Here is the eighth issue of Unshod Quills, August 2013, just two months past our second anniversary, and it’s holding new and important work from poets, painters, photographers, editors, essayists, surfers, teachers and caustic dreamers. We’re serving up poetry; life’s blood. Sustaining, sneaky, real work. We’re serving up a little prose and art, too. More sneak, real, bloody sustenance.
How do you read poetry? Do you read like a child at the breast? Nurture and nature and mama’s eyes? In big, life-sustaining gulps like a too tired woman thirsty only for water? In demure sips that leave your lips burning like too much salt? Or furtively, sneaking a poem in like a long draught from a bottle in a brown paper bag?
Do you look up from the screen, the book, or the magazine–the poem standing in your mind–with an envious heart, or one of wonder? Are you reading poetry at all? Or writing it? If not, why not? What the hell are you doing?
Read it. Read it again. Read it out loud. Share it with someone who might give a damn. And use your manners, please. Remember: every poem you read saves the life of one bee.
Finally, join me in congratulating Unshod Quills’ Founding Editor and love-child of David Bowie, Dena Rash-Guzman on the publication of her disarmingly wonderful book “Life Cycle.” Get yourself a copy. Read it. Congratulations, Dena. Well done.
We are a mess. A beautiful mess. So are you.
Yours,
Wenyi
Wendy G. Ellis
Editor
Unshod Quills
Unshod Quills Editors Dena Rash Guzman and Wendy G. Ellis, at a poetry summit in a room with a view of a fake, tiny Shanghai – Philadelphia, PA – June 2013