Welcome to the sixth year of Connotation Press! Five full years of Connotation Press are now in the world. I suspect that, at times, we all think about what impression we’re leaving on the world – that is, what our influence on the world is and will be. What will we leave behind? Will people remember us, and does that matter? Why do we care? Do we want to be remembered for our selves, or is it just as good help shape the world, put positive waves out into the world that will ripple namelessly around once we’re gone? Here at Connotation Press, we try to help shape the world a little bit by sharing art that we find to be strong and that will send out positive waves for the artists and for other people. We encourage and celebrate conversations and connections. It surprises me a little bit that I’m realizing that if my “self” doesn’t survive long after I do – that is, that people don’t remember me – I’ll be alright with that. I’d like to think and feel like I’ve done something to make the world just a little bit better, and I think we do that here at CP. But in the likely event that I don’t become canonical in some fashion, I’ll still survive, probably in a way with less identification of self attached. Energy and matter are never destroyed, after all. There’s a comfortable kind of closure in that. You’ll see why this is on my mind when you read our lead this month – Jim Daniels! I’ve got to say, I’m pretty ecstatic that we have work by Jim Daniels to share with you as we welcome our sixth year with Connotation Press. Mr. Daniels shares with us poems that he wrote as part of a collaboration with photographer Charlee Brodsky. We have Ms Brodsky’s corresponding photos to share with you, too. The photos focus viewers’ attention on minute, beautiful, rich details of subject matter we might ordinarily think mundane. The poems Mr. Daniels shares with us are brilliant must-reads and lift off from the photos in, I thought, unexpected and wonderful directions. They demonstrate the way we constantly impress ourselves onto the world, and the way the world without trying impresses itself back on us. Jim also gave me a superb interview. I can’t resist repeating that in it, he states, “I do think I agree with you on this, that everything is connotation.” He also talks about his collaborative process with Ms Brodsky; about preserving the self through space and time; and about a project he’s involved in that will send poetry to the moon, micro-etched onto special metal with diamonds. The world is so full of wonder, and this collaborative work and interview explore a surprisingly broad and deep braided band of it. Don’t miss this one.
Associate Editor Julie Brooks Barbour also knocks it out of the park this month, bringing us work by four stunning poets, plus an interview. Ms Barbour writes:Poems that take on the persona of historical figures have always been interesting to me, moreso how a poet decides which details of a full life to include in the retelling. You can imagine my delight in running across Geoffrey Philp’s poems on Marcus Garvey. The particular moments of Garvey searching for identity drew me in, the first of him at a printing press attempting to find his voice. I had the pleasure of interviewing Philps about these poems, which are part of a larger series, and the decisions he made in writing about an historic icon. I hope you find the interview and following poems as fascinating as I did.
I am always stunned by the beauty of Diane Lockward’s poems. Her poems make me see the world anew, as in the way the color pink unfolds as image and icon in “A Polemic for Pink.” I reconsider what I know about fortunes typed on small slips of paper in “Pity the Poor Fortune Cookie Writer His Muse.” These are two surprising narrative journeys. Buckle up.
These poems by Kate Gleason explore how our bodies become fragmented after a radical change. In “The Monster’s Bride Speaks (Roughly Two Centuries after Dr. Frankenstein Destroyed Her Unfinished Form),” the speaker realizes how her life might have been different, “if the first person to see me // hadn’t retched with dread.” In “PTSD,” we visit a survivor of trauma, who states “everything so real it’s dreamlike.” These poems themselves are dreamlike, inviting us into lives that challenge our ideas of reality.
In these poems by Maureen Alsop, we visit places lit with emotion. Here’s evening, where the speaker stands “at the wardrobe touching your dresses, speech matching the shape of old conversations.” Here’s the field where the speaker grieves the dead: “Suppose // she was you, without any theory of / season.” We do not stand in an ordinary house or field, but in places altered by atmosphere and mood. I am in awe of these perfectly paced lines that deliver us to a re-imagined world that is at once familiar and dream-like.
We also have beautiful poetry by Simon Perchik to share with you this month. One thing that I love about Mr. Perchik’s poetry is that it took me a while to figure out why I’m so drawn to it. I love poetry that makes me curious about it. I knew right off that I loved the imagery in these poems. The lines are beautiful, and a few in particular awed me. But it really was the tone that got me. I love their sexuality-askew. These poems feel almost like lonely lullabies that don’t help you sleep and that also, despite their loneliness, remember connections over and over, even if those connections are flawed. It may be their honest intimacy, even where they’re guarded, that I love the most. Their intimacy magnifies their beauty and the humanity behind them.
Come on in, the waves feel great.