The Blue Route will be accepting submissions for Issue #15 from August 1-October 1. Undergraduates, please send us your best fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry during that window. For more information, see our submission guidelines.

Most English, Creative Writing, and other students of the Humanities don’t find the possibility of a government job too appealing. Though art and politics are not mutually exclusive disciplines, “creative freedom” isn’t a term often thrown around in our bureaucracy.

Now allow me to introduce to you the finest government position ever conceived for creative minds: The Poet Laureate.

The idea of a national Poet Laureate extends back to Italy in the early 14^th century, but the American office has only been around since the 1940s. Great minds including William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost have held this position, of which the sole work is to “raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry” (More information can be found by clicking here). The Poet Laureate receives a $35,000 stipend for the honor and maximum free time to work on his/her own projects while in the position. There are some formal duties to attend to, such as opening and closing the Library of Congress’ annual poetry series, but other than that, the Poet Laureate has total freedom in choosing the best way to get Americans to listen to and care about poetry.

America’s current Poet Laureate is Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner Charles Wright. Distinguished as he is, I had never heard of Wright before conducting research on this topic, though I love what I’ve found from him so far. The relationship between nature and aging comes up quite a bit in Wright’s poetry, but always in unique ways. After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard is a darkly poignant example of Wright’s ability to synthesize the two topics with lines like “How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard” expressing the relative loneliness of aging. On the other hand, Wright is also deeply affected by the topic of faith, and lines such as “One knows/There is no end to the other world/no matter where it is” from Last Supper express the comfort that such faith can bring.

The American Poet Laureate has the great potential to change the way America as a whole thinks about the art form of poetry. Whether poetry is your thing or you find it too difficult to truly enjoy, any student of the written word should pay close attention to what the current Poet Laureate is up to. The advancement of art in this country is something we should all be concerned about, and nobody has more power to do that than the Poet Laureate.

by Emma Irving

In light of the numerous posts telling everyone what they should leave behind from 2014 and what they should adapt for a happier 2015 I thought I should contribute. Why not try to bring back the man who wrote some of the best comebacks in history? Have no fear, there are many generators and tools that can be used to augment your insult game.

William Shakespeare had a knack for finding some of the most forgotten, misplaced words in the English language and combining them with other words of equally odd merit to create the best one-liners in the language. Take that ingenuity and mix it with the technology of the 21st century, and now we have insult generators!

So here are the top 3 insults, of my creation, that everyone should introduce to their insult games for 2015.

Thou art a lumpish weather-bitten codpiece!

Thou art the epitome of a reeky onion-eyed malt-worm!

Thou are a yeasty fly-bitten foot-licker!

And here are some of my favorite of Shakespeare’s that are sure to silence anyone:

“How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?”

Henry IV part 1 

“Thou art baser than a cutpurse.”

The Two Noble Kingsmen

“[Thou] mountain of mad flesh!”

Comedy of Errors

“Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, start up and stand on end.”

Hamlet

If you love these and you can’t get enough, I found all of them on the same website where they provide the insults and create a chart where you can make your own? (click here for link)

So here’s to 2015 and having faith in the knowledge that you’ll have the last word every time with a sleek Shakespearean insult. Go get ’em, you wimpled base-court bugbears!

by Kimberlee Roberts

Most writers were lovers of the written word before they ever picked up a pen (or keyboard) to create work of their own. Whether their discovery of literature was facilitated by parents and teachers or simply wonder at the freedom to be found between library shelves, books have long been an integral part of their lives. Some of these books take on more a personal meaning than others, lingering in memory and influencing a writer’s own work.

The stories that stuck with me most of all beyond my formative years as a reader were those that were read to me. I have distinct memories of sitting on the floor as my dad read A Wrinkle in Time to my sister and me; the iconic Harry Potter series was introduced to me by a passionate third grade teacher who read aloud from them each day. When I went back to reread these books on my own later, the story was altered.

Something about absorbing the words audibly and being sucked willingly into the rhythm of the sentences was more entrancing than turning the pages on my own. I could close my eyes and fall into the fictional world more completely. My imagination ran rampant. Someone else had control of the story and chose when to set it aside for the day; someone else got to choose the cliffhanger. The waiting was torturous, but the anticipation for the next chapter was thrilling.

It is that lack of control over the experience that made those stories so memorable, but also the catalyst that drove my desire to create tales of my own. I wanted dominion over the narrative, to create characters of my own and form backstories that the reader may never even receive. Because of this, I gave my imagination the opportunity to sit on the other side of the desk. I allowed it to create its own worlds and find the right sounds and rhythms and flow of images to describe them. I am too old now for anyone to sit me down and read to me, but I miss the days of being able to completely surrender to a story that didn’t originate in my own mind.

by Sierra Offutt