Welcome to the February, 2010 issue of Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. This month’s issue is full of new submissions in nearly all categories. Enjoy!
Here in Morgantown, West Virginia, where our home office is located, it’s cold...VERY COLD! I think it was 9 degrees last night. I feel like I’m living in a Tom Waits song lyric… “And there’s 15 feet of snow in the east / Colder than a well digger’s ass / And it’s colder than a well digger’s ass.” In fact, although I am no well digger, my ass has been numb for weeks!
For this issue, then, we decided to warm things up a bit!
Hoppenthaler’s Congeries starts this month with a wonderfully unconventional preface. John decided to give us something to chew on this month, and his preface-essay is brilliant. He’s intent on opening lines of discussion related to helping us all “gain something like a grip on what our current period’s fashionable style looks and acts like, and why.” And he focuses on essays by Louise Gluck, Tony Hoagland, and Stephen Burt.
But Hoppenthaler’s Congeries doesn’t stop there. It is full of poems by some outstanding artists: James Richardson, Ellen Doré Watson, Anna Journey, Gabrielle Piedad Ponce, Rhett Iseman Trull, A. E. Stringer, Laura McCullough, Steve Scafidi, Dan Stryk, David Rigsbee, dawn lonsinger, and starts with an outstanding interview with T. R. Hummer followed by three new poems.
If reading these artists doesn’t warm you up, Amanda McGuire’s Plate to Palate chimes in with some great ideas for creamy, gooey, comfort foods to help you get through the night. Rebecca Hart, Karen Babine, Sarah Lenz, and Kathryn Miles add wonderful dishes to the column focused on soup! As Amanda says, “Soups are hearty and homey.” Man, I could really use some soup right now. Seriously!
Our drama editor, Joshua Fardon, has brought in an off-the-hook interview with Jacqueline Wright (this interview has been updated to DO NOT MISS status!) followed by her new play Buddy Buddette. We’ve been getting a lot of mail applauding the artists and their work in the drama section and I wholeheartedly agree. This submission will knock you out!
Steven Huff graciously agreed to helm our guest editor column this month, and we send him a big thank you very much! Poets in the column include: Anne-Marie Oomen, Joe-Anne McLaughlin, Philip Memmer, Allen Hoey (who appeared in our poetry section last year), Kurt Brown, Dzvinia Orlowsky, George Drew, and an interview with Editor/Production Director at BOA Editions, LTD, Thom Ward. Thom was also kind enough to give us four new poems! Well done, Steve!
We also offer for your pleasure a new nonfiction piece by Ed Weathers, a book review of Elizabeth Haukaas new book, “Leap:poems” by Olivia Everett, a wonderful essay by John Wenke (thanks, Jack!) for our Essays on Art column, and a new featured undergrad, Jennifer Butcher, introduced by the brilliant author and friend of writers everywhere Allison Joseph.
Connotation Press: Come with Me, and You’ll be, in a World of True Imagination
This issue of Connotation Press: An Online Artifact is dedicated to Jerome David Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) who once wrote, “I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” Rest in Piece Mr. Salinger. Although, sadly, I doubt for that there’s much hope.