05/06/2010

Hey, I'm Jake! I'm the new online poetry editor for spork, gently hovering in the liminal space where poems coagulate and fracture. I live in Tucson, home of cheap beer and the chimichanga. C'est la guerre! Welcome to the future!

Frank O'Hara said, "You want your pants to be tight enough so that everyone will want to sleep with you." I want to sleep with you. Better yet, I want you to make me want to sleep with you. I'm interested in poetry with an attuned awareness to the world and what makes it human(e), an intellectual curiosity in the driving force of meaning (language), and music that epistemologically reflects our time (2010, not 1955).

I'm not so down with formal verse unless it's innovative or pushes boundaries, genders, or plays with itself. For me, poetry is about intimacy. I want a poem to dance inside me as if I swallowed an octopus or wrap my loneliness in empathy. I like the pyrotechnic. I like the rollercoaster. I want someone to whisper a secret to me that detonates, reminds me that there might be this thing called truth. As Jack Spicer said, "Poet, be like God."

Spork publishes a variety of poets and poetry, believing that quality can astonish in any mode or form, but has historically leaned toward the lyric. Some things Richard has said: "We don't want experiments, we want innovations. Experiments are awesome or they fail. Let them fail on their own time. They can send us what they're proud of and we'll throw them on our shoulders and buy them grilled cheese sandwiches. We want our robots to serve drinks, we want our poets to sing. Well, not sing necessarily, but they should have something to say and a way of saying it." I agree.

I individually respond to submissions, so it may take me some time to get back at you with a response. I appreciate innovation and value newness. I say newness because I don't believe in originality, but maybe you can prove me wrong.

You'll get a better sense of my aesthetic from reading the work once we get rolling. Read the work! If you send me some hackensack sixth grade sonnet about your first girlfriend I'll be upset and may print out your poem and burn it. Then again, I might publish it if it breaks everyone's heart! Break everyone's heart!

Drew has set up a blog space for me so you can get to know my brain speaking. I encourage you to read it, not because it will make your poems better, but because it will make my ego bigger.

To submit, send up to 5 poems (to submit_poetry@thisissporkpress.com) as an attached document (.rtf, .doc, .pdf.). Use your name as the subject line of the email and please include your contact info inside the document. No cover letter, no bio, but yes I accept simultaneity in all its forms. In fact, I encourage it. Send me simultaneous submissions.

In the field where there is rhyme there is retribution—
Onward,
Jake Levine