WITTY PARTITION

  • ABOUT
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    • News
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  • ISSUE 16
    • Table of Contents
    • A WORD
    • POETRY >
      • Selim Temo
      • Bejan Matur
      • Necmi Zeka
      • Baba Badji
      • Alberto Mario Perrone
    • Insight 1: Visitors
    • ESSAY >
      • Architecture of Poetry
    • URBAN LEGENDS >
      • Randolph Petsche
    • Insight 2: At the Window
    • ONE ACT PLAY >
      • Harriet Kriegel
    • Memoir-16
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Charlie Steiner
    • ¡VIVA >
      • David Gordon
    • FICTION >
      • Agneta Pleijel
      • B.J. Fukada
    • Vintage InSight
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • BOOK ARTS >
        • VIncent Tripi
      • WOMEN OF THE FAMILY >
        • Nandana Dev Sev
        • Trish Crapo
      • It's a Mystery >
        • Carmen Firan
    • COLOPHON
    • Contributors
  • Issue 15
  • Back Issues
  • EXTRA!
  • ABOUT
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Submissions
  • NEWS
    • News
    • LINKS
  • ISSUE 16
    • Table of Contents
    • A WORD
    • POETRY >
      • Selim Temo
      • Bejan Matur
      • Necmi Zeka
      • Baba Badji
      • Alberto Mario Perrone
    • Insight 1: Visitors
    • ESSAY >
      • Architecture of Poetry
    • URBAN LEGENDS >
      • Randolph Petsche
    • Insight 2: At the Window
    • ONE ACT PLAY >
      • Harriet Kriegel
    • Memoir-16
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Charlie Steiner
    • ¡VIVA >
      • David Gordon
    • FICTION >
      • Agneta Pleijel
      • B.J. Fukada
    • Vintage InSight
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • BOOK ARTS >
        • VIncent Tripi
      • WOMEN OF THE FAMILY >
        • Nandana Dev Sev
        • Trish Crapo
      • It's a Mystery >
        • Carmen Firan
    • COLOPHON
    • Contributors
  • Issue 15
  • Back Issues
  • EXTRA!
Witty Partition, formerly The Wall

We are, first and foremost, an international, online journal fostering communication among writers and readers of many languages. We post issues new issues three times a year: on or about the Ides of March, Bastille Day, and Thanksgiving.
 
Our name, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, derives from the play-within-a-play in  Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5:1, enacted for Duke Theseus by trademan called Mechanicals.
They are anxious to win his approval, as we are the reader’s, but they are not the Duke’s vassals. One of them, Snout, a tinker, plays the Wall that separates two lovers, but through which they nonetheless communicate via a chink in his “masonry.” Amused, and genuinely impressed by the tradesmen’s performance, the Duke has the following exchange with a courtier:  
Picture

Wall of Books mural. Paris. XIVe Arr. August, 2005.

         THESEUS
          Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?
          DEMETRIUS
          It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.

As the scene ends, Snout announces that his role is over:
 
           WALL
           Thus have I, Wall, my part dischargèd so;
           And being done, thus Wall away doth go.
           THESEUS
           Now is the mural [wall] down between the two neighbors.
 
It is in keeping with the playful, earnest, and inclusive spirit of these lines that we craft our publication.

Our partition, like Shakespeare’s, being permeable, we are open to contributions in all genres of literature and the visual arts. Please use the Contact Us link on the menu bar to make inquiries and click on Submissions to view or download our submissions guidelines. And, of course, read sufficient material from our the current and back issues to get a sense of how your work might harmonize with the politics and sensibilities of WP.
 
Witty Partition is a collaboration among editors Bronwyn Mills, Eric Darton, and Hardy Griffin. While the source of editorial comments could be any one of us, all other work is duly credited to the actual authors and translators.