Is Poetry 3D? POETRY may be the most multidimensional art, because right now rules are few: there’s an endless variety of ways to create and present the art form. Unique ways of viewing and reacting to the world. TODAY we offer as powerful a feature poem as we ever have: “Slick” by Ali J. Prince. Want poetry with passion? Which addresses the world around us? Poems that grab the reader or listener by the lapels– or t-shirt or pajamas– to pull the person from their comfortable chair or complacent attitude and shake that individual to say, “This is the world. This is art!” If so, then you might e ..read more

Happy Halloween from Karl and Kathleen! No, we don’t have any scary stories to offer this Halloween season– we figure there are already plenty of frightening tales and images this year courtesy of mass shootings, world events, and news media. We DO invite people to read our enlightening offerings– our features, listed at our Top of the Pop page, and short poems, interviews, fiction, commentary and satires at our new-this-year Fast Pop Lit site ..read more

Hello! Welcome to autumn and more great fiction. We’ll be presenting fewer full features at this site, as we move many of our hit-and-run activities to our Fast Pop blog (see top of this page)– which is why we’re making sure the features we do present are choice. Emphasis on the reading experience. As example, our new feature– “White Crane Spreads Its Wings” by Aspen Audley. A tale about a tai chi class– something with which many of us can relate. Is there a Mr. Know-It-All in the class? Of course! Read the story to see what happens. It was only my third lesson, but I’d already fallen in love ..read more

Last week Lit Mag News ran a short article about AI by New Pop Lit’s Editor (myself). My co-editor Kathleen Crane– this site’s conscience and objective intelligence– liked the article but said there wasn’t enough hope in it. An apt criticism, because this literary site was built on hope. One of our missions is to be a positive force in the culture amid a mass of literary negativity and complacency. I’m an optimist– a realistic one who knows the world is a tough, chaotic, often hellish place, but there are stray gems of goodness and beauty to be found in it. Which might be the appeal for us– an ..read more

WHAT HAPPENED to the days when fiction had an idealistic magic to it, created by literary magicians like Robert Louis Stevenson or F. Scott Fitzgerald with tales of mysterious personas with unreal qualities– romantic characters who in Fitzgerald’s timeless phrase were “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” Does one find that magic from today’s writers? Not often, but alert editors can occasionally stumble upon it– as we did with our new feature story, “Killian and the Black Blade!” by C. A. Shoultz. An exciting narrative about a fencing club. A story desi ..read more

WHERE do the experiences of art and life meet? It’s a question the artist– any artist– at some point is required to ask. When an actor is playing a role, he becomes that role– that character– yet at the same time remains the original person living through the experience of playing the part, on stage or in front of a camera. These are thoughts occasioned by our new feature story, “Something to Tell” by John Van Wagner, in which his character is overwhelmed by the museum art around him– yet is about to have an experience to match or surpass it. The well-written tale is the latest in a series of ..read more

Yes, it’s officially summer, so we can call this feature summer poetry– though we’ve been on a poetry kick now for several weeks, including presentations of poems at our new Fast Pop Lit site. (Did you miss them? You have to act fast, before they vanish.) The world is moving fast, as it did in the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his famous character Jay Gatsby. The Roaring Twenties! We have today in the 2020’s the same kind of sped-up economy– we simply need a tad more glamour and style. To celebrate the memory of Jay Gatsby, the Twenties, and a peak era for writers and the literary scene (may ..read more

The question remains, several months into the introduction of ChatGPT: What will be the impact of the new technology upon today’s literary scene? Botbooks have already begun to flood onto Amazon and other book and literature outlets. Quality of the offerings to date has been lacking, to say the least. Those who believe they can create something adequate or excellent with their prompts will likely be lost amid the mass mob of bot-generated trash. New Pop Lit has been at the forefront of those engaging in pushback against the plutocrat-funded, piracy-fueled change. FIRST, our “Save the Writer ..read more

WE NOW have a second example of actual creative writing up at our new Fast Pop Lit site– “What Happened at Drake’s” by aptly named Lukas Tallent. The idea: presenting an aesthetic of mood and style. We believe this short fictional piece accomplishes that: Drinks, a restaurant, nighttime. Click on and plunge in. There were fireworks in their eyes, and smoke from their mouths hovered visibly in the room. They both had drinks, brightly-colored and in tall fizzy glasses. He was talking to her, and she was leaning forward, her arms on the table, taken it seemed. The others in the bar were lost in t ..read more

While we have much going on with this project, including a petition against Artificial Intelligence and the beginnings of a new site designed to compete with this one, today we provide an interlude with an entertaining new short story: “Yak… Yak… Yak…” by David Sheskin. We asked ourselves: “Can we find a short story unpredictable enough in every aspect of its plot that no chatbot could ever copy, preempt or prompt it?” As we were pondering this, David Sheskin’s story appeared in our Inbox. We can’t give away too much, other than the story is mostly– though not exclusively– set in a classroom ..read more