From the
Editor's Desk

Screen Memories

Television debuted in our house the same year I did. In a home movie, a Christmas reel, we are introduced: first, adorable me riding my dressed-up mother's knee and then that glamorous screen shining—though in the hulking 1950 console, it was, by today's standards, a very small screen. A dancer, long of leg, scant of dress, taps and whirls in our fubsy living room. Impossible to compete with her! That tireless dancer takes up two-thirds of "Baby's First Christmas."

Like most kids of my generation, I spent inordinate amounts of time staring into a bright screen. TV was baby sitter, faithful friend, and most of all an easy means of escape—and in those "dysfunctional" '50's families, we had lots to escape. By the time I got to college, I considered it the boob tube, though. No more staring into screens for hours at a time; there were books to read, papers and poems to write. Then, in 1974, I went to an exhibition of a new office technology called a "word processor." To think that one could throw away the stinky Wite-Out and revise so easily, and change fonts without changing elements (remember that little "ball" in the IBM Selectric?), and save one's documents so there would be no tedious retyping! And it looked like fun; those little blinking cursors on a black screen reminded me of an early video game called "Pong." I couldn't wait to start staring into that marvelous screen.

I've been staring into the later generations of computer screens for a long time. Though some poets continued to write first drafts with pen and paper, I went directly to Wang and then to Microsoft Word. And since the internet, I've been reading on screens too: poems, articles, shorter works of all kinds. If you're reading this bright page, then you are a screen reader too. We may still love and collect books but we've embraced a new technology that has proved miraculous for poets. Nowadays we publish in new ways and reach exponentially wider audiences than we did during the Gutenberg epoch.

My screen reading has taken on a different character since I announced Umbrella Journal a few months ago. Excited as I was by the prospect of reading submissions, I didn't know how I'd react to a stuffed e-mailbox; would I feel besieged? And when I read those submissions, would they disappoint, or would I be too fussy and fault-finding (a habit I may have acquired during years of online critiquing )?

Poetry

I needn’t have worried. Rather than feeling besieged, I feel blessed. The caliber of submissions has been high. Almost without exception, poets gave me a crack at their best writing; that is how it felt and that is why, of late, I have been staring into a screen with renewed joy and gratitude . Fault-finding was not an issue, even in relation to the poems that didn’t make it into the journal. I’ve begun to understand a little better why rejections happen. Rejections don’t mean that an editor thinks your work is fundamentally unworthy. We have idiosyncratic preferences (and a few blind spots); decisions are made for subjective reasons.

At any rate, there has been largesse all around, and serendipity. Why, I wonder, did so many poets send work of a spiritual, even mystical, nature? For fear of attracting verse that might be sappily religious, I said nothing about my appreciation for such themes in the Guidelines. Yet in they poured: poems that are informed by various traditions: Judaism (Jehanne Dubrow), Catholicism (Catherine Chandler-Oliveira); Mysticism (Mark Allinson); poems that probe the assumptions of Christianity (James R. Whitley); poems that philosophize from high places—the parapets of a cathedral (David W. Landrum) or high windows (Maryann Corbett)—or ponder instead a fall from a high place (Peter Bloxsom). This month’s featured poet, Rob A. Mackenzie, gives us a little of almost all these things and speaks eloquently about spiritual poetry in his Interview, ably conducted by Katy Evans-Bush.

Then, too, many poems deal with the flesh, the family, aging, death: the decrepitude of parents (Rachel Dacus), the loss of a spouse (Judith Kerman), the mixed regrets and admiration for a father, long gone (Ralph La Rosa). There are intimations of mortality inspired by children (Diane Elayne Dees) or by childhood recollections (Gary Charles Wilkens). Failing health forges a blood bond between daughter and mother (Susan Settlemyre Williams), pregnancy sharpens the senses (Traci Brimhall), the knowing of another in sex leads to a disconcerting experience of not-knowing (Lana Hechtman Ayers). These poems suggest that there is no clear boundary between flesh and spirit. 

Kindred Prose

Our Featured Article this month is an excerpt from a memoir-in-progress by Timothy Murphy, a leading formalist and a self-described poet of place, that place being the hardscrabble landscape of North Dakota. The excerpt, Mortal Stakes, describes a life-long struggle with alcohol and a spiritual reawakening.

Our feature This Old Book gets off to a smashing start with Kathleen Flenniken’s essay on two books about Wallace Stevens. Anna Evans gives us a very Close Read of Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Ride” and Ann E. Michael launches The Umbrella Book Review with a review of J. D. Smith’s “Settling for Beauty.” For Musings, Ralph La Rosa wryly reminisces about a day at Disneyland with none other than Allen Ginsberg.  These are planned as rotating features in the journal, along with Cinemaphilia and ContraVerse.

Bumbershoot (Umbrella’s Lighter Offshoot)

Emma Goldman famously said “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” Well, if I can’t giggle, it’s not my art form! So when you’re feeling blue, or simply need a break from high literature, come visit this first edition of Bumbershoot. Pack your camelCase, drink a beer with the bard, open an (ahem) unusual Valentine. Then bring the kiddies to the screen to buzz with bees, play imaginary dress-up, and enjoy a cat-tale.

Final Note

Rachel Dacus, Carol Taylor and Peter Bloxsom have joined the Umbrella enterprise. Please meet them at the Masthead.