Thursday, August 21, 2014

Acceptance: East Coast Literary Review

http://www.eastcoastliteraryreview.com/

Editor Heather Lenoir informed me that my poems "Zephyress" and "Back Together Again" will be appearing in the Fall Issue of ECLR.  From my geezerly perspective, Editor Lenoir is a precocious youngster who recognizes the importance of both visual and verbal passion, expressed as art, for the health of community.  As with most internet zines, the sense of community she helps establish is national or even international.  We need this kind of empathy, as we are all going to swim or sink as a species, given the global hurdles we face. 

ECLR is a source of catharsis, mind-enrichment, and luscious meaning.  You get people expressing their deepest truths--painful or ecstatic.  They thereby demonstrate what we are, and what we need to express as we grapple with the dictates of society.  Society is a norm-imposing beast.  A deadening beast.  A battlefield where greed often wins and sets the rules.  We need to escape the dysfunctional locus.  We need to be more like children and also sages.  Child-like sages.  ECLR helps with that. 

Into the future we go, numb yet reckless, cocksure yet stupid.  It is a future enmeshed in so much technology and environmental upheaval that nothing can be certain.  It seems that humanity tends to hate itself, and act self-destructively.  Art and poetry, in contrast, allow us to accept each other, share, and actualize our best.  We can be ethical and mutually caring.  We can.

All these thoughts came to me while reading Editor Lenoir's zine.  Go check it out, and see what comes to you.

Owl

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