Time for the usual 97-gun salute by the NC Regimental Battery, three cheers, toasts in fluted glasses to be smashed against the andirons of the clubhouse fireplace, plus the (now de rigeur on such occasions) human sacrifice for luck*. We’ve never had a poetry editor before. Now Susan Aizenberg has chosen to fill that deficit. We are gratified and optimistic. The mood in the bunker has risen. We’ve found the key to the Talisker locker. In truth, we are very, very pleased.
For those who need a introduction, Susan has poems in the current (September) issue.
*Um, we don’t actually do the human sacrifice thing anymore, not lately anyway. There were complaints.
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Susan Aizenberg is the author of three poetry collections: Quiet City (BkMk Press 2015); Muse (Crab Orchard Poetry Series 2002); and Peru in Take Three: 2/AGNI New Poets Series (Graywolf Press 1997) and co-editor with Erin Belieu of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press 2001). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, among them The North American Review, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Connotation Press, Spillway, The Journal, Midwest Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and have been reprinted and are forthcoming in several anthologies, including Ley Lines (Wilfrid Laurier UP) and Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (Etruscan). Her awards include a Crab Orchard Poetry Series Award, the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Levis Prize for Muse, a Distinguished Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council, the Mari Sandoz Award from the Nebraska Library Association, and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner award. She can be reached through her website, susanaizenberg.com.
“me, blind / to what you were doing, what must be allowed.” What we thought we would not need to remember.
Wonderful poet, brilliant editor — congratulations to you all!