Windows, Open Homes, A Sense of Community

For the most part things happen when they are supposed to, when a combination of characters and conditions make it possible. I didn’t discover Agni until issue #29/30. I knew of its existence, but do not recall seeing it until then. The first thing I did was glance down the table of contents looking for familiar names. I found two among many. Uneasy at first, I remember that there were names I had never heard pronounced, whose pronunciation I couldn’t be sure of: Akhmatova, Rymurak, Scialabba. I also remember thinking it contained a lot of writing. Not too much, just a lot. Dilemma: should I sit a long time with it, or have many sits? Its size alone challenged me. A relationship had begun.

Issue #33 was the first time my work appeared in Agni, but by then I’d become an outside family member, a half-brother who on holiday visits listened and watched very closely from other rooms. The publication was and still is very dear to me because I remember feeling like I was becoming a part of a dialogue very local and at the same time very global: Chomsky, Moldaw, Salamun. Back issues, like photo albums, gave me a sense of Agni’s breadth and history, its community.

There’s no doubt about whether or not I have since come to view the journal as a home—a great many writers do, some I have met, some I will never meet. Agni is the kind of home whose rooms I am comfortable in. I am comfortable that if I feel a chair or painting is in the wrong place it can be changed. I am comfortable with being close enough to be both recognized and heard. At the same time, I am comfortable with the reality that the rooms exist to comfort more people than myself, democratic by design, open.

I don’t remember who it was that described to me the poem as being a home and stanzas as being rooms. What I do recall is that the analogy changed the way I saw into writing, my own as well as others. Once that door was opened for me, I was able to enter and find the windows. I was able to look out, turn, look in. This is where, surrounded by family members, I got the confidence to accept such an endeavor as editing a supplement of young poets.

Why us? I think we were picked because we were, and to some extent still are, the type of individuals who as kids always brought friends and stray animals home. “Mom, can this person stay over?” and “Dad, I found a kitten. Can I keep it?” We share the same common desire to include and discover as many voices as possible. The same is true of Askold Melnyczuk who chose us. And like those kids, who ultimately discovered the family couldn’t take in or feed every friend, we were forced to exclude. “Standing on the Verge” turned out far more competitive than either of us imagined. A great many good poets were rejected and friends turned back. We chose work that surprised us, work filled with windows and bridges, the kinds of strays and friends we’d still bring home today. We argued, disagreed, discovered things about ourselves only time will heal, read, re-read, listened as the submissions shaped the supplement, as our creative processes intervened in selecting poems and their order. Joseph rode the bus to Boston. I rode the bus to Providence. Our apartments became jungles of large red rubber bands, jiffy bags and Agni stationery. Poems hung from our refrigerators, “Must remember to show Lease these.” We read a lot, piles and piles for months. “I’m still excavating it all.”

February ,1993
Cambridge, Massachusetts