Spectator
New Canaan High School Literary Magazine
The Spectator Literary Magazine is a literary magazine that has been publishing the work of New Canaan High School students since 1961. Over the past years, Spectator has won numerous awards and been recognized as one of the top school literary magazines in the state of Connecticut. Submissions to Spectator include poetry, short stories, photography, graphic designs, mixed media art, narratives, etc. Additionally, podcasts, short films, and spoken word poetry videos may be submitted.
Poem of the Month
The Perpetual Valley
By Rowan Hartley
To be stuck in this house of eternity
Such as how the broken oven clock
Is forever frozen at 9:43
Or how time moves so slow unless
Drowsing asleep at dawn between
The ringing at each hour
Like the crude screaming of wheels outside my window
And the groaning walls in the wind
It all inches forward so slowly
Pooling like molasses at my feet
The anxiety constricting
My throat closing
When everyone conveniently leaves out the “I” in “I love you”
So they don’t commit themselves to it
Not like they used to
Not since the farm burned down
In the shadow of Greylock
Like an omnipresence over me watching
Both crushing and humbling
The light at the top a signal of
Half-home, half-foreign
Never-wanting-to-return
An argument of “Must I go? Must I stay?”
Each time forsaken to that small blue room
I’ve never been claustrophobic
But my mother’s hometown leaves me gasping
Surrounded by caverns and mountains
Being torn open by metal claws
In search of communal revival
Each ore found a reason to endure
As the old bar crumbles into the ground
A root cracks through the pavement
Another ghost engulfed by leeching vines
A landscape desperate for impermanence
Still the rain pours over unchanging land
Until the soil swallows me
Until the water drowns this town
Neue Aufnahme.m4aArt Pieces of the Month
Wooden Ships
By Connor Flood
Geometric Digital Art
By Emma Finnerty
"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital." -Oscar Wilde
“Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. 'Come with me into the field of sunflowers' is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.” -Mary Oliver, Upstream