ISSUE XXXVI EDITORIAL(S)

SO YEAH, IT'S BEEN A YEAR SINCE ISSUE XXXV. I apologize to those who have waited a year to hear back from us, to those who have not heard back from us (yet) and the subscribers who are aloof as to the whereabouts of our presence in American poetry today. So many excuses can be made as to where the fault lies outside of my pure and simple distraction with China. I have been traveling to China since 2003, but since last March, I have taken four trips to China, been through a grueling mandarin class, reading the poems of Li Po and Mao, and meeting some of most interesting people I have ever met in my life. Chinese culture is relatively similar to poetry in that it has a unique quest of centering oneself¬—which has been noted by a long line of philosophers and poets throughout the multi-thousand year history influenced by past generations and paving the way for what is to come. There is a unique sense of peace that can be found the deeper I dig. Anyway, this is not the Chinese poetry issue (yet), but I just wanted to note how this has opened the floodgates to many new ideas. One was to learn more about the poetry coming out of the younger poets. I spent some time with a young poet, Erika King, a student from Bennington College in Vermont and worked with her on this issue. She selected many amazing poems from the build up of submissions in our backlog. You have seen the poems from my perspective for 18 years worth of 35 issues. The future of poetry is wider than what these hands can hold. The future of poetry is in the hands of women like Erika, who can approach the poem from new perspectives. I can show her what has lead me to my developed taste for the crafting of words for her to carry on her quest. She emailed me over the fall inquiring about an internship with POESY and I admit, I saw a bit of myself in her. She has gone through every step of producing this issue with me and I am confident that she will continue to pave the way for those to come.

— brianmorrisey, publisher/editor/suga-daddy to the word

I WAS LED HERE, TO ISSUE XXXVI, from Vermont during a 7-week break at Bennington College, a time when students are encouraged to learn and grow outside the classroom. I am so grateful that I have had this opportunity to become involved with POESY—a magazine ripened in innovation. Thanks to Brian for trusting me, a young college student desperately searching for the taste of poetry in all directions of the country, to help him with the task of editing issue 36.

In this issue, we interviewed the Guerilla Poets Project, a collective of small-press poets and writers, who hope to spread the powers of the written word, bringing meaning into, what some may feel, a very meaningless world consumed with material gain over artistic inspiration.

As you read the next couple of pages, open your senses to varying perspectives and poems of differing emotional states—some are quiet observations and others inspired by the unusual reading like a dream—let the poetry speak directly to you. This collection forms here a patchwork of meditations on our world, as it is, today.