WestWard Quarterly, The Magazine of Family Reading: Shirley Anne Leonard, Editor

CONTACT WWQ

WestWard Quarterly
P.O. Box 369
Hamilton, Illinois 62341 USA
800-440-4043
Email the Editor

OTHER SITES

Marsha Ward, Novelist
(Former Editor of
WestWard Quarterly)

Illinois State
Poetry Society

Richard Leonard's Rail Archive

WestWard Quarterly seeks to present the best work of upbeat writers and poets, whether accomplished or beginners. We maintain a positive editorial philosophy, presenting material that is reflective, inspiring, uplifting, encouraging and humorous. This is not to say that we “bury our heads in the sand.” Some of the difficult issues of our time must be addressed, and poetry has a role to play in raising the standard of our expectations. It can do this through offering hope, instead of by magnifying what is crude or deplorable in the human condition.

We accept all styles of poetry and look for good imagery and grammar and a fresh outlook. If rhyming, we look for consistency and natural word order in the rhyme scheme. If metrical, we look for consistent scansion or “beat.” If free verse, we look for some kind of rhythm, flow, and harmony that makes a poem differ from prose.

For other submission guidelines, with subscription and single issue prices, please click the link at left. There is a sample page showing the magazine’s current style. We offer a “Writer’s Workbench” (also a regular department of the magazine) featuring helpful hints for better writing. The Archive presents back issues a year old or more. In addition you can meet our editor, Shirley Anne Leonard, and read some of her more than 750 poems. All of these features are linked in the left navigation panel.

To subscribe to WestWard Quarterly, use the PayPal "Subscribe" button below (PayPal charge of .75 included) or click here for the Mail-in Subscription Form.

Featured Poem Reading

A Noble Proverb

“Iron sharpens iron,”
so they say.
But what if I
am only made of clay?
Obliteration —
if I get in the way!

Iron sharpens iron.
So does stone
if rough, and with a
hardness all its own
to grind the weapon’s
cutting edge, and hone.

Iron sharpens iron.
Make me so
the wheel will grind
deliberate and slow,
and sparks will not inflame
emotion’s glow.

Iron sharpens iron.
Let us talk
and mind the words we say,
lest they should walk
toward battlefields
and kill us on the way.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Without Words

Made into a song by Richard Silkebakken. To download and play the music, choose MP3 format, M4A format, or WAV format.

I cannot tell you,
words will not come,
but if soul should speak to soul
what need for tongue?

Let my eyes tell you
when they gaze into yours
and my soul gets lost
in their deep corridors.

Let my lips tell you,
barely touching yours,
of the tender love
in a heart that adores.

Let my hand tell you,
clasped into yours,
while love speaks
without words.

Let your music speak,
with the setting sun
in the soft hours of twilight,
that we are one.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Systems of Belief

Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept
by rhythms not our own,
mesmerized by words we heard
somewhere in the past,
supposing that the chanting of them
made us good —
but good enough to last?

Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept . . .
Would someone now break time,
disrupt the rhythm, halt the rhyme,
tear the blinder from our eye,
shout — “Yonder lies the pit
where we all march to die!”

Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept —
chanting as we go, line by line . . .
Would someone stop — ask why
we’ve not been told the truth —
been told the lie?

We march — encased in molds;
we think the thoughts we learned
from books we read in schools.
We march — encased in molds;
we mouth the words we learned
to keep our culture’s rules.

But wait — misgivings mock us as we go,
mouthing slogans that aren’t really so.
Would someone now break time,
disrupt the rhythm, halt the rhyme,
break ranks — expose the lies!
Let the truth be known,
and let a new song be our own.

Without Doors

In a world without windows,
without any door,
the people rush blindly
while screaming jets roar.

The rivers run darkly
and children are born
to go to their death,
to helplessly mourn.

The pain of the ages
is bound up in rooms,
pressed between pages
in book-haunted tombs.

I must break away —
Can’t take any more.
But where can I go
in a world with no door?

By 2002 Ms. Ward had encountered some health issues and was unable to produce WestWard Quarterly on a consistent schedule. A writer on western themes, she decided to concentrate on her other work and suspended publication of the magazine. Shirley Anne Leonard, a subscriber and contributor, offered to take it on with the help of her husband, Dr. Richard Leonard, publisher of Laudemont Press. Under the new editorship WestWard Quarterly has retained its name for the sake of continuity, and in recognition of Marsha Ward’s efforts. The magazine continues her editorial philosophy of presenting material with a positive outlook on life — “Adversity happens; find the eternal purpose behind it.”