For the next three months, Reb Livingston, co-editor of No Tell Motel, and herself an estimable poet, will run our Sunday poetry page. She succeeds Robert Hershon of Hanging Loose Press, who did a fantastic job. (Thanks, Bob.) Reb lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and five year-old son.
Her own books include God Damsel (No Tell Books, 2010) and Your Ten
Favorite Words (Coconut Books, 2007). She is the editor of The Bedside
Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. Welcome, Reb. Tell us, how would you introduce yourself?
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In August 2004, I launched No Tell Motel with the help of my co-editor
Molly Arden, designer, Nancy King and technical advisor, Chris Morrow.
Around that time a lot of online poetry magazines were appearing, but
most were following the format of print publications. My years of
working as a producer and content manager at AOL in the 90s taught me
that's not how people read on the screen. I wanted to create a
publication that brought the poems top-level so they would be read, all
of them. Instead of publishing issues, I choose a format that features
one poet a week, a new poem each weekday. I've been doing this for
almost six years, published over 1400 poems by over 280 poets writing in
a wide range of styles. In 2006 I expanded the publishing venture with
a micropress called No Tell Books that to this date has published thirteen
titles by such poets as Jill Alexander Essbaum, Rebecca Loudon, Karl
Parker, Hugh-Behm Steinberg, PF Potvin, Ravi Shankar and Laurel Snyder.
Our two upcoming titles are Glass is Really a Liquid by Bruce Covey and
Crushes by Lea Graham.
>>
OK, Reb. How about one of your poems?
The Epistle
of Damsel
Magi, seer
of Sea-Slag, to Damsel nee Woe-DoDo, Miscreant, Apron, etc., who now travails
in GOURD, Hey:
2. I am
versed, consoling you and your remedies, realized without dose and haven
3. For it is
chronicled that you ceased attachment with the malign and fiend nee Shepherd,
Beau, Gigolo, Fishyman, Harpy, etc.,
and weaved
the bombast and wicked into your own elixired scribbles to uplift the defunct
4. Which
when I perceived, I knew that either you are Czarina herself weeped from the
egged-eye of the lady dragon or Sultana, daughter of the Higher Ache
5. On this
unrest I inscribe, wholeheart and storm, longing for your hornet, the stinger
of verity, to join and heal our deported bedrolls
6. For I
hear Shepherd calls you cruel and Gigolo counts you needy as Beau chants weird,
all intending you unrest with unfeeling
7. My
metropolis is haul, but upbeat and expressive for the both of us
Magi
* * *
Magi, you
are courtly, bunches you receive me, though we have not yet met
2. For it is revealed that those who bereave me
do not recognize me, that they who do not grieve might beckon to only buckle
3. As to that invitation to your metropolis, I
must relate regret and unmet expenses during this ongoing midstrife and that
regret extends to all who once clutched me
4. But after my cocooning I will emit one of my
dishtowels who will absorb your malaise and give wife to you, and to all who
came along to clutch me.
Damsel of Gourd
-- Reb Livingston
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