Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-five Spring 2011 |
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| Issue Twenty-five, Spring 2011 | |
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A Luminous Lobster These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots thrusting into the fertile loam known to all of us, ignored by all of us, but from which we get what is real in art… —Federico Lorca Duende, as conceived by Federico Lorca, is the defining aesthetic of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal. It is a darkness rooted within writers, a force moving up through their being. Come to the stain in the shape of Alaska dragging your leg. It demands poets take creative action or perish. It terrorizes them to the point they must expose the most unbearable and sublime parts of humanity or forfeit their ability to bear light. All writers have experienced moments of duende. It is a current of inspiration rising up through the body, an urgency to write, a spirit taking hold of the moment till the battle is won and the thing is written. Dad wants so badly for a fish fry that he constructs a time machine. When a poet is the conductor of duende, the poem is alive, possessed, and in return, duende enters into both reader and listener. Each issue of Arsenic Lobster strives to provide readers with the chance to experience some of the best contemporary poets who embody duende. This issue promises poems that will change us; poems that change both reader and writer no matter how we unzip our skins tomatoes/potatoes. Salt. Stir or bake. We’ll deliver poems that demand your attention because you wore your glasses and white (buttoned) night gown. Because you remember, I promised a luxury of freedom? Well, neither of us is tethered to a mountain peak, darling. |
Did I mention Lorca championed irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical? So does Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal. I lick your gravestone for tears that fit my mouth—the way waves of television befriend my sleep, wash over my curled shore of knees. Lorca wrote, “The duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible.” Dimmer switches, you see, can sense a see saw out of spite. He added, “In poetry this struggle for expression and communication is sometimes fatal.” And forgive me for taking fierce pleasure in knowing this is your only poem. Readers! Contributors! How did we become so possessed? Let down your hair, this time I drink to you. --- Susan Yount Editor & Publisher, Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal |
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