Vital materialists will thus try to linger in those moments during which they find themselves fascinated by objects, taking them as clues to the material vitality that they share with them.  This sense of a strange and incomplete commonality with the out-side may induce vital materialists to treat nonhumans–animals, plants, earth, even artifacts and commodities–more carefully, more strategically, more ecologically. (17-18)

While Bennett is attempting to elevate things to the level of “agentic assemblages” which “are vital players in the world” (4), her desire is for human agents to “take a step toward a more ecological sensibility” (10) by means of better understanding how humans are part of a larger matter-energy flow.  Ultimately, the goal is to move away from anthropocentrism toward cosmocentrism, a goal largely shared by the poetry journal that stands behind this blog.

When I read about lingering in a fascination with objects, I thought of the work that the poets published in Albatross do:  call attention to an awareness of nature that will bring us as a species to a greater sensitivity toward the nonhuman.

But this work must continue as well, and so it does.   Once again I was so pleased by the poems in this issue.  I still actually type each poem out, so I have that experience of becoming intimate with the poem–as if I wrote it myself.  (This reminds me of a story that UF writer-in-residence Harry Crews once told me.  In order to teach himself how to write, he retyped word-for-word Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.  That was his apprenticeship…)

While a year might be a long time in between issues, I hope you feel like it’s worth the wait after reading these.  Some of my favorite moments: the opening poem by Don Thompson (do you notice how each issue starts off with a poem invoking religion or God in some way?), the following powerful poems by Temple Cone, the arrogance and destructive nature of childhood in Joan Colby’s poem, the terror at the end of Ronnie Hess’s poem… and the stunning pair by Adam Penna (which, in the print issue–soon to come!–you will find in the sweet middle-spot, where the journal flips open to automatically).

Thank you for reading!

Cacophonous flock
above harvest field
spreading their sky-net

sideways falls and soars
medusoid in the pulsing
light of afternoon

under bundled clouds
neither to feed nor mate
before migration

OHIO POEM by Deborah Fleming

Cacophonous flock
above the harvested field
spreading their sky-net

sideways falls and soars
medusoid in the pulsing
light of afternoon

under bundled clouds
neither to feed nor to mate
before migration

There was much that I really liked about this right off the bat:  the opening line, for example, starts off with a great moment of alliteration and assonance:  “Cacophonous flock.”  Notice the “k” sounds, “f” sounds, and “ahh” vowel sounds, all rhythmically “sound” (so to speak).  The next line, however, causes me to stumble a bit:  “above the harvested field.”  The -ed on harvested and “the” add syllables that slow down the quick and clipped rhythm established in the opening line.  My suggestion was to cut the “the” (though it alliterates with “above”) and the “-ed” so that it reads “above harvest field.”  Try reading the two lines together, and hopefully you’ll see (or feel, or hear, or sense) what I mean.

The other suggestion I made comes in the last stanza, where I suggest cutting the “to” before mate, allowing for the alliteration with migration to arrive quicker:

under bundled clouds
neither to feed nor mate
before migration

It’s a subtle distinction, but, again, if you read it both ways, I think you’ll hear what I mean.  The extra “to” (not necessary for parallel structure here) just does something to the rhythm of the line that throws off the potential power of the closing phrase.

I want to highlight two other notable parts of the poem:  the use of “medusoid” (I’d have to confirm if it’s a real word, but because this is poetry that doesn’t matter, ultimately), an interesting neologism that really paints the writhing form of the flock as it wheels about; and the alliteration and assonance in “under bundled clouds.”  That’s just fun to say!

So now the poem with my suggested changes:

OHIO POEM by Deborah Fleming

Cacophonous flock
above harvest field
spreading their sky-net

sideways falls and soars
medusoid in the pulsing
light of afternoon

under bundled clouds
neither to feed nor mate
before migration

Deborah agreed to these changes, so this poem will appear in #22.  I will also add this separately as a featured poem.

All I can think to say is YES, YES, YES, YES, and YES.

This was first presented a year ago and is now being integrated into the forthcoming Copenhagen Treaty currently being drafted for the international climate change negotiations being held this December.  To find out more, explore the Trees Have Rights Too website.

It is encouraging to learn that this kind of environmental activism is happening on the global level.  I also learned today that Obama has chosen someone connected to the pesticide industry to be the chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative.  These are the guys who wrote to his wife in the summer, urging her to stop misleading the public by encouraging them to grow organic gardens.  Yeah.

There hasn’t been a time when political activism is more necessary than now.  And guess what?  Such activism will make you happy.  So go to it.  Change the world–or some definite part of it–for the better.

Hi, my name is _________, and I’m an MFA student at _____ State University. I respect your journal and would like to do a presentation on your editorial process for my publishing class. If you have time to answer a few questions, I’d be grateful. If not, thank you for your time and for publishing an amazing literary magazine.

The specific poem I am focusing on is “Insurance” by Kim Triedman, featured on page 6 of edition 20.

1. Why did you choose this poem? It has the albatross/anabiosis theme, but what else do you look for in choosing poetry? In general, are you ever surprised by what you decide to put in your own journal?

I chose this the way I choose any poem:  there’s something about it that won’t let me let it go.  One criterion is that there can’t be anything in the poem that distracts me (an ugly word choice, for example, or an inappropriate metaphor).  Usually it’s an interesting ending that engages me.  There definitely needs to be a sense of voice, like someone is speaking from a position of authority, knows they have something to say and then they say it in a way that grabs your attention.  I accept poems that I want to read again, that–most importantly–move me in some way, engage my emotions, make me say, “Damn!” and catch my breath.

With this particular poem, I happen to know what nasturtiums are like as my wife plants them, and they are beautiful.  Not sure that has much to do with how I experience the poem–probably–in general I like poems that name things (ever read Robert Haas’s poem “Letter”  in Field Guide p. 65?  Stunning).  I liked the build-up of the ending, the list of participles (“teeming–cascading—extrapolating–luxuriating” and the image of “the little open mouths”:  something that’s coming alive while the rest of the world is at the verge of death/autumn.  And the idea of this being “insurance” against the coming winter, against the death of the summer garden, and summer in general…

This one didn’t have the powerful kicker ending some of them have, but I really liked the tone and voice throughout–that sense of authority, like I said (so many submissions come through, even ones from well-published writers, that are flat and drab).  The opening line is great and engaging:  “There is one thing I get right: every spring I plant the nasturtiums.”

I also pay attention to how the poem sounds.  You’ll notice a lot of assonance in this poem, and I find this especially appealing:

“scritch along the walk like small…”

“greenness, even the blossoms, tipped in gold, their little mouths open.”

2.  Did you receive this poem through the slush pile or was it solicited? Were you familiar with Kim Triedman before publishing her?

I don’t solicit poems directly.  It’s all one big slush pile.  I may have published her in a previous issue–that would be the only way I know her.  Here’s an interesting twist:  we are now friends on Facebook.

3. What is your reading process like? Did anyone other than you read “Insurance” or provide editorial input on the final decision?

I am the only one who reads the submissions.  I’m a one-man band.  Reading process:  every couple of months I say, “Shoot, it’s been a couple of months since I’ve done submissions, so I better catch up…” It’s hardest keeping up with email submissions.  I’m not sure I’m answering your question.  Submit follow-up questions if you like.

You should also consult the Albatross blog, where I talk about examples of my process:

http://albatrosspoetryjournal.wordpress.com/category/examples-of-editing/

I then asked her about why she picked that particular poem.  Her reply:

Thanks for responding and directing me to your blog! I just looked at it, and I especially enjoyed the entry regarding how you order poems within an issue. The way order influences structure and perspective has always fascinated me (especially the role order plays in Modernist literature). The impact of organization on a literary magazine is interesting, especially how an effective order allows the poems to stand both independently yet also in dialogue with each other.  All of the revision posts are very relevant to my class, and I’ll certainly include them in my presentation.

I was struck by “Insurance” by Kim Triedman for a fairly odd, personal reason: it reminded me of my mother. The more independent I become, the more fascinating my mom becomes as I see her as a “real” person—sometimes, almost as a stranger. The speaker in “Insurance” is probably so many things to so many people, but when she takes the time to plant the nasturtiums she is reasserting herself as a person with her own needs, fears, and hopes. As you noted, there is also some beautiful language and description in the poem. But the thing that makes me go “damn,” so to speak, is the way the poem doesn’t rely on sentiment but instead uses action and metaphor to deliver such an emotional impact. I chose Albatross in general because it takes an ecological stand and challenges humans to consider how we impact the world around us. Poetry can be such a powerful rhetorical tool, and I respect a journal that welcomes work that isn’t afraid to ask big questions.

Ultimately, editorial choice depends on the sensibility, experience, and taste of the editor, all of which results from the powerful complexity of the human brain.  This is why it’s so hard to explain!

114-66, to endow all of the town’s natural assets with legal rights: “Natural communities and ecosystems possess inalienable and fundamental rights to exist, flourish and naturally evolve within the Town of Shapleigh.” It further decreed that any town resident had “standing” to seek relief for damages caused to nature – permitting, for example, a lawsuit on behalf of a stream.

This concept of government rights or representation for the environment reminded me of something poet Gary Snyder wrote somewhere.  I went to my shelf looking for Turtle Island but didn’t find it, so I’m stuck with just saying that SOMEWHERE in Snyder’s ouevre is this reference.  The ideas is not new.

I loved it when I first read it, and I love this idea now.

Why not?!  Corporations have the rights and privileges of individuals–it’s called “corporate personhood“–and they have used the Civil Rights Act, for example, to override the democratically determined decision to prevent installation of a cell tower in a small town in Massachusetts.

Yup.  Pretty startling.  So how about “environmental personhood”?

Quinn re-interprets the core stories of Genesis while weaving in anthropological and historical analysis of “primitive” vs. “civilized” societies (or what he renames “Leavers” vs. “Takers”).   For three million years all was well with hunting and gathering until the agricultural revolution.  At this point, the Takers began to break the “law of life,” which fosters life for all:  they began to exterminate competitors, destroy competitors’ food (to make room for their own via agriculture) and deny competitors access to food.  This obsessive need to control our food supply originates in a fear of not being in control of our own destiny, of trusting in higher powers.  In breaking the laws of life, we end up co-opting the role of the gods by deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. the fruit of the tree of knowledge).

In other words, for the Takers the world belongs to man, whereas for the Leavers, man belongs to the world.

Quinn ends with an insightful observation, one that can be viewed in conservative reactions to environmentalist critique of our culture of consumption:

people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty.  They need more than a vision of doom.  They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them. (243-44)

This new (or, rather, old–i.e. Leaver) vision of the destiny of humankind involves humans being the first to reach sentience and therefore the first to learn that we have a choice:  thwart the gods and die or be Father to all future species evolving to sentience after us.  In this story, “Man’s place is to be the first without being the last.  Man’s place is to figure out how it’s possible to do that–and then to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he’s become” (243).

So Quinn strikes at the mythic roots of our war with nature and tries to re-orient our species by providing the key to breaking out of our captivity to “a civilizational system that compels us to go on destroying the world in order to live” (25).  My hope is that the Albatross contributes in some small way to the change of consciousness that Quinn’s book points toward.

I’ll talk for a moment about how I found out about it–it’s an interesting process that shows the power of social networking.  I have a twitter account and have been “tweeting” for just over a year now.  It’s been in the news a lot lately, so if you haven’t heard about it you’re way out of the loop.  When somebody starts to “follow” me (i.e. subscribes to my tweets), I get an email message saying so.  I always take a look at who it is who’s chosen to follow me, to see if they are interesting enough to follow.  Some of them are goofy (e.g. Santa Claus), and some are just promoting a business or a website.  Occasionally, it’s someone who has obviously used a Twitter search tool to seek out people posting on subjects of interest to him or her.  Today I got an email saying helloshmoop is now following me.  Upon checking out their twitter profile, I saw one of their recent tweets mentioning that “Poem in Your Pocket Day” is happening soon… I followed the link and voila!

Who knows how long it would have taken for me to discover shmoop… if ever… and I could easily have let this day slip by.  But now I have a chance to take some of the actions suggested by the poets.org “PIYP” page.

There’s been a lot of bad press about twitter in recent weeks, but like any tool there are good and bad uses.  Today’s Hiawatha Bray column in the Boston Globe talks about how he was won over to the use of twitter as a way to “capture the wisdom of crowds.”  So it’s all about the crowds you choose to join.  Who are you following?  Do they make relevant posts telling you of interesting websites or news items, or are they telling you what they are cooking for dinner? Some twitterers post bursts of tweets that amount to short poems.  I would have enjoyed playing with this twenty years ago, when I was an English student.  Now there’s not a lot of time for it after family and work, but when there is, I often find some useful sites, like Shmoop.

Shmoop is a collective of M.A. and Ph.D. students who have launched a website with learning and teaching resources for literature, U.S. history, poetry, and writing, and it claims to make us better “lovers of life.”  If you’re reading this, you don’t need to be told that poetry will help you love life more and better.  This is my hope and goal for Albatross as  a poetry journal–and has been since we started back in 1985:  to get us to love the environment (life!  all of life!) so that we stop destroying it (as the Ancient Mariner did in Coleridge’s poem–the source of the journal’s title).

There are some amazing poems in this issue.  Some of my favorites include William Keener’s and Lyn Stefenhagens’s.  I hope you enjoy these poems as much as I have.  And the cover art is awesome as well.  While visiting my son in Gainesville, we went to a party at an art gallery, and the owner was selling this woodcut as a card.  I asked him if I could use it for #20, and voila!

I have found other works of art this way.  Another of my favorites, the cover for #10, was done by a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.  We were sitting next to each other at Dunn Brothers Coffee House, and he was sketching these cool abstract pieces.  Again, I boldly asked to use the artwork, and this is how it came to be on the cover.  This cover for #10, by the way, was featured in the 1998 (I think it was) Poet’s Market.