|
A Word from guest Editor Valvis |
|
Introduction My good friend Jim Chandler, who usually edits this magazine, has asked me to lay down a few words of introduction for this issue. This is the first time I have guest edited a magazine, but it's the second time I have edited one. Back in 1993, fresh out of the army, I put together a literary rag (for rag it was) called The Avant Garden. That ill-fated venture lasted only the one issue, and the only reason it lasted that long was due to some money I received for an income tax return. 1993. Ahh. Those were the days before internet publishing, when a man had to run off copies by the hundreds at the nearest copy machine he could find, if he could find one at all. I found mine at a gas station. This gas station was located in Bumkin Land, Florida, and I doubt that copy machine was ever used except by some locals to copy their divorce decrees and landlady evictions. I strolled in an hour before shift change, prepared to make my hundreds of copies, and got right to it. The female gas station clerk was maybe four hundred pounds, and seemed annoyed I was there--as if I were stopping her from doing some important job. Perhaps in her spare time she brokered for world peace. More likely, she just wanted to sit her fat ass down and use the phone and not have to worry if I was going to lift a bag of Munchos. I'd have left, but I couldn't afford to go elsewhere. Her machine was the only affordable one for miles around and my tax return wasn't exactly a Lotto check. The finances broke down like this. The machine cost 3 cents a copy and my magazine was close to 50 pages. Times that by the 50 copies, almost all of which went out to contributors, and you had 75 dollars. But the copy machine didn't have a counter. It was on an honor code. So--since I have no honor and since the gas station clerk hated me--I lied and only ended up paying 50 bucks. (I swiped some Munchos too.) Postage cost a buck an issue, and that means I was out about a 100 bucks. That doesn't include time spent editing, printer ribbon, soliciting material, doesn't include envelopes, stress, heartache, hostile gas station clerks, and the five bucks I handed the cover artist, just because. But let's call it a 100 bucks. And do you know how much I made in return? Zip, nada, nothing. Well, the Munchos. I've gone into all this for a reason. And here's the reason. I got jobbed and I wanted to complain. No, no, just kidding. Here's the real reason. Free Munchos aside, nobody in his right mind does one of these magazines for profit. The fact that it's online now--and therefore cheaper--not free, mind you, but cheaper--does not change anything. It's a labor of love, or it's nothing at all. It's a labor of love, or it never materializes. It's love, baby, it's love. You have to love the work as much as the person who is sending it. At least you have to come at it with that kind of hopefulness, the same kind of hopefulness that a writer felt when he sat down to begin writing, and let it happen or not happen, depending. But depending on what? For every editor it's different. For me it's an attention to language and the ability and willingness to say something important about something. How you say it, and what you say. But of these two, I always prefer the latter. That is to say, I'll grant some slack on the how you say it but never on the what you say. Some people think they can get away with saying nothing or saying the same damn thing everyone else is saying. Other go beneath that. They intentionally say nothing and think their obscurity, their obliqueness, will render us breathless, provided they flash a degree or some long list of credits. These credentials do not impress me. We all know that just about any fool can earn an MFA and even more fools can get published. There's no crime in having either credential, but these mean nothing when the work is false. None of the work presented here is false. I can assure you of that--and that is the end of my assurances. This is a strange time to put out a magazine of poetry and fiction. As you probably know, there's a war going on. People are dying. Good people, bad people, and a bunch in between. You are either for that war or against it, I don't care which. Let's all stick to what we can agree upon, and I think we can all agree that there is definitely a war going on. Now, facing that reality, that grim reality, one might ask himself what business one has editing a magazine of literature. And one might also ask what business one has in reading one. These are good questions. I can only answer for myself. My love for poetry and fiction, like my love for my family, does not stop when there is a war. It's important because we deem it important. It's important because if it's important during easy times, it's important during the hard times as well. Perhaps, in such times, it is even more important. Besides, 1993 was a strange time too. All times are strange. The love must roll on. My mind keeps going back to that gas station clerk, that minimum wage momma. She had obviously never seen my like before. She probably never met my like again. I imagine her asking, What kind of madman is this? How many copies does he plan on making? Why has he left his wife in the car to do this nonsense? Who does he think he is? When, in God's name, will he leave? I should have given that clerk a copy of The Avant Garden. Who knows? She might have come to understand, just a little, what it means to love poetry, to love fiction, to love anything. Having failed then, I turn to you. These poems and stories are already twice loved--loved by the writer, loved by the editor--and now it is your turn to love them. I hope you will. Jim Valvis Issaquah, Washington |