Poesy Magazine Issue 36

POESY
issue 36
P.O.Box 7823
Santa Cruz, Ca. 95061
2008 ISSN# 1541-8162
www.poesy.org

Publisher: Brian Morrisey
Guest Editor: Erika King
Boston Editor: Doug Holder



Initially I flipped through Poesy Magazine issue 36,
and my first impressions were the juxtaposition of
photography and poetry; essay and poetry; different
type faces and poetry; the white space page integrated
with and opposite the black space page. This issue is
worth the year wait. The size, 7 ½ by 7 ½, the glossy
cover, the presentation, all lend to an intimate hold
in your hand, kind of magazine. The editors did a
fabulous job. Their respect for poetry and the poet is
evident in the formatting.

I started a list of the poems I liked best, then I
realized there were so many that it became impossible
to comment on all of them. It will have to suffice,
that I found some of the finest, grounded, simply
plain spoken poetry, not excluding what I feel is also
experimental phrasing, in a few of the poems;
“daylight snapped between black & white” or “I leave
again for Paris by way of my mother…” Then those poems
of few words, leap off the page and grab my mind, hold
me captive until I think it through; “I am the last
brut’ and the last poem in the magazine seems to be
the epitome of what this magazine stands for, or at
least part of what the magazine espouses..

“I maybe
used to have
favorite poets but they
only wrote about made up things, didn’t
have even a portion of a trashed life…”

Poesy is one of many small magazines, small presses,
that gives the public a sampling of what some poets
are trying to capture about their life and landscape,
without having to confound, us the reader.

Brian Morrisey and Erika King’s interview with the
veiled anonymity of the GPP is interesting but I don’t
agree with a lot of what the responses to the
questions were. I do agree with, “we’ve never said we
we’re, “revolutionary”…we just publish poems and get
them to as many people as possible.” that premise is
what the small press does, get the word or poem out
there and Poesy does it well.

The photography is in itself poetic portraits
portrayed in an insightful manner. Bravo to Poesy and
to all the hard working small presses. Without them
most of the poets I know would not be in print. most
of them would be lurking in a corner coffee shop
waiting for an opportunity to publish.

Irene Koronas
Poetry Editor
Wilderness House Literary Review
reviewer: Ibbetson Stree Press