Seriously, check this out, and really click on some of the poems, they are great! (THEO is on here)

Chelsea Nuffer
Assignment 8: Review of a Literary Journal

Where can a professional writer and professional facebook stalker meet to share artistic thoughts? You obviously have not heard of UpRightDown.

UpRightDown is a literary journal where every issue features a single plot, and multiple ways of telling it. Poet’s can write it, painters can paint it, singers can sing it, and even you could capture the plot in video form, whether a professor at MIT or a nanny in NYC. The plot for issue one was simple, yet could be made complex however interpreted. The plot and theme for this issue was set in a bistro where a young woman tells her three girlfriends about an affair with an American tourist. He has gone home and hasn’t called like he promised. One friend tells her to call, another says to e-mail and the third tells her to forget him. She doesn’t tell the three friends she is carrying his child. Into the bistro enters a fat American couple both with a different speech impediment. They order food. The man chokes and one of the friends performs the Heimlich maneuver on him, and saves his life. Do you think you have the creativity to spell this plot out in another way?

This issue included a fourteen second youtube video, twenty-six pieces of verse and prose poetry, six video clips, two word/image pieces, one animation piece, three of drama, three strictly image and two interactive medium pieces. This collaborative multi-media site changes every week with new additions and invites one and all of many levels and with different passions to participate by reading and/or submitting work from poems to videos and paintings. The contributors for this issue included forty-four individuals of different ages, and artistic backgrounds. For example, the brief summary of Amy Woolensack introduced her as a professional nanny and amateur Facebook stalker who lives and stalks in New York City. Avery Smith lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she attends the School for Creative and Performing. Lastly, Nick Montfort is one of the author’s of A Palindrome Story, the longest palindrome ever written. He is an assistant professor of digital media at the MIT. These three examples prove that anyone can participate with URD, from students, to professors and professional writers, and even nannies.

The versatility and freedom of this site will capture your attention. It is a fun, colorful site that can bring out the funniest entertainment in the arts to date. Plots can be expressed with youtube videos, the most popular site of college students with procrastination issues, so you should check it out. If you wish you can even upload your most recent AIM conversation with your friend if it fits the plot, or even the cross word puzzle you found in the paper at the student center. You don’t know what artistic expression is until you check out URD.

Visit http://www.uprightdown.com to read the plot and go to the issue or even suggest a plot for a future issue!

I will be returning to this site because it is so entertaining. It will inspire me that not all poetry is serious and romantic. Jess Young, I am dedicating the above URL to you. Have fun. I am not sure if we should workshop this poetry but we should spend a day having fun with this site. I would definitely want to publish in this journal, the freedom, the fun! This was a hard choice, but here is my favorite poem in this issue on the above topic was the first poem in the first column a prose poem by Ann Buechner. I FOUND THEO’S WORK ON THIS SITE! Awesome! Also, I found a poem written about the above plot, only using words starting with B. That was neat. I also really like the AIM conversation about the plot. There is also a poem using the dictionary type form to describe the event.