The Best American Poetry

William Waltz presents a poem by Carley Moore (from "Conduit" #20)

 It’s true Conduit may have too many slogans for a budget-deficit endeavor, but we insist. One of my personal favorites states that it’s published “when least expected.” This refers to our irregular schedule. Conduit is a biannual that has been publishing since 1993, yet only recently did we publish our twentieth issue. No, the math doesn’t quite add up, but nevertheless we persist.

The idea for Conduit came to me, just before I graduated from the University of Massachusetts, when I realized that few of my many talented associates were getting published. Because there were fewer venues to publish then and even fewer willing to take chances on unknown voices, or so I thought, I determined the remedy for such a malady was to start a magazine, to start “the only magazine that risks annihilation,” and thus Conduit was born. From the beginning, we’ve championed the young, the unknown, and the unaffiliated. It’s a joy to publish one’s heroes as we have, but it’s almost sweeter to find a wildflower among the weeds.

Carley Moore’s “The Match” is the first poem in our twentieth issue, “Humans ‘N Nature.” I can’t say I know much about Ms. Moore aside from she writes a no nonsense cover letter and polite emails, but we took a fancy to her poem right away. And when the time came I knew “The Match” had to lead the issue off. Plainspoken as it appears, the poem welcomes, calms, disarms, and even comforts before dispatching the reader to that beautiful, yet slippery, precipice where reason and unreason hang in the balance.

-- William Waltz

The Match

At the stairs to the top of the volcano,
you warn me, “Secrets are small fires.
Let’s be more primitive. Let’s tie ourselves up.
Let’s wait for the monster.”
We do. We tie. We wait. And we wait.
This waiting is more like a highway than a staircase.
This waiting is more like waiting than I thought it would be.

There are things that are right about the moon,
but it’s not enough. You want to live underneath the volcano—
to stop hanging out in other people’s hallways.
You want to take the kitchen chairs out of the kitchen.
It’s not unreasonable, but then you cut your heel on the crust of the volcano.

You beg to be put to bed and I do it.
I pretend to know what you are.
You are something that lies down and offers itself.
You are small and almost wooden—a match trying to move to the fire.
You are my arm reaching to turn out the light.

-- Carley Moore

William Waltz introduces "Conduit" (and Himself)

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