I spent most of the winter hard at work on the new novel, and am just now catching up with the poems and essays that have seen the light of day, and are available online, in the last months.
They’re celebrating their tenth birthday over at Contrary Magazine, and the editors are picking their favorite selections from the archives. Jazzed to see that poetry editor Shaindel Beers chose my poem “The Garage Sale Daze Meditations,” which is part of my manuscript-in-progress, for her best of list!
I have a long poem, “The Garage Sale Daze Meditations,” up in the latest Contrary. Really a wonderful issue all the way around. Here’s a bit more about the magazine:
On the Contrary
The first problem is the “Contrary” above the content. Why is it called Contrary, you might ask, when some of its content isn’t? We have a contemplation to confront this contradiction: we insist that all of our content is contrary. And, we insist, so is all of yours. Doesn’t it seem possible that all content is contrary, that there is no for, there is only against? Why else does the word contrary, so openly against something, have no antonym? What opposes contrary? Nothing. That which opposes contrary, by opposing, becomes contrary.
Besides, we tend to think contrarily, and we hope our magazine expresses contrarities that otherwise might go unexpressed: writings and images that confront entities, voids, and the edges of their own categories. As for that poetic nothing, the “Journal of Unpopular Discontent,” we conceal our dreams in the double negative, hoping to become a journal of popular content. (Spring 2003)
joewilkins.org 