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What Life Was Like on Planet Earth: An Assemblage
 
After a brief discussion of porn shooting techniques—an area in which I had no firsthand experience, but about which I had many ideas—we began.
 
Andrew Schenker

 

Ambidextrous Poesie: Ekphrasis in the Venetian Renaissance (Spotlight Runner-Up!)
 
Just as in a poem, disorientation spurs us to find a foothold—and we do, in the comfort of our own interpretations. In effect we finish the poem with the most powerful tool we have on hand as observers: our imaginations, with which we perform our own ekphrasis as a way of achieving clarity, as one might try to focus one's eyes on a blurry object. Similar to the poems of this period—villanelles, sestinas—our swoon takes place within the orderly, predictable lines of stanzas and scaffolds, ballads and ballustrades. It is safe to swoon here.
 
Jalina Mhyana