Acceptance: Bolts of Silk

boltsofsilk.blogspot.com


These days, my middle name is “busyness” and there is no end in sight. This means I am going to disappoint myself by expressing only a tidbit of my admiration for a most wonderful literary nonesuch called Bolts of Silk.

Bolts of Silk is more than a literary journal. Here is part of my response to editor Juliet Wilson when she told me she was keeping my poems “Piebald” and “Taken”:

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Whenever you take my poems, I feel they have found not only a good home but a healing and wise place, a cross-roads of many hearts, all joining to praise the Earth and Her many wonderful forms of life. Bolts of Silk is a continuous prayer that is beyond religion yet ultimately spiritual. You have built, through your caring, a nexus of invocations. We reach out with our loving voices, with the best side of humanity, to Gaia.

The more we do this, the more likely we are to change and learn. We weave strands of interconnectedness with our poems--and you have provided the loom.

Very Best,

[Owl Who Laughs]

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The greatness of Wilson’s journal will always beggar even the most sublime words. But I like the metaphor of an exquisite loom, the threads thereon the soul-offerings of many poets. Wilson excels at selecting pieces which celebrate nature. There’s never a hint of cliché. In fact, the opposite: the poems of Bolts of Silk enliven and surpass. In a world of grey mega-buildings and sulfurous asphalts, this is just what we need to keep struggling and bolster our hope.

According to my records, Wilson first honored me with approval in 2007. Due to the fantastic organization of her site, all thirteen poems I’ve had accepted are quickly accessible. This is one of the strengths of the journal: an interface which fosters an aura of timeless beauty. The clock loses its dull trod as you conjure up, with great ease, poems from many different years at once. Bolts of Silk is a holism of profundity.

Another charm is the perfusive feel of health and rejuvenation. Bolts of Silk hums with social vigor as you experience not only well-crafted stanzas but also links to numerous poetic sites--blogs, twitters and home pages--all of them seeming to chirp away on the side of the screen, somehow like happy magpies, through their RSS feeds.

Perhaps no other editor has engendered, so well, such a living breathing artwork. A dynamic convocation to regenerate our love of the wilds. This basic yet deep-seated love often gets steamrolled by our fast-paced factory world; but not after visiting Wilson’s bowery loom of magnificent spells.

More than any poet or editor I know, Wilson, who is both, advocates passionately for the sylvan vim beyond urban cement-scapes. April flowers, cicada chirrs, autumn scarlets and winter diamonds. Wilson embraces all seasons in myriad aspects. She traverses the Internet like a joy-stung sparrow, collecting and sowing delight. Her profile has many thousands of views. Her bewitching blogs attract an abundance of merry comments.

She is, for anyone who gathers inspiration from green writing, a Druidess of Poetry. I do not bestow this title lightly. It is, for me, a station of highest honor and I find her to be, indeed, most worthy.

So, thank you Druidess Wilson! You are a magnificent gift to us all. You have been more than important in keeping up the general morale, and in helping this OWL navigate a meaningful road.