BIAS, Editor, Ax T. Grind, PO Box 1234, Exclusive of Content, NY 11111. Green-eyed, sable-haired, teenage lesbian, aboriginal pygmy poets only. Seeks rhyming, Jungian haiku based upon the life experience of green-eyed, sable-haired, teenage lesbian, aboriginal pygmy poets. Quality of content of fleeting significance.
Dear Readers and Contributors,
We at Poetry Bone have, over the past decade or so, noticed a disturbing trend represented by the above mock solicitation. When did poetry cease being about the poetry itself and start being about the gender, hair color, politics and/or sexual orientation of the poet? I suppose around the same time marketing departments began dictating to manufacturers what to put on the box. But I digress.
Some might argue that a publication's fixation with an aspect or aspects of a poet's life is no different than a publication which focuses exclusively on one particular form of verse. If a magazine chooses to publish only sonnets or haiku or translations, is that not the same as a magazine which chooses to publish only poems written by skinheads? No, it is not, not to us. For us, the work itself is the thing. We find this shift toward the poet and away from the poetry a dangerous and ultimately bankrupt philosophy.
You will notice in Poetry Bone that we have included neither the poets' pictures nor bios. It is our hope that you will enjoy the poems we have selected for the magazine. If, however, you do not, your disapproval will be necessarily attributable to issues of taste. I can assure you that nothing but quality of work was considered when we made our selections. One of the poems appearing in the premiere issue was authored by someone who referred to a grouping of lines as a paragraph, not a stanza. My God! Someone call 911. I suppose the editorial staffs of some magazines might have rejected the poem based on that poet's naivete. We never even thought about it.
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