Unconventional Conventions

Introduction by Susan Terris

What does "unconventional conventions" mean? I've been asked this a lot in the past few months. In the selections I've made for the current issue that may be hard to define. Yes, in this new edition of In Posse Review, you'll find unconventional sonnets by Joan Stepp Smith, Lee Passarella, and Brenda Yates. But you will not find a lot of poems with the words spaced randomly or artfully across the page. Why not? That seemed somehow too easy; and, besides, I'm not even sure in this era of computers, which will center poems, justify right as well as left etc. etc., that spaced poems, shaped or shapeless poems are really unconventional any more.

Instead, I succumbed as an editor to the transgressive and the surreal. Once I'd accepted Duff Axsom's "In Mallarmé's Mirror" and Walter Bargen's "Carrots of Guilt, " I was off and running. Or, perhaps, I was possessed. Even the ordering of the poems by these 16 poets is, for me, transgressive. I tend to organize poems in a publication by subject matter rather than alphabetically. But here, you'll find the poets in alphabetical order. Why? Because it was appealing to me to have a poet listing that went from A to Z— from Axsom to Zaccardi. Another reason for an alphabetical listing is that all of these poems seem to me to be part of an on-going dream or nightmare, where the change of voice and point-of-view keeps wrenching you, the reader, in different directions in a way that keeps you thoughtfully off-balance.

Just when you think you know where Heather Derr-Smith is leading you in "The Birds," her piece changes direction and startles you. Poets John Chorazy, Albert Flynn DeSilver, Jeanne Wagner, and John Estes play with language in a way that is skillful, amusing, and unconventional. Tom Gribble, Kathleen Hellen, and Sally Molini offer exciting yet strange excursions into magical realism. For the lyric impulse with touches of transgression, the reader will find poems by Mike White, Sam Magavern, and Joe Zaccardi.

So I hope this summer '09 issue of In Posse Review will please you, surprise you, make you laugh. Perhaps it will even make you cry, convince you to ponder the truths of an out-of-control world. As all conventions are made to be broken, so are our lives given new perspective and meaning by unexpected changes. Maybe what you read here will help lead you on some less conventional journeys. Now, buckle up and enjoy.

Susan Terris
Poetry Editor

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