From the Editor’s Desk Kate Bernadette Benedict
The Wondrous Strange
I wasn’t sure, when I put out a call for poems that portray “weird scenarios,” if anything much would show up in Umbrella’s in box; after all, I seldom encounter this type of work in other journals. (Odd how the odd gets so little respect!) And would I even like the poems that did come in, I wondered? Perhaps they’d be not just weird but deranged. Well, some were a tad deranged but no less delightful for being so. The narrator of Janice D. Soderling’s “Taking It All Off” stripteases off her own skin! So open up our “Wondrous Strange” feature and enjoy her performance. Take a tour of a national park of clouds. Be well warned against trespassing. And maybe have a nice long think about the role of imagination in poetry, its limitless possibilities.
Masthead News
Good cheer and kudos to C. E. Chaffin, our new Contributing Editor, whose Selected Poems has just been published by Diminuendo Press: Unexpected Light. News of its quality and depth is spreading fast, and (blush) the blurb I contributed is being quoted hither and yon. So I might as well quote it again: The unexpected light in these poems is a certian sort of light: faint, slant, the light of twilight or a fading penlight or a barely discernible sliver of moon. Yet the poems pierce and burn. Until you acquire his book (and I know you will!), please enjoy Craig’s essay in this issue.
Call for Submissions
Summer 2009, online June 1, will be a non-themed issue and we welcome your submissions. We will also publish our famed Bumbershoot annual and for this we seek light verse, verse that is more seriously funny, and poems about, and by, animals. Robert Schechter, whose own writings have graced previous Bumbershoots, will be joining me as guest editor for the issue. He is especially looking for Riddles. Deadline: May 15, 2009.
This Issue’s Art
This edition welcomes the art of Kristin Fouquet, a native of New Orleans and a fine-art photographer and writer. Samples of her photography can be seen at Le Salon.