PoetryRepairShop 05.01:012

JAN OSCAR HANSON
Men Overboard

On a sheet of fair green ocean the crew of
a shipwrecked tanker float bobbing up and
down in a synchronized harmony. They have
yellow life jackets - a colour that keeps
sharks at bay, not that it matters now that
seagulls have gouged their eyes out. When
night descends gentle as a blanket lovingly
tucked around a sleeping child they will be
washed ashore on a paradise island of golden
sand and coconut palms.and there they will
dry and be slim under a tropical sun till they
are lighter that the tail feather of a sparrow
then they will fly with the prevailing wind and
see what they didn't have time to see as crew
on practical ships made of steel


Copyright 2005, all rights revert to the poet.



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PoetryRepairShop 05.01:012


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PoetryRepairShop 05.01:012

Charles P. Ries
AN OPEN LETTER TO POETRY MAGAZINE

		

January 5, 2005
Mr. Christian Wiman
Editor
Poetry 
Post Office Box 575
Mt. Morris. IL 61054-9982

Dear Mr. Wiman,
I recently received my renewal notice to POETRY and because you are
a fine publication, I want to take a moment to tell why I will not be renewing. 
Take this feedback and do with it what you will, I realize it is impossible 
to please all the people all the time.

I subscribe to about twenty small press poetry magazine or zines as we like
to call them. Some are so tiny they are nothing more the stapled zerox pages 
with a subscriber base of one hundred and others are perfect bound and with
a circulation of over two thousand.
 
A few years ago I felt it was my duty to subscribe to POETRY. I was curious.
 I wanted to see the top of the mountain. I wanted to see what the best writers 
wrote. And for two years I read most or all of the issues you sent me. I looked 
into their pages and asked, "What makes this poem great?" "What makes this 
writer unique – exquisite?" 

That said; I struggle to feel engaged with most of the work you publish. It does
not blow my mind, frighten me, shock me or confound me. Yes, you have 
published writers who have touched me. But I find them so seldom in POETRY, 
that I wonder, why are they in POETRY? 

I don't begrudge you the audience you have decided to serve. I'll call them 
purists for lack of a better word. After all academics need their journals too,
 but why have you chosen to serve such a tiny sliver of poetry? With an 
endowment in excess of one hundred million dollars, you can now fly where
ever you like. You can safely spend five millions a year and never touch 
principle. You can champion and magnify this gift of poetry. Instead I see 
you doing so much for so few. What a shame! 

But with the $35 I will not be sending to you, I will subscribe to Free Verse,
 Lummox, Bathtub Gin, Iconoclast, FUCK!, Zen Baby and Poesy and maybe
two or three other magazines because in them I find voices that shock me, 
move me, surprise me and make me proud to be a poet and reader of poetry. 
In them I find a collision of voices and views that I don't not find in POETRY. 
Will you please take time to formally talk to the editors of these small 
magazines? Listen to them. If you like I will send you the names of twenty 
such editors. Editors who, like you, love poetry but who have been called to 
a vastly different river of words. They may not change how you orient POETRY 
or its content, but you will learn something you don't know now if you listen to 
them. At least you must listen.

Sincerely,
Charles P. Ries

5821 West Trenton Place
Milwaukee, WI 53213
charlesr@execpc.com
http://www.literati.net/Ries/
			

Copyright 2005, all rights revert to the poet.



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