[Janice D. Soderling]

I freely admit that without the Internet I would not have known. But now I do. Neat!

Losing a Language" by W.S. Merwin

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back
yet the old still remember something that they could say
but they know now that such things are no longer believed
and the young have fewer words
many of the things the words were about
no longer exist
the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I
the children will not repeat
the phrases their parents speak
somebody has persuaded them
that it is better to say everything differently
so that they can be admired somewhere
farther and farther away
where nothing that is here is known
we have little to say to each other
we are wrong and dark
in the eyes of the new owners
the radio is incomprehensible
the day is glass
when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
everywhere instead of a name there is a lie
nobody has seen it happening
nobody remembers
this is what the words were made
to prophesy
here are the extinct feathers
here is the rain we saw

Edited in to add last line. Thanks Philip.

[Jan D. Hodge]

Nope, Janice, it wasn't a typo (however prone I am to making them). The journal's title is Buckle &

The title page confirms the source, though it takes a liberty with the typography of the original, which is:

......... . . the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
...Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

With so many small journals arriving and departing, it isn't surprising that you haven't heard of it. Bernhard Frank in Buffalo, NY, resurrected the earlier Buckle [1977-82] in 1998, but it is now apparently again defunct. Two of my carmina appeared in the Fall/Winter 1999 issue.

[Philip Quinlan]

Janice

Oops - you lost the last line:

"here is the rain we saw"

Great poem (from "The Rain in the Trees" but appears in the good old Norton Anthology).

Philip

[Janice D. Soderling]

but it is now apparently again defunct

Ah, thanks Jan, that explains why I couldn't find it. And in the nineties, I was out of the loop, so I hadn't heard of it. But even defunct mags count. And somewhere there are people like me, who now and then go back to the old printed mags and re-read. So your poem lives still with a public ! When it is gone from the net, it is gone.

I think it is such a nice, personalized way of naming a literary magazine. I have still a little stack of titles from poems, but here are two from names:

Ezra and Carve. Not so hard to figure who is getting the homage there !

[John Whitworth]

Janice, you and your gang are very welcome. There's a nice magazne here called The Interpreter's House, which is a quotation from somewhere. I used to know where, but I've forgotten.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thank you, John, where can I put my suitcase? And what time is lunch?

INTERPRETER'S HOUSE was a literary magazine I did not know and I am glad to make its acquaintance. Doing so, I found the source of the title:

.... the house of the Interpreter, at whose door he should knock;
and he would show him excellent things
Bunyan, 'Pilgrim's Progress'

The issue included a brilliant poem by Miklos Radnoti. It is unclear who the translator is, but likely it is Thomas Orszag-Land, who undersigned the prose preface. I am very happy to learn of this magazine. Thanks, John.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Recently defunct Room of One's Own.

Ship of Fools.
Jaberwock Review
Red Wheelbarrow (formerly named Bottomfish)
There was once one called "Beside the White Chickens" but I guess it is dead. I submitted but never heard back from them.

Yes, I am playing solitaire. (I got more.)

[Gail White]

You got me to thinking that if I started such a journal I would call it
"The Bald Street."

(Hint: This is Tennyson)

[Janice D. Soderling]

Gail, I must admit I did not know that poem and am pleased to have made its acquaintance.

I think "Bald Street" would be a very good name for a journal.

Let me know when you start it and I will send you two excellent and profound poems of mine: one titled "The Night Life of a Postiche", the other, "The Early Death of a Toupee".

[Gail White]

Janice, that title is actually from one of my favorite lines in "In Memoriam" -- "On the bald street breaks the blank day."

Don't a lot of days seem like that.