Copper Nickel #19 Contributor Copy

78º ~ after the storms, a cold front, dry air, pleasant temps, windows open at 10:30 a.m. at the end of May, counting the blessing

On Tuesday, my contributor copy of the new Copper Nickel arrived in the mail.  I grieved again for Jake as I took it from the mailbox, knowing as I held it in my hands, that the two poems he'd accepted of mine would be the last two of my poems he and I would talk about, confronting again the reality that he is gone from this earth.  I love Jake's poems and own all of his books, but if you've only ever known him through his poems, you need to know that Jake was also an amazing editor who took such care of the work he published and of his writers.  I know that tradition will be carried on by Brian Barker, Nicky Beer, and all the rest at CN, and that will be another of Jake's legacies.  I can't imagine how difficult it was to produce this issue in the aftermath of Jake's death.

All of that being said, I spent the morning reading the issue, and as expected, I was wowed, awed, and stunned over and over again.  CN is a meaty journal, coming out twice per year; it is the kind of journal one needs to set aside several hours at the minimum to absorb.  And another thing I love about it is that the physical journal is as lush and aesthetically pleasing as are the words printed inside it.

While there wasn't a single poem I skipped over in the issue, here's a list of my favorites:

Austin Segrest "Cutlass Supreme"
Margaret Bashaar "You are not the one I call when I am down and out"
Jaclyn Dwyer "On Turning Thirty, Still Single"
Hala Alyan "Junebug,"
W. Todd Kaneko "Selected Legends of Andre the Giant"
Molly Damm "Poem for the Langley-Porter Hospital"
Jason Myers "This View of Life"  (a long poem done right!)
Tarfia Faizullah "The Interviewer Acknowledges Shame"
Lorraine Coulter "Red Terror"
Laura Kochman "Sand Map"
Ephraim Scott Sommers "One Self"

And that doesn't even touch on some of the great prose between the pages!  Do yourself a favor and get a copy of this issue!