The Insertion of Money Where the Mouth Is
TriQuarterly is moving online and/or ceasing publication depending on who you ask. It is a real shame to see such a fine publication being forced into this transition. I’ve noticed a lot of garment rending, lament and outcry, but how many of us subscribe? Every time a small press or magazine announces it’s going to close or is on the verge of closing, the Internet immediately begins frothing about the loss to arts and letters but as someone who works behind the scenes and knows how few of us actually subscribe to literary magazines, I have to wonder about the hypocrisy of it all. People say they can’t subscribe to every journal or that they can’t afford to subscribe or they don’t believe in acquiring things or a wide range of other excuses but still, people really appreciate the work We appreciate your appreciation but we like and need your money more. What magazines are you subscribing to these days? Do we have a right to express our outrage about the “state of publishing” if we’re part of the problem?
TriQuarterly and the Poet Jana Harris
Yesterday, I actually left my house and went to the bookstore to try to buy a 2009 calendar (my choices, since most were gone, were between Harry Potter and one with a 3D skateboard on the cover). I also bought TriQuarterly, which I pick up from time to time, but not with any regularity, and NPlusOne, which I think I get a bit more regularly. Then I skimmed them both. Then I settled deeply into Jana Harris’s poems, (she teaches at University of Washington online), in TriQuarterly. They are gorgeous things. Here is the beginning of “Feeding My New Son With An Eyedropper, I Remember Coming to This Country with My Parents, One Trunk, and Seven Words of English”: