By Maura O’Brien

I recently attended a performance of the play Strange Aeons at Widener University. I was especially excited because I knew absolutely nothing about it except for some posters hung up around campus decorated in clocks and tarot cards and what my friend in the play had told me. I was essentially going in with no idea what to expect.

I made my way over to Lathem Hall a little early so that I could get a good seat. It was there that I found out that there were no seats. The show was interactive, which meant the audience would be moving throughout the different sets the entire time. There were three different paths that we could choose to follow: the path of the Hermit, the path of the Empress, and the path of the Magician. I chose the path of the Magician, because that sounded like the most fun to me. Once everyone was assigned a group the doors opened and the show began.

Regardless of the path taken, attendees made a bargain with someone called the Emperor. The Magician wanted to bring her sister back from the dead, but in making the deal her memories were stolen from her. There were a lot of things happening at once, which made for a very chaotic but fun experience. On the Magician track, we received lemonade, watched someone try to summon a ghost, attended a tea party, and at the end watched all three of the paths meet their fate.

Overall, I would say it was a unique experience, and something that I would absolutely do again if given the chance.

by Abigail Grossman

People get together to enjoy a range of autumn festivities every year. One of the most enduring activities is the sharing of spooky stories. Who has not gathered around a fire with family and friends to share terrifying tales of ghosts and ghouls?

With Halloween close at hand, if you’re looking for a perfect scary story to tell, look no further than Edgar Allan Poe, one of the all-time best writers of horror. “The Black Cat,” one of his most famous works, was published in 1843. From his jail cell, the narrator recounts his descent into madness. As the story progresses, they reveal how they were caught for the devious crimes that landed them in prison. Although it may seem like a simple tale of a criminal’s lament, the story is much more complex. Poe includes elements of murder, mystery, and even magic, leaving readers on the edge of their seats with every line. For these reasons and more, “The Black Cat” makes for the perfect spooky story to share with loved ones this Halloween.

That said, there are many other horror tales by Poe that are worth sharing as well, including “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Read these tales at your own risk, though, because they will be sure to haunt you!

On a related note, our university’s very own FreshBaked Theatre Company is performing Poe! Poe! Poe!, a play by Kathryn Schultz Miller. Public shows are on November 9th and 15th in the Alumni Auditorium on Widener’s main campus. The production is free to attend, but any donations will support charity groups in Chester, Pennsylvania. Quoth the raven: “We hope to see you there!”

Good news!: You don’t need to rush. The deadline for the next issue of The Blue Route has been extended to November 30. If you are an undergraduate student, send us your best poetry and prose for consideration. For more information, please see our submission guidelines.

By Laura Polaski

Last week, Widener University welcomed award-winning poet and former creative writing professor Kenneth Pobo back to campus as this semester’s visiting writer. Dr. Pobo met and spoke with students and ended his visit by giving a reading of some of his poetry and flash fiction pieces. Before the reading, I had the opportunity to talk to him about his work and his advice for writers. 

Dr. Pobo primarily writes poetry, which influences all of the work that he does. Even when he is writing flash fiction, he incorporates imagery and figurative language that bring the story to life. Most of his poetry is written in free verse, but he also enjoys writing villanelles, sonnets, ghazals, and triolets. Since each of these styles has a specific structure, he describes the challenge of writing them as a “puzzle.” Dr. Pobo views writing flash as similar to free verse poetry, in the sense that it is another opportunity to work with less structure, without having to consider the impact of line breaks, which allows him to write “a more elastic kind of line.” He also enjoys the immediacy of writing flash, as he has to make something happen quickly with such a limited word count.  

For aspiring writers, Dr. Pobo says that “there’s no substitute for getting your butt in the chair.” If you ever sit down and want to write but nothing is coming, he says to take a break and get out of the chair but always make sure to come back to it later. All it takes, according to Dr. Pobo, is just one line or one piece of dialogue that can help push you forward. He also acknowledges how easy it is for young writers to get discouraged and feel like others can do better work than them, and he admits that he feels it sometimes, as well. To get around this, he recommends thinking about how no one else has the same perspective as you; you can put your own stamp on your work that no one else can. He also advises against worrying too much about the future, because “the future takes care of itself.” All you need to do is write your poem or story. Another thing that he believes will help is building a community by meeting other writers and learning about their challenges. For editing, Dr. Pobo recommends reading your work aloud, because your ears will catch things that your eyes miss after reading over your work so many times, such as using the same word too close together. 

Some of Dr. Pobo’s favorite poets include Tomas Tranströmer, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Theodore Roethke, but he also emphasizes the importance of reading contemporary poetry, as well as outside our own culture. He believes that the more you read different perspectives and different styles, the “wider our voice can become.” For him, it is an honor to write poetry to remember all of the voices that came before him and those that have had their voices oppressed, and he believes that it is important for writers to have that sense of honor and humility with their own work.  

Attention undergraduate writers! Hope you all had a wonderful summer. The Blue Route editors would like you to know that we’ll open for submissions from September 15 to November 15. If you have some previously unpublished poetry and/or prose, we’d love to take a look. For more information, please see our submission guidelines

Issue #30 of The Blue Route is here! The issue features amazing work from undergraduate poetry and prose makers at Harvard University, the University of Georgia, Portland State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Central Florida, Swarthmore College, and Salisbury University. Many thanks to our contributors and readers!

We’ll be open for submissions again on September 15.

Happy New Year, everyone! The Blue Route staff is on break right now, but we wanted to take a moment to recognize National Science Fiction Day, which is today. The genre, as many of you know, has many standout authors, such as Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, and Nnedi Okorafor. These and other writers have penned many fascinating novels and short stories.

There are some writers, though, who paint on a much smaller canvas–the canvas of flash fiction. If you’d like to celebrate Science Fiction Day, but you don’t have the time to crack open a novel or collection of stories, check out the strange, super-short piece linked below. You won’t be disappointed, but you may never look at yogurt the same way again.

The submission window for the Spring 25 issue of The Blue Route will be closing on November 15. Submissions are rolling in, but we’d love to read even more poetry and prose by undergraduate writers. Please read the submission guidelines for more information. If you’d like to submit but are currently facing writer’s block, check out these excellent writing prompts from Poets & Writers magazine:

https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

By Katherine Abissi

Widener University recently welcomed in the spooky season by hosting Lightbooth Blackout’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The production, which was adapted by director Dave Ebersole, was thrilling and spectacular, featuring glorious performances from the actors and the crew. The play takes on the unique interpretation of Victor Frankenstein being the monster not his creation. The theme of what makes a monster is visually represented as Victor Frankenstein (Thomas-Robert Irvin) being more physically imposing compared to his creation (Nolan Maher). The adaptation leaves the audience with questions about human morality and what determines a monster.

Frankenstein is a gothic novel written by Mary Shelley in 1818. Shelley originally drafted the story in 1816 when she was only 18. Due to the time period, Shelley published the story anonymously; however, she eventually received credit for her work in 1831. Since then, Shelley’s story has become a gothic classic enjoyed by many, especially for the Halloween season. Shelley’s characters have been featured in a plethora of modern media: countless movie adaptations, the TV show The Munsters, and even songs such as Alice Cooper’s “Feed My Frankenstein.” In 2017, the movie Mary Shelley was made about the author’s marriage and life. Shelley has been praised for her work and has had a clear influence on the horror genre. Mary Shelley’s novel will forever live on in all the interpretations and adaptions. In each new interpretation, creators bring to life Mary Shelley’s words: “beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” The gothic novel Frankenstein will endure through the unique and bold writing of new creators.

Emma Irving, former Blue Route Editor-in-Chief (2016-2017), has had lots of fascinating experiences since graduating from Widener. She chronicles many of these things in her newsletter called Milling, which provides “[i]nspiration & reflection for those who journal with terrible penmanship, aimless creativity, and hoards of phone notes.” In her most recent post, she recounts the experience of reading a novel that captivated her so much that she had to write a review before she even finished it. Here’s an excerpt from her thoughtful review:

I still have 100 pages to go but I know this is already one of my favorite books of the year so I had to tell you about it immediately.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar was lent to me by friend of the newsletter Victoria, who said that she needed someone to discuss the work with. Having spent hundreds of hours in English classes together over the years, we’re who we turn to when we need to flex that muscle again.

As unhelpful a genre label that literary fiction is, it’s an excellent label for this book. Written by a poet, Martyr! situates itself within this nimble space between happening and being. It’s a book about a poet, Cyrus, writing a book, and throughout the work we get glimpses into drafts of poems, literally noted via .docx file names. We also get to peek into a number of imagined conversations Cyrus plays out in his mind, and so the distinction between who is really doing the thinking and responding and writing is constantly refocusing.

I bring this book up to you because I want to try to explain to myself what I love so much about it. Poets publishing in prose (big love to Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous) and the Künstlerroman genre are works I gravitate towards often, but this one is really doing it for me.

At the very middle of the book, in the Interlude section, I realized what was happening and am still tumbling down that hill towards the end in a way that I expected. And yet, the inertia feels fresh. They say that there are only so many stories to be told in the world, plot types whittled down to a cute listicle of 7 or whatever. I don’t disagree with that, I just find the vast expanse of creativity that blooms from the human source more interesting than the naming of it.

Martyr! is not a beach read I’ll say. We’re dealing with addiction, dying and death, guilt, and tons of other heavy topics. But the writing does not slog, the chapters are short (which I am not afraid to admit I’m a fan of), and Cyrus is a fascinating and likable protagonist. He’s a twenty-something guy who we see googling stuff he doesn’t know, working a shitty job in his college town, sitting in a hotel bed eating pizza and watching The Office reruns. The intrigue and experimentation in content and form are keeping my imagination activated and like Victoria said, I’m eager to talk about it with others.

If you’re interested in seeing other posts from Emma’s newsletter, click on the link below.

https://milling.substack.com/