It’s a wet one here in Northern New Jersey. I’m writing this morning from a dark, dimly-lit room, listening to Waits’ Rain Dogs next to two dogs reined in by the inclement weather, two dogs who’d much rather be wrestling in the waterlogged earth outside then lying restless on the dry couch next to me.
Rain is one of dog’s first lessons in unfairness.
Rain is the inner-torment-fallen-strawberry-ice-cream-cone.
We have a great week coming up at Atticus Review. Let’s get started…
On the Trail
First of all, if you missed it, on Saturday we published Jared Yates Sexton’s latest dispatch from the campaign trail, this time a close look at the Democratic National Convention. I’ve really appreciated these personal, boots-on-the-ground reflections from Jared of what has been happening at the two conventions. I feel like it’s given us an important perspective, different from the one delivered to us by the Big Media Bullhorn. It puts us in the midst of the action, sweating on the grass next to the discontent and the passionate. It brings us honest statements like these:
Political losses are bad enough when you’re invested, but when you’re a true believer? When that candidate marshals something in you you thought had been lost?
That’s another matter altogether.
This Week
We’ve got some great stuff coming up this week: Part Two in a series of conversations between Georgia poets Anya Silver and Sara Hughes about poetry, teaching and cancer. Here is Part One, which we ran in June. We will also run a poetry feature on David Campos. And finally, we will get out our special “Violence” issue, which we had to delay last week.
Submissions
We have temporarily stopped submissions to allow us to regroup a little bit and do some much-needed housekeeping. We plan to open submissions again on September 12th. Please plan on sending us your best work at that time via our Submittable Page!
New Managing Editor
Speaking of housekeeping, we have a new Managing Editor coming to Atticus Review. I will write more about her next week, but for now I will say I’m very excited about working with poet Michelle Greco on getting the Atticus Review publication schedule consistent in the fall. I believe she will bring a positive energy and enthusiasm to Atticus Review and I can’t wait for her to get started.
Nonfiction Editor
I also want to announce that we are officially looking for a new Nonfiction Editor. If this role interests you, please email me at atticusreview at gmail dot com. Let me know what you would bring to the journal. Let me know why you’re the one to find us great Creative Nonfiction.
“You are Living in a Poem”
Ok now… I want to leave you with this. I listened to the On Being Podcast/Radio Show this weekend as I was driving down to DC for a reading. I try to listen to On Being every week because I often crave the thoughtfulness and inspiration that show delivers, and on this most recent episode, host Krista Tippett has a conversation with poet Naomi Shihab Nye. They discuss many things relevant to the contentious climate we find ourselves in these days, particularly with regards to politics.
I really loved this one thing Nye says about the relationship between poetry and the self. I think it is worth taking with you this week whether you’re a writer or not:
“I think that is very important, not feeling separate from text, feeling sort of your thoughts as text or the world as it passes through you as a kind of text. The story that you would be telling to yourself about the street, even as you walk down it, or as you drive down it, as you look out the window, the story you would be telling — it always seemed very much to me, as a child, that I was living in a poem, that my life was the poem. And in fact, at this late date, I have started putting that on the board of any room I walk into that has a board.”
So write that a couple times on your mental blackboard this week, won’t you?
You are living in a poem.
You are living in a poem.
You are living in a poem.
Have a good week. Make good things. Begin anyway.
