I just posted Albatross #21 at the main site. This has been a tough year insofar as I have begun to adjunct at Emerson College and so have been busy with researching, creating, and then teaching a new course since September. The work I do on Albatross is always very much squeezed between the cracks of a very busy life, but this year that busyness has increased one hundred fold. At this very moment, I am neglecting some work I should be doing for this course…
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!
Albatross Poetry Journal 