Where's a Tote Bag When You Need One?
I turned thirty-one this year, and the year that got me here has been one of the most chaotic, confusing, and busy years of my life.
Over the past year, my family and I have moved across the country from Oklahoma to West Virginia, welcomed our second son into the world, begun new jobs, and bought a fixer-upper of a house that, at every turn, makes me question what the previous owners were thinking, among other things. I have spent hour after hour hunched over, refinishing hardwood floors, digging out stumps and roots, hauling old cabinetry and paneling out of old, crowded rooms, and moving, moving, moving again everything I own. I have a fault of not knowing when to stop. I sit and stare at the mountainous pile of to-dos and find myself crashing into the anxiety of feeling like I haven't accomplished nearly enough. If I am not careful, and if I do not surround myself with people who care about me, I am often at risk of running myself to exhaustion and frustration. Finding the space to be still in all of this has been a challenge. I am tired.
I say all of this to speak to the refreshment that this issue of Jarfly has been for me. The poems that have found their way into Issue 5 have caught me up and held me transfixed, forcing me from the immediacy of my responsibilities and interrupting me with the immediacy of my humanity. These poems have wrapped themselves around me and brought me to wonder, to sorrow, to joy. The poets in this collection ponder humanity and inhumanity, the ordinary and extraordinary. At once concerned with the beautiful menagerie of everyday relationships, as in Grayson Mack's "My mother comforts me after a breakup," and the cosmic wonder of impossibility, as in Jack Bedell's "Swamp Thing Explains How the Green Works."
I'm not an expert about any of this, and when confronted by the task of writing a editorial letter to readers, all that I can think to do is to celebrate the work of these writers and artists. The work of poetry is so invisible and often thankless. Sharing poems and shooting them off into the dark of the internet is such a gamble. As writers, we question audience and hope that maybe, for someone, our words will strike true and make a meaningful change in someone's life. Jarfly is not a big magazine and it doesn't have a huge following; I don't have the fancy analytics to know how far reaching any of this is. But acquiring these things is not my ambition. I don't aspire to sell golden medallions or fancy tote bags. What I ultimately want is to provide you with a space to be as arrested with poetry as I have the luxury of being. I hope to provide you with a space to be still and quiet and listen - really listen - to others' experiences.
I think that we can reach that goal. It's probably more realistic that the the whole tote bag thing anyway.
All the best,
Ian C. Williams
Jarfly Editor-in-Chief
Over the past year, my family and I have moved across the country from Oklahoma to West Virginia, welcomed our second son into the world, begun new jobs, and bought a fixer-upper of a house that, at every turn, makes me question what the previous owners were thinking, among other things. I have spent hour after hour hunched over, refinishing hardwood floors, digging out stumps and roots, hauling old cabinetry and paneling out of old, crowded rooms, and moving, moving, moving again everything I own. I have a fault of not knowing when to stop. I sit and stare at the mountainous pile of to-dos and find myself crashing into the anxiety of feeling like I haven't accomplished nearly enough. If I am not careful, and if I do not surround myself with people who care about me, I am often at risk of running myself to exhaustion and frustration. Finding the space to be still in all of this has been a challenge. I am tired.
I say all of this to speak to the refreshment that this issue of Jarfly has been for me. The poems that have found their way into Issue 5 have caught me up and held me transfixed, forcing me from the immediacy of my responsibilities and interrupting me with the immediacy of my humanity. These poems have wrapped themselves around me and brought me to wonder, to sorrow, to joy. The poets in this collection ponder humanity and inhumanity, the ordinary and extraordinary. At once concerned with the beautiful menagerie of everyday relationships, as in Grayson Mack's "My mother comforts me after a breakup," and the cosmic wonder of impossibility, as in Jack Bedell's "Swamp Thing Explains How the Green Works."
I'm not an expert about any of this, and when confronted by the task of writing a editorial letter to readers, all that I can think to do is to celebrate the work of these writers and artists. The work of poetry is so invisible and often thankless. Sharing poems and shooting them off into the dark of the internet is such a gamble. As writers, we question audience and hope that maybe, for someone, our words will strike true and make a meaningful change in someone's life. Jarfly is not a big magazine and it doesn't have a huge following; I don't have the fancy analytics to know how far reaching any of this is. But acquiring these things is not my ambition. I don't aspire to sell golden medallions or fancy tote bags. What I ultimately want is to provide you with a space to be as arrested with poetry as I have the luxury of being. I hope to provide you with a space to be still and quiet and listen - really listen - to others' experiences.
I think that we can reach that goal. It's probably more realistic that the the whole tote bag thing anyway.
All the best,
Ian C. Williams
Jarfly Editor-in-Chief