From the Editor’s Desk Kate Bernadette Benedict
Segue into Fall
Here’s to Autumn and a new Umbrella issue, a miscellany. Even when there is no announced theme, sometimes a theme emerges anyway. As summer ends, here we have a number of poems that explore ripening, the coming of age, night thoughts, memories, an awareness of death—not a “hurrahing in harvest” in the manner of Hopkins but more of an equinoctial melancholy that looks ahead to the near and inevitable winter solstice. A little wryness and eros leaven the bread and the poems run the spectrum from the strictly formal to the prose line. Here’s to eclectism!
Reaping and Winnowing
And what about another kind of reaping and winnowing, the editorial kind? Some editors, at the end of a reading period, surround themselves with a pile of likely candidates and then make final decisions. I prefer a more fluid approach. If a poem sings to me, then immediately I create a web page for viewing it in my private browser. Over the course of a week or two I will study the page multiple times. I’ve tagged Umbrella as “the supremely rereadable electronic journal” and as you see, I live by that precept! It is Umbrella’s core criterion.
Sad but true—many a poem that grabs me initially fails to hold my attention over the long haul. It’s hard to describe exactly why that may be so. Perhaps the theme begins to seem stale or the diction ordinary, or there are weak turns of phrase that don’t seem revisable. Admittedly, rereadability is a subjective value but then again, most editorial criteria are just that.
It is disappointing to lose faith in a poem this way and painful to press that delete key. Disappointing, too, when those “nays” are more instant simply because an otherwise well executed poem doesn’t fulfill itself. A poem may exhibit excellent ideation; it may start off well but then go astray. Clichés slip in, endings are weak, there are metrical bobbles or padding. And, of course, certain poems are rejected outright simply because they exhibit something which your editor has specifically noted as a bugaboo. See What is an Umbrella poem not like? in the Mission Statement (recently revised).
Rejecting decent work is not pretty for anyone concerned. My only hope is that this scrupulous approach results in a high quality journal.
Call for Submissions
A Winter 2008 “Umbrella Extra” is planned. In addition to reading works of a general nature, our theme will be popular culture. Movies, TV shows, music, fashions, trends, pop icons and iconography: intrigue us with poems that recognize the depths beneath the shallows.