“Hecate, My Fixer” wins 2nd Place Prize from Common Ground Review

I’m excited to report that my poem “Hecate, My Fixer,” which I wrote in March after going East for my Dad’s funeral, won 2nd Place in Common Ground Review’s 2024 annual poetry contest. They published it in their Spring/Summer 2024 issue today.

I’m pinching myself about Common Ground contest judge, poet Rebecca Hart Olander’s, comments. … “The language in this poem is gorgeous.” …

And she taught me something about myself when she wrote: “The displacement felt here aptly conveys that state we live in after loss, that time of crossing over into new realms of being and of magical thinking.”

Here are her comments in full:

“Hecate, My Fixer” —Josh Feit

The language in this poem is gorgeous with its mythical allusions, “transit timetables,” and “radial spring.” The blending of mundane details (the fact of a Tuesday, cheap wine, a bed, a pair of shoes) is wonderfully mingled with torches, the performance of a quartet, and that beautiful last line. I love all this poem holds – its Brooklyn and its train platform, its funeral and mourner’s Kaddish, its Hecate and Persephone. And especially the heart of the poem – the grown child visiting their original city after moving away, returning after the death of a father, and the accompanying confusion that loss adds to understanding the world as it is now (for both the adult child, and the mother). There’s a confusion one might feel when returning home as an adult anyway, and to do so on the occasion of loss is to plunge one back into childhood again (given yet another layer in the poem when the mother – from dementia, grief, or both – mistakes the child for the father). The displacement felt here aptly conveys that state we live in after loss, that time of crossing over into new realms of being and of magical thinking. Hecate, goddess of ghosts and crossroads and magic, is the perfect guide. --Rebecca Hart Olander