Unstressed

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A weblog from the editors of Linebreak

The regulars

Ash Bowen's poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, and Black Warrior Review, among other publications. He lives and works in Texarkana, AR.

Jennifer Jabaily's poetry has appeared in Mannequin Envy and Fickle Muses. She's a second-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Ashley Anna McHugh is a third-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Measure, DIAGRAM and Memorious as well as other publications.

Johnathon Williams's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, the Pebble Lake Review, and Unsplendid. He lives in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife and daughters.

A late night thought

By Johnathon Williams on Nov 5, 2009

The best thing about being in an MFA program is the way it feeds your reading: friends stop you in the hall to cram a photocopy of their favorite new poem into your hands, books are passed around at parties in a kind of infinite borrowing circle so that the person giving you that wrinkled paperback is probably three steps removed from the person who actually bought it. This is particularly helpful for poetry, which is so marginalized compared to other genres that even hearing about new books (especially by new poets) is difficult.

This is what I want more of from the Internet — original poems bundled with a trusted recommendation. So much of what we do online is still commentary, still meta. I want more new source material online. I want the stuff itself.

3 Comments // mfa, online journals, publishing

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