Mudfish 26, a journal of poetry, art, and fiction, features 78 photographs by street photographer, and portraitist, Lawrence Applebaum, whose candid shots of poets, friends, launch parties and Mudfish headquarters, provide an intimate glimpse into the world and aura of Mudfish. This is the quintessential Mudfish: the founding fathers—cf. the three on the cover—plus marvelous new talent. The whole issue takes on the familiarity and intimate feel of a family album.
Renowned poet Billy Collins is the judge of the 19 th Mudfish Poetry Prize. The winning poem, Allen Brafman's "Together on the Uptown 6," is a fitting companion to this photographer, famous for his New York subway photos. All the poems that follow are a full-throated declaration of the American experience.
The photographs chronicle the story of Mudfish and the poems, in keeping with the Mudfish aesthetic, all tell a story. They are personal and profound. And unforgettable. The end of life is a theme and the way it relates to childhood. There are "Mother" poems and "Father" poems. Beautiful and moving poems. Cancer is a leitmotif. Nevertheless, "always leave them laughing," is our goal.
A new writer, Joshua Even Eisen, seems a contemporary Hemingway. Sophie Kohler, in an excerpt from a coming-of-age novel, is a delightful new voice. Stephanie Emily Dickinson is featured once again with her exquisite, painful, medicinal prose. Her prose that is poetry. In the first paragraph of "Cancer in the Afternoon World" she mentions the 6 train:
"For years in bright sunshine, I marched on this sidewalk to the Astor Place subway to catch the 6 Train to work, returning late. Those hurrying mornings a youngish homeless man shouted, 'City Queen!' and would kiss my hand when I gave him a dollar."
The writing in Mudfish 26 knits itself together into a mysterious unity, as if all of these authors were being guided by an invisible hand. The lone ant of Billy Collins' poem, "Why I'm Incapable of Writing a Novel"
a lone ant
hauling a relatively enormous crumb
about half again its size, across the surface
of the table on which he had been weeping
has wandered into Stephanie Dickinson's prose:
"Ants and flying mites had lost their way landing on a page of my open book. I took a deep breath and exhaled them back into their world. When ants in pupa were sick they sent out chemical messages alerting their brethren ants to come and destroy them. They began peeling off their cocoon readying themselves to be bitten to death by adult ants. It was suicide to protect others. My cancer, too, gave off messages."
Dell Lemmon writes, in her poem "50 th High School Reunion": "It all started with a dream."
I never imagined living
this long and when you get this old,
it's as if you are already dead
and everything is a dream.
And as she says, "Aren't we supposed to be everybody in our dreams?"
It is as if we are all truly "together on the Uptown 6."
Jill Hoffman has a B.A. from Bennington College, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph. D. from Cornell University; she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and has been published widely in journals, including The New Yorker. Her first book of poems Mink Coat was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1973, her first novel Jilted was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. Other titles of poetry include: Black Diaries (2000), The Gates of Pearl (2018), and Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves (2024). Other novels include: Stoned (2023), and Topless (2026). She has taught in major universities and now teaches the Mudfish Writing Workshop on Zoom. She is the Founding Editor of Box Turtle Press. She is also a painter.
