I’m thrilled to have been invited to ride these light waves with you for the next few months, or until Mr. Lehman pulls the plug. I’ll be introducing and posting poems that first appeared in Conduit, of which I am the founder and editor, and discussing what the Conduit project is all about and a little of what it’s not all about .Click here for the Conduit web site.
So, what is Conduit? It’s a biannual literary journal that -- in defiance of common sense and the laws of economics -- has been thwarting good taste, progress, and consensus for more than fifteen years. I like to think that the magazine is direct, playful, inventive, irreverent, and darkly beautiful. Conduit publishes distinctive voices of literary merit -- experimental to accessible, established to emerging -- in snazzy skinny volumes. We print work that demonstrates ingenuity, intelligence, courage, and humanity. Believing a vigorous imagination is one that is cross-pollinated by diverse areas of human inquiry, Conduit reaches beyond the literary. How? By publishing the work of innovative visual artists and by interviewing astronomers, ethno-botanists, musicians, graphic artists, historians, et cetera.
Like many editors of literary journals, I am a poet. My first book, Zoo Music, was published by Slope Editions. So now, at the request of the good people at The Best American Poetry, allow me to launch this blogcast with a poem of my own that recently appeared in jubilat, which seems fitting, as I’m following Rob Casper, the editor of jubilat, as your Sunday reporter on this site.
I'll Be the One Wearing Tiny White Boots
In hell,
In hell there's one
Season. It's called cold
Cruel oatmeal but it's never
Too soon to wear white slacks,
White hats,
White socks, white jocks.
Sundays we fling our javelins
Into the mystery down by the river
While the feted ferries come in. Toot Toot.
We're concerned
Less with accuracy than distance.
May this toss take me elsewhere, may
The breeze off Fire Lake carry, may these boots
Move me and if not, make me happy here.
-- William Waltz
