth a lot more than $2. That’s less than a cup of coffee. You can go to your fave coffee shop, buy a cup of coffee, and read it is winter. Enjoy it with your coffee that costs more than the chapbook itself. Maybe someone will ask you what you are reading, and then you can tell him or her to go to the nibble website and buy it for $2. That person will probably exclaim, 2 dollars?! And you will say, Yes, 2 dollars. That person might then respond with- That’s less than a cup of ….Yep.

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you can purchase it is winter by clicking the subscription link on this webpage and then the paypal button. 

it really is winter…

it is winter enjoyed a record breaking first week of sales!  if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, there is still time…or…at least copies available….time is a whole other issue we can’t help you with.

anyway.

there are still copies available from nibble press!

it is winter

the latest chapbook from jeff fleming.

for just two dollars (yeah, we’re serious!), you can get a copy of this amazing chapbook.  you can order via this website using paypal

and each copy will be autographed by the author!

jeff fleming’s poetry has been described as “mature, intelligent, empathetic….good stuff.”  he writes “with a steady blend of emotion, experience, universality, and objectiveness.”

he is the author of several chapbooks of poetry including: falling up, why is my lemon tea red, the bones of saints under glass, delirious and purple, shades of green, and the forthcoming beneath a willow.

fleming was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

only $2? that’s outrageous!

now available from nibble press!

the latest chapbook from jeff fleming:

it is winter

 

for only two dollars, you can order it is winter via this website using paypal

each copy will be signed by the author.

jeff fleming’s poetry has been described as “mature, intelligent, empathetic….good stuff.”  he writes “with a steady blend of emotion, experience, universality, and objectiveness.”

he is the author of several chapbooks of poetry including: falling up, the bones of saints under glass, delirious and purple, and shades of green.

fleming was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

back to life. back to reality.

yep, we went on a two-week vacation.

we were forced…ur, convinced that it would be best for everyone involved if nibble took a couple of weeks off.  locked the doors and left town.

quite enjoyable.

but now we are back.

we hope you enjoyed issue 19.  based on the email we received while we were gone, you did.  but we cannot rest on our laurels.  we must get back to work.

and that means you have to get back to work sending us your poetry.  we are working on issue 20 (of course) and still on the lookout for poems with ‘nibble’ or ‘nipple’ in them.  we’d like to finish those special issues asap, so if you have anything that fits or think of anything that fits or write anything that fits or just want to complain about us giving you fits, then send them along:

nibblepoems@gmail.com

as always, we are happy to hear your suggestions.  we are quite likely to ignore them, but we often get a chuckle from them and hope this doesn’t dampen your enthusiasm for sending them.

kidding…

nineteen

today is the official release date of nibble nineteen.

very exciting.  we have some fantastic old poets in here.  and by ‘old’ we mean they have been kicking ass in nibble for a long time.  some of them are actually quite young.

we also have some amazing new talent…we want to name drop, but we’ll let you discover them for yourself.

never too late to pick up a copy, if you somehow didn’t get any of your own poetry in there and it sorta slipped your mind to put in a subscription order.  just click the ‘subscriptions’ link to the right of this post.

now would be a fantastic time to send in your submissions.  we are collecting for issue twenty (OH MY GOD!  20! ARE YOU SERIOUS!).  also, we are still on the hunt for nibble poems and nipple poems.

if you’re not sure what those two things are, just nibble around in our past posts and you’ll be edumicated pretty quickly.

nibblepoems@gmail.com

do you remember the time?

we are exactly one poem away from filling issue 19 and entering the phase of “pre-production.”  we love to post this sort of information because sharing our reality makes it more real.

it also seems to encourage people.  they like the idea that a new issue is about to be birthed and they can now send in their poems for the next issue secure in the fact that we are actually still here, actually still doing business.  we think it is something along the lines of once bitten twice shy or a new adage we are attempting to coin: those f*#kheads at (insert name of online poetry zine here) promised to publish my poem and then just disappeared into the ether of the internet.

yeah, it’s a little cumbersome to actually become a tried-and-true expression, but we like it anyway.  mostly because we aren’t f*#kheads and we can’t disappear into the ether of the internet as we are not an online poetry magazine.

so anyway.

we are still looking for nibble poems, nipple poems and other great pieces of wordplay with less than 20 lines.

nibblepoems@gmail.com

we’re on safari to stay

this is a post about nothing.  or maybe everything.  or maybe just some random jumble.

we are posting because it is friday and we haven’t posted in a week or so and we don’t want you to think that we’ve gone under.  out of business.  kaput.

we’re still here. working away. currently putting together four issues at the same time, which we’ve never done before.  and will likely never do again.

anyway.

did you know that some poetry magazines have certain times of the year when you can and can’t submit your work?  like we only accept submissions from june 5 to october 13. 

did you know that nibble is always happy to read your poetry?  even during a full moon. or a waxing gibbous.  even on friday the 13th.  or saturday the 14th.  serious.

anyway.

so did you write a poem a day during national poetry month?  or did you take that time to convert the heathens?  or did you go to poetry readings and buy the photo copied/laser printed books that the local poets self-published?

did you do anything special?  or just business as usual?

of course, you are a poetry superstar, so even if you did nothing out of the ordinary, it was probably out of the ordinary.

anyway.

did you know that nibble might someday win several prestigious awards?  maybe.  and if that happens you’ll have to move us to the front of your list of publishing credits when you submit your poetry for publication.  yep, you’ll have to put us up front, because not only will you have been published in a magazine that has won several prestigious awards BUT you did it before it was even cool!  you’ll be in the vanguard. 

you so totally rock.  it’s hard sometimes to be in the same room with you, you shine so brightly. 

we’re really into you.  did we mention that?

anyway.

we realize that this post reads like we knocked off early, went home and started imbibing and then remembered that we forgot to put up some new crap on the website and dashed something off even though we were half crocked.  it’s not true.  we wish it were.  but it’s not.

it’s just one of those days…

nibblepoems@gmail.com

superstar!

today’s best cover letter:

Editors,
 
Thanks for providing a place for tiny poems.
 
Here are 5 for you to review in 3,2,1..blastoff:

i can name that tune in 4 notes…

poems with the word nibble.

poems with the word nipple.

your best poem with 12 lines…10 lines…8 lines.

nibblepoems@gmail.com

some people think liz taylor was not beautiful

this is poetry.

you can’t measure it in mpgs or horsepower or metric tons…well, you could if you really wanted to, but that would just be weird and anyway it’s way off topic…

the point is, everyone has an opinion.

sure, you could argue that “good” poetry is what most people agree they like, or “good” poetry is what the professors at the local university tell you is good.

whatever.

we are not “most people” and we certainly are not “professors at the local u.”

we are nibble.

so what do we like?

well, get a copy of nibble and you’ll see pretty quickly that we publish short poems that have evocative imagery, some style and flair, and an understanding of how to get things done with as few words as possible.  the poems we like have a little piece of the poet inside, sometimes hidden, sometimes right in your face.

what do we generally (if not always) pass on?  well, rhyming poetry, for one. 

haiku. 

also, we find poems that are laid out in clever fashion all over the page to be distracting.  yes, loads of famous poets imploy this technique.  maxine kumin (whom we enjoy) does so to wonderful effect in a poem called 400 meter freestyle (google it).

but, it is difficult to do well.  and, if the words are the right words, generally doesn’t need to be done at all.

we aren’t big fans of poems that have sing-songy rhyme…oh, did we mention that already?  gee, why would we take the time to write that twice…

the point of this post is that we want to publish your poetry in nibble. 

honest. 

we love you, love that you write poetry, and want to usher you into our pages in the hope that you will feel part owner of nibble, and as such you will treat her with all the love and respect that you would a child or a grandparent or that slightly quirky uncle who sometimes says things he shouldn’t when he’s had a few cocktails or missed one of his scheduled medications.

we do not want to be a notch in your poetry belt. 

we don’t believe in notches or poetry belts.  we leave our shirts untucked.

we want you to take a seat at the table.  right here.  we have nice cushy chairs, imported from paris…strike that…they were proudly made right here in the u.s.a.

so, please read our submission guidelines.  they’re pretty short and fairly entertaining, as such things go.  and then send us your poems.  we will read them, all of them, and we will be kind to them while they are in our care.

nibblepoems@gmail.com