Resistance Poetry 2020.11
Transition
A pile of local weeklies sporting headlines like “Geiger Wins House Race” and “Miramant Reelected to State Senate” stared up at me from the tail of the check-out counter at my neighborhood market.
Consternated, I asked the clerk, “What’s with the old papers?” He looked at me quizzically. Then we both laughed. It was the Saturday after Election Day. The papers had been published Thursday, yet seemed ancient. The preceding four days had seemed like a month.
November seemed like a year. So much changed on a daily basis. Glad news. Bad news. WTF news. Despite the rapid change, it felt like wading through quicksand while being swarmed by greenhead flies.
Sometimes I hope we are in the final fifteen minutes of a horror show. Soon, the lights will come on, and those of us left alive with draw a deep breath. But mostly I feel we are in the first book of a trilogy, and there is so much more grief yet to come.
If you aren’t exhausted, there is either something wrong with you or you are a Zen master.
Not being a Zen master, I am exhausted. And exhaustion has a way of driving me to assess what I can change to make my life more manageable. So, here’s a heads up that there are going to be changes at Resistance Poetry:
- I will no longer be posting links to poems on Twitter. I cannot begin to tell you how much I loathe Twitter. I find it a noisy, inane cesspool of self promotion punctuated by the occasional newsworthy item. Since ceasing posts on November 30, I already feel lighter.
- These monthly compilations will cease as of the December 2020 issue. They are tedious and time consuming to create and do not appear to have performed the function I hoped (at least in a meaningful way): connecting people to poets and poets to each other.
- RP will, until further notice, not accept new poets. Although I am occasionally awed by a new poet who contacts us, I have been finding the majority of those requesting writer designation are deadwood intent on earning some kind of Medium Merit Badge. Such is the wonder of social media.
I’m hoping these changes will make RP sustainable, because there will always be a need for a platform like this.
Now for our poets’ takes on the election and more:
