April is the cruelest month, True or False?

In the April of T.S. Eliot's poem, following the April of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, life starts to emerge from what looks like inertia, a cold dry earth.  Chaucer gives us sweet showers to pierce March's drought and bring flowers up into blossom.   And we all know that bulbs and roots underground are just waiting for the weather to improve before they grow.

Here at the magazine, we haven't been just waiting, even if it might have looked like it.  (That is, even though I haven't updated the blog for too long.)  We're putting together the Spring/Summer issue now, and we're starting to accept pieces for the Fall/Winter issue.

But it's also been an unusual year for us.  Two of the editors went to Dublin for their MFA residency; one of us (okay, me) taught in London from January to March--not, perhaps, the months you might want to spend in London if you want to admire the flower gardens, but an excellent time to see the museums.  I'm still marveling at the National Portrait Gallery exhibit on Charlotte Bronte, with her tiny handwritten Angria novel and her almost as tiny boots.  I'd always thought of her as having big footprints to follow...

And now we're back, we're reading your work, we're on the job again refreshed, even if what we got was not April showers but a small snowstorm.  We hope you continue with the work of poetry, too, refreshed, ready to send us more to read, and maybe even ready to read a new Common Ground.

Let us know if you want a current issue--in April and May, we'll send you one for $12, or a sample issue for $5.

The Apparently Frozen Website & Miss Clavel

It does look as if this website has been frozen at a particular moment in time, doesn’t it?   As if it’s an archeological remnant from a year ago?  It was a cold winter, but we should have thawed out by now!  

Funny story… our webmaster was working on his engineering degree (which he now has—mazel tov—and a full-time job, very good news, many congratulations to him.)  And he’s a great guy, so when we asked him to make the changes to the website, such as posting information about the contest judge, he said he would.  He would get to it.  Sure, he’d do it. 

Haven’t you done something like that?  I do.  I'm guessing that most of us have more work on our to-do list than we can get to right away, and even when we tell ourselves, we must do this first thing tomorrow, something else always inserts itself into that time.  This summer, I’ve been feeling more and more like Miss Clavel in the Madeline books, sitting up in the middle of the night and saying, “something is not right!”  But the moment I start working on fixing it, the doorbell rings, all the kids in the neighborhood come over, and suddenly I’m making lunch.  Where did the morning go?  Where did the month go, or the summer?

The good news is that we are indeed working on the magazine, which is very much alive—all is right in that regard.  Our Spring/Summer issue should be arriving on campus next week, and we will send it out as soon as it does.  We should have a new webmaster once the Fall semester begins.  We are already working on the Fall/Winter issue.  If you are sending us poems or stories or essays electronically, I would like to ask you to submit work via Submittable, not by the regular email address—it is too hard to keep track of mail that comes in that way. 

And thank you for your patience!

August!

August is the month of the shower of stars--the Perseids--and the month of mosquitoes eating you when you go out to watch. Despite the mosquitoes, Common Ground Review is looking at poems on stars this month and until September 30th for our first theme issue.  Thank you for sending us poems!  The stars don't have to be celestial--they can be celebrities, or asterisks, or anything starry that you are intrigued by.  We are accepting other poems, too.  Officially that deadline is August 31st, but we keep reading until the issue is full.  And we are also catching up on the backlog.

Our Fall/Winter issue spotlights a work of creative non-fiction.  This can be on any subject, but it must be relatively short-- less than or equal to 12 pages (double-spaced).  If you have any questions, you can ask Dan Bevacqua, our Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction Editor.  And now, let's not dwell on Fall/Winter.  It's still summer, and for a few short days, still summer vacation!

Here in western Massachusetts, the gladioli are blooming, the tomatoes are turning red, the weeds are thriving...and we start a new semester at Western New England on August 25th, so it's been busy.  We've run into a delay in printing the Spring/Summer issue--sizing the cover properly.  But we think that's been resolved, so we should be getting the issue out to our contributors (and anyone else who'd like an issue, a bargain at $10 including mailing costs) as soon as we can.

We also ran into a delay starting Submittable, but that should be available very soon--the Submittable programmers are working on upgrades this Saturday (August 23rd, also the day of the new Doctor Who episode), and we realized it would be smart to start up after those upgrades were in place. 

Stay tuned...Our next theme issue will be on food!

July!

Here’s what’s happening right now:

FIRST

We are in the process of switching from straight email submissions (which we have no good way to keep track of) to Submittable.  We hope this will enable us to respond to submissions much more efficiently.  At the moment, I’m creating descriptions and setting up links; there’s some HTML code to put in, but you should see the link to submit work via Submittable on this website by the end of July.  Of course we will continue to accept work though the regular mail.

Recently the esteemed literary journal Triquarterly has been in the news for sending a letter that apologized for a backlog and returned submissions unread.  We sympathize both with the writers whose submissions were not read, and with the editors of the magazine.  In our situation, we will continue to work through our backlog and to read all submissions sent before the installation of Submittable, as well as those sent by way of Submittable.  This takes time, and we apologize for the wait, which in some cases has been very long indeed. 

However, please be aware that we allow simultaneous submissions, and we are genuinely pleased (if sometimes annoyed with ourselves and our own slowness) when you tell us that you are withdrawing work because it has been accepted elsewhere.  It may be that just the act of sending work to us will bring you luck!

SECOND

We are proof-reading the Spring/Summer issue, which is looking great--and that isn't even including Lorna Ritz's gorgeous cover.  We hope to be able to send it to the printers by the end of July.  At that point, we will start focusing on submissions for the Fall/Winter issue. 

Thank you, everyone who has sent us work--we really appreciate it!

Mid May

And what is happening here?

I am relieved to say that the Fall/Winter issue finally came out! 

Our judge, Karen Skolfield, determined the 2014 Poetry Contest winners and Honorable Mentions.  We will be posting those and comments on the Contest page shortly.   We are sending letters to the other entrants this week.

We are continuing to read submissions for the Spring/Summer 2014 issue, which we hope to be able to send to the printers in June. 

**Inspired by last year's graduation speech given at Western New England University by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, we have decided to make the next Fall/Winter issue a theme issue.  The theme is stars--whether celestial, or in the realm of celebrities, or the symbols used to indicate excellent food, or some other variant is up to you.** 

We will continue to accept poems on other topics, but we're looking forward to seeing what you send!

We are also still looking for short stories and short non-fiction (10-12 pages) for our Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter issues, respectively.

The Proof Is On the Way

Have you ever clicked on to the link to a package coming your way via FedEx or the Post Office, thinking, I hope it's here soon!, only to find that it won't arrive (apparently) until next week?  Here it is four days into Spring (technically), and I am waiting for the proof of the Fall/Winter issue; as soon as I can okay it, we can get the magazine to you!  I keep looking out the window hoping that a delivery van will drive up.  I'm also hoping that the Nor'easter projected for tomorrow night will miss us, but if not, maybe it will be the last of the wintry storms that have delayed us so much this year.

In the meantime, we have great news about our Poetry Contest Judge, Karen Skolfield--her book, Frost in the Low Areas, just won the New England PEN Award for Poetry!  It is well deserved--the book is wonderful, and I'm only bragging a little when I say that we had the wit and foresight to print two of the poems in it in Common Ground Review 14.1 (the one with the cat on the cover).

Finally, we are still reading submissions as far back as from last summer for consideration for the Spring/Summer issue, and with any luck, we may be able to get that issue out when it is actually still Spring/Summer.  (Probably Summer.  But Summer 2014.)

Thank you for your patience!  and let us know if you'd like a copy of the magazine, or a back issue.

Snow Days, Sneezes, and COLD

Snow days are joyous things--especially when the forecast got it quite wrong, skies are blue, and schools are closed (having believed the forecast).  That's the perfect time to play, make hot chocolate for the happy children zooming about the house like self-propelled rockets, and wonder when you're ever going to finish formatting the magazine.  It's 16 degrees today, going below zero by about that much tonight, and I at least slow down a bit in the cold.

The good news is, we are formatting the Fall/Winter issue, which should be ready in February. 

More good news, we are accepting entries for the poetry contest (judge to be named soon).  And of course, the poems we are reading now are being considered for the Spring/Summer issue--whether they have been sent recently or whether we are just getting to them.  The reading is going on apace; notifications are following a little more slowly.  (If only we could harness the children's energy--those rockets could get letters to you in record time!)

Thanks and Apologies!

Tonight is the start of Yom Kippur—which my son has learned to call, “I’m Sorry Day.” 

“What have you got to be sorry for?”  I asked him.  “Nothing,” he said.  I should be so lucky.  (And so blithely confident, but that’s another topic.)

Let me start with thanks: thank you –thank you VERY much to everyone who sent in submissions by the August 31^st deadline: we will be considering everything for the Fall/Winter issue—including those pieces which were sent months ago to be considered for a previous issue. (I’m so sorry!) We are catching up, but over the summer, we had a skeleton crew (just me, for the most part), and although we have reviewed much of the work that came in, we have not had time to write and send all the letters out. 

After the High Holidays, we will be back to a normal schedule, with regular editorial meetings.  And we will contact everyone who has sent us work.

I’d also like to thank everyone who contributed to the Spring/Summer issue, which is now available, and I would especially like to thank DAN BEVACQUA, our fiction/non-fiction editor, whom I inadvertently left off the masthead, but to whom we owe a wonderful short story by MATT ROSSI.

I owe one more apology to our first-prize winner, EVE FORTI, whose poem we printed without noticing a few mistakes.  We will be posting the corrected version soon so that you can see it as she meant it to be: go to the Contest section of the Common Ground Review website and click on her name.  If you click on the poem title, "Beautiful," you will see comments by this year's contest judge, IAIN HALEY POLLOCK.  (Thank you, Iain!)

The next blog will be about revising poems—several of our poets have agreed to let us post copies of versions they originally sent us, in contrast to the versions they finally wished to have us print.  In some cases, we went with the revision; in others, we went with the original, and we will talk about why we made those choices..

We have also been discussing having a theme issue, and we would love to hear your ideas on what theme(s) you’d like to write about.

Thanks for reading this—a happy, healthy, sweet new year to you, and well over the fast!

Spring/Summer 2013 Cover?

Common Ground Review's art editor, Lorna Ritz, had a grant to paint sand dunes in Cape Cod while she stayed in a shack without power or hot water.  We thought the ocean might be a great cover for the Spring/Summer issue.  (This June we are busily catching up on a year's backlog, selecting poems for the issue, debating, contacting people...and our contest judge, Iain Haley Pollock, is doing his part, too!)

For now, here is the possible cover, and some excerpts from Lorna's diary about her time on the dunes:

1 May.   It was pure joy to set my easel up on the cliff again. My entire color pallet changed from lush Western MA. I had to mix the colors together to very specifically find what color this place is. The ocean constantly moves and changes.

2 May By now I have lost track of days… Yesterday I got lost in the dunes again. What should have taken me 1 + hrs. to return to my shack turned out to be many more hours. I again got disoriented and lost my sightlines as I descended deep into the crevices of the dunes; when I climbed back up in sand, my sightlines were gone, so, I walked the wrong way. ... Jesse said , ‘Me and my wife never get lost. “ He added, 'you should have map quested the dunes."  (Impossible, in this case: I even had a National Park Service map which is of no help when disoriented).  A P'Town artist told me that people get lost all the time, many having to sleep outside in the night, in the cold, because they can’t find their way out. It was my instinct that got me ‘found’ each time.

2 May Today was my happiest day (not getting lost)!    Last night before I went to sleep, I lay flat under the mysterious sky full of brilliant stars, listening to ocean waves. The combination has put me in a good mood for a lifetime. I did another ocean drawing, paying attention only to the waves coming up onto the dunes. !!!!

 



   

Review: Richard Merelman's Imaginary Baritone

Richard Merelman has aptly named this collection The Imaginary Baritone (Fireweed Press 2012) as every piece exhibits low undertones of what it means to live. This collection of 32 poems is an insight to the mind, and the poems fit nicely together like puzzle pieces tell a larger story. This collection gives us a collage of people and places, whether actual events or fictional stories. There is commentary on a mother and father’s place in a family or a member’s place in the religious community and how they all fit into the world around them. It reminds me that no matter how small I feel sometimes, the world is not as large a place as it feels.

A poem published in Common Ground Review (Spring/Summer 2012), “Lizavetna Petrovna,” offers a perspective on historical truth, as well as on the human experience during times of war. Although language is a barrier in this piece, the author is still able to fully communicate the experience he’s had with the audience. The poem provides a reminder that we are all connected in some way and some concepts - sadness, grief, longing - are universally understood. Through Merelman’s writing, I feel as if I was there in that museum carefully watching Lizavetna Petrovna recount these memories: I don’t even know what she looks like, and I still want to cry for her.

My two favorites (because I can never choose) are “Walking the Labyrinth” and “Her Portrait.” The structure of “Walking the Labyrinth” jumps off the page because of the zig-zag form it follows; for example, the line “pause at the center” is placed where the poem changes directions; not only is this an interpretation of the poem but a literal interpretation of the structure. “Her Portrait” is short but poignant.  It all happens so quickly, the reader must be sure to pay careful attention or it will be over before you realize anything has even begun. A young boy and his father share a moment, not entirely understood by the young boy, by throwing a portrait of the mother into a river; however, the reason for this action is not explicit, it is left to the reader to interpret and decide. I think I love this piece so much because I can’t imagine why they would do such a thing and I’m left feeling curious. Overall, the whole book is fantastic and it makes me think a lot about how people fit into not only their own lives but in other people’s lives as well.

 

--Review by Cassandra Deal

 

This piece is the first in a new venture.  Common Ground Review is interested in reviewing books by its contributors.  If you are a contributor with a book, and you would like it reviewed on the blog, please let us know.

Queries

Is the Fall/Winter 2012 issue ever coming?

Yes.  Yes, it is.  We have sent copies to all the contributors as of March 15th.  If you should have gotten a copy but didn't, please let us know.  If you'd like to purchase a copy, send us a check for $10.

But if the Fall/Winter 2012 issue is out, what happened to the poems I sent last July?  Are they doomed?  I haven't heard anything!

That is our fault.  We are very sorry.  We were overloaded this year with both submissions and obligations.  But the good news is, your poems are not doomed!  At least, not yet.

Technically, we have deadlines for regular submissions. We would like to read all the September 1-February 28^th/29^th submissions for consideration for the Spring/Summer issues, and all the March 1^st-August 31^stsubmissions for consideration for the Fall/Winter issues. Sometimes, however, we read something that’s come in late, and it just fits perfectly into the previous issue, which we are in the process of formatting. So we add it. Sometimes, we fall behind. And so at the moment—with sincere apologies to those who are still waiting—we are considering all the submissions from last summer (and earlier) for the Spring/Summer issue.

What about the Poetry Contest?

Our contest deadline for the 14^th Annual Poetry Contest has officially passed, and we are reading the entries in the first round. 

But if you're reading the poetry contest entries, what about the poems I sent in earlier?

We're reading those, too.  Sometimes one editor will like a poem that another editor isn't thrilled about, and then we wait to hear from the third....  The poems we don't like get the fastest action, ironically.  Poems we do like tend to take more time.

 

Fall/Winter 2012 almost ready!

This is Lorna Ritz's new cover!  and it's giving us terrible problems because we can't get the dimensions exact enough for the printer.  But we are working on it....

Winter Issue

When we started reading for the Fall/Winter issue last summer, we had high hopes of publishing it in the "Fall" part of the year.  Fall became late Fall, and late Fall became Winter, and Winter is so cold that every time we go outside, the chill and the icicles and the crunching of snow underfoot tell us to go in and finish working on the magazine.  And have some hot chocolate.

We are still reviewing, discussing, and accepting work for the Fall/Winter issue.  We think we can finish this first stage very soon.  If we hear from the accepted authors in good time, we will be able to format the magazine and get it to the printer in early February, so it will truly be a Winter Issue.

And we thank you for your impatience!  The emails you've sent asking what ever happened to your submission?  they galvanize us into action.  

Next post, we'll have the Fall/Winter cover picture for you.

 

Guy Fawkes Day!

In England, this is a day for fireworks!

Here, we are still going through the submissions for the Fall/Winter issue.  We made a number of decisions back in August, and then we had to move offices just before classes started, which meant that a stack of your manuscripts, logged and ready to read,  went into boxes for longer than we'd intended.  Those boxes are now open, and Andrew Varnon, Joanna Novak and I are reviewing and discussing them over the next couple of weeks.

Sometimes we see fireworks.  This is brilliant!  we say, and there's no doubt at all that it will go into the magazine.

Hmmm, we say at other times, and then we each lobby for our favorites.

I hope you are our favorite.

Back in June

Poetry Journal Editors Panel

I realize now that before it actually happened, I should have blogged about The Riverwood Poetry Festival in Hartford (June 21^st-24^th, yes, sorry, you’ve missed it this year).  It looked really great: among the events, four Poets Laureate read one night (Dick Allen (CT); Walter Butts (NH); Lisa Starr (RI) and Sydney Lea (VT)), and Nick Flynn all by himself on another. 

And I was on a panel of poetry journal editors, trying to characterize our journals and what we looked for.  We each read two poems we had accepted and explained some of what we liked about those poems, and the audience asked questions—two in particular seemed to strike a nerve.

The first was, why does it seem you have to have an MFA to get published?

The second was, doesn’t anyone accept poems that rhyme anymore?   

We all had our answers.  Of course you don’t have to have an MFA to get published, and we (all the editors on that panel, but also we editors at Common Ground) don’t actually look at your credentials: we look at your writing.

However, people who’ve worked to get an MFA may have these advantages: they’ve had a period of intense concentration focused on making their writing shine; they’ve had experienced teachers giving them advice; they’ve run their poems through the gauntlet of their peers’ criticism, and then they’ve revised their poems some more.  (All praise to those who have gone through and survived!)

The MFA writers may have these disadvantages, though: their poems may sound “workshopped” and/or more like their mentors than like themselves; the work may have lost energy and innovation as it gained polish; the writer may have chosen to shy away from risky moves, for example, deciding to err on the side of intellectualism rather than passion, fearing that passion might be overly sentimental or naïve.

Or it might rhyme.  (That’s a joke!)

Personally, I don’t think rhyme should hijack the poem.  The poem is not about rhyming.  If rhyme has a point, if it adds rhythm and meaning to the poem’s content, then I’m fine with it.  But even then, I want the rhyme to be created from the best-chosen words; I want the rhyme to please and surprise just the way I want the rest of the poem to do.

If you want to look up the other journals whose editors were on the panel, here they are:

Caduceus: http://tfuscomedia.com (Tony Fusco)

Connecticut River Review: http://ct-poetry-society.org/publications.htm (Pat Mottola)

CT Review: www.easternct.edu/connecticutreview (Lisa Siedlarz)

Dogwood: www.dogwoodliterary.com (Sonya Huber)

Drunken Boat: http://www.drunkenboat.com (Ravi Shankar)

It’s at the Printers’!

At the Printers’!  I hope that sounds exciting, which it is, and not too much like the excuse for delay, “It’s in the mail.”

“In the mail,” that is, sent out to the contributors and subscribers, is the step after the step after next.

Let me tell you what happened:  we had the poetry contest winners, and we were finalizing the other acceptances, when my computer—the one which has the publishing program—was infected with a malicious virus.   The wonderful IT people basically re-built my computer.  The process took more than a week.

I may have lost some records (my apologies if I end up contacting you twice about the same thing), and I did lose the customized (blank) template for Common Ground Review, but I was able to use a version of the Fall/Winter issue as a template.

So we formatted the issue and the cover, and the printers are now sending us a sample proof. That really is in the mail; once we get it and can okay the order, the printers will get to work.       

In the meantime, we’re getting address labels ready and putting them on envelopes so we can send everything out as soon as possible, and I can actually say, “It’s in the mail!”

Lorna Ritz's Spring/Summer Cover?

         

The cat's name is Ruby.  She's in charge of brush maintenance.

What You Are Doing Right

We are reading submissions now, trying to select not just good poems, but poems that really take us forward, that would work together in an issue that will, we already know, be very eclectic.  It’s not as if we’ve asked for poems on a theme.  That’s a possibility to explore for later.

We publish two issues a year, but we get submissions year-round.  What’s great is when the exact right poems arrive just about when we are putting together the issue.  Then we can accept them instantly: we know how they’ll fit, and the poets get letters from us very quickly. 

But when good poems arrive just after we’ve published an issue and we aren’t sure what the next issue is going to look like, we tend to hold those poems until the next issue gels.  This means that when we find some of the poems will not work, and we have to reject them, the rejection has been so delayed that the person who submitted them must be wondering what on earth has happened—or else has forgotten about them completely.  We have not forgotten, though we may be looking frantically for those poems when an editor has taken them home to go through one final time, or when our office has been packed up and moved to another building, both of which just happened between December and January.  

What you are doing right, when you are doing it right, is just amazing to think about. 

First, you are sending your work out.  That takes organization (especially with the constant changes in postage) and courage, or possibly enthusiasm.  When I send work out, I am at that moment so pleased with what I have written that I cannot imagine anyone would reject it.  The next day, however, or even the second after it goes out, I am certain it is all horrible and will be returned as soon as someone has read it (after it has been sitting around for months waiting to be read).  I am impressed by your sheer bravery in putting poems (or fiction or non-fiction) in the mail.

Second, you are writing.  I don’t know where you find the time to write or the ideas—life is busy!—, but I am happy you have managed to do so.

When you send your work out, I recommend a few practical considerations: 1) use the Forever stamps; 2) make sure your SASE is fully addressed and included;  3) make sure your bio is included, with some means of contacting you if by any chance you are to move before the issue comes out.      

Finally, you keep writing.  You keep sending work out regardless of rejections and delays and rejections.  Because as you keep writing, and as you keep thinking about writing, you are getting better at doing it.  Eventually everything will all come together: the poem sent to the right place at the right time, the acceptance that lifts you until you are walking on air instead of ground.

The Occasional Poem

And lateness.  I want to talk about the poems in our new issue, the Fall/Winter 2011 Common Ground Review, but I’ll circle back to that.   As our local patron saint of poetry, Emily Dickinson, wrote, “tell all the truth, but tell it slant—/success in circuit lies.” 

Here is my circuitous path to our latest production: the process of selecting poems; getting them into a publishable format, along with the new masthead, table of contents, and contributors’ biographies; marking up our gorgeous cover with words and ISBN# in exactly the right places; putting them into PDFs to send to the printer; reviewing the proof copy; waiting for and then sending out the issue—it has been an amazing series of experiences, and at the end of it, I look at Lorna Ritz’s autumnal cover knowing there are really good poems inside and, to cap them off, Annie Dawid’s thought-provoking essay on poverty, basic needs and assumptions (all connected by teeth).  After all the work, the issue is here (more Winter than Fall, my apologies for the delay) and this is an Occasion. 

I happen to like occasional poems: they contain an urgency and an urge to write which that day (or moment, or reason) has called up in the author, despite—I am sure—the author’s need to do other things, like laundry; I like that a specific and personal occasion for writing emerges out of the day everyone shares. 

In this Fall/Winter issue (13.2), we have a number of wonderful occasional poems, some based on holidays (like Martha Christina’s “Memorial Day.  A Brief Remembrance,” Robert Cooperman’s “As My Brother Held His Son,” and Joyce Meyer’s eclectic “American Thanksgiving”—I wish we’d been able to get the issue out in time for everyone to read it at their Thanksgiving table.  Dudley Laufman’s occasional poem, “Ice Storm,” seemed prescient when our own Halloween blizzard knocked out our power for a week.  Richard Merelman, Christopher Nye and Jay Rubin use the occasions of journeys—in St. Petersburg (and we get a phone call from St. Petersburg in Dustin Junkert’s “Friend”), through Tuscany, and across California). And there are many more, all occasions for celebration.

        

Happy New Years

In an accident of fate, I started the new year of 2011 eating cookies across a kitchen table from Norton Juster.  I didn’t know he was Norton Juster—he just looked a little familiar, like a writer.  We were talking about his house, and the work he’d put in on it when he’d first gotten it, when he mentioned having published his book.  So I asked, what book?  The Phantom Tollbooth, he said, and I realized who he was.  “Oh, I love that book!” I said, because I really do, because it makes words come alive, and then I had to tell him my favorite line, which occurs early on, when Milo gets into the car and stops paying real attention to where he is, at which point he finds himself going along a road which looks “suspiciously like the wrong way.”

           

For me, this is a gorgeous use of language: it is evocative, it conveys emotion, it puts me inside a familiar experience in a new way—and it does all this very concisely, like poetry.  Even though Milo is heading into trouble, there’s real optimism in the idea that if you are going the wrong way, you might be able to recognize it. And if Milo hadn’t wound up in the Doldrums, nearly trapped by the Lethargarians’ exhausting schedule of naps and meals and ways to put off any actual work or thinking until later, he would never have met Tock, probably the sweetest character in the book, and he wouldn’t have learned how important it is in a journey to appreciate the sights along the road.

Now here I am, starting out as the editor of Common Ground Review, in another sort of new year (added to the calendar year of 2011, the academic year 2011-2012, the Rosh Hashonah of 57720), another metaphorical journey, and I hope to be attentive, to find many wonderful things along the way, and to work with the help of my friends and colleagues at bringing the magazine somewhere that looks suspiciously like a good place to be.     

Note:

I actually sang in the chorus of the Commonwealth Opera version of The Phantom Tollbooth: I got to be a Lethargarian.  The best part is that in addition to Juster’s words and Feiffer’s drawings, I also have Arnold Black’s music in my head for the complete and resonant experience that I look for in poetry (and find in the good stuff).