Here's ANGEL HEAD # 5, the latest incarnation of the my not-really-very-startling online poetry magazine. In these pages you will find all a panoply of delights from t.kilgore splake, Sharon Auberle, Ronald Baatz, Gerald Nicosia, Dave Church, Joe Speer and--in a rare moment of immodesty--me.

 

I have not been publishing my own poetry here in the last few issues. There is a view abroad that it smacks of egotism when an editor does that, and Heaven forfend anybody should accuse a poet of egotism. We are modest, unassuming boys and girls in general, aren't we? The poem featured--"Fire Lookout"--however,  can stand alongside the inestimable writings of the other folks here without too much embarrassment. So here it is. (It first appeared on Joe Speer's "Beatlick" website by the way.)

 

There have been a few technical difficulties in preparing issue 5. The free template I am using keeps double spacing everything when I get to a line break, and no one I know can figure out how to undo that. And the technical support page is so impenetrable I haven't been able to find the answer there. Not yet, anyway. I will keep looking and change the poems to a single space format as soon as I can. Anybody out there have any suggestions as to how I might do it? (understanding my computer brain is in its infancy and will respond to all technical language by "spitting up", as the Americans say, and forcing the host body to fall out of its high chair). Any advice in this regard--email bruce.hodder@tesco.net --will be rewarded with a generous "thank you".

 

Readers will notice a continuing post-Beat flavour to most of the poems here. That's not intentional; it just happens that post-Beat poets tend to be the ones who know me and are aware of the magazine. (I have purposefully avoided advertising ANGEL HEAD heavily so I don't get swamped with terrible submissions.) But in case anyone happens by here and they are left in any doubt, despite the tone of previous issues and some of the names that have contributed so far, poets who don't consider themselves to be in the post-Beat vein are equally welcome to submit work. In fact, I positively encourage it! I am almost violently disinterested in making this thing a graveyard for poems about Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski, or outdated cultural posturing.

 

Anyway, I'm getting distracted by "King of the Hill" on tv now so I will wrap this up before it becomes too disjointed. Information about how to submit to ANGEL HEAD is included on the Ronald Baatz page.

 

Issue 6 will be appearing as soon as I have enough submissions.

 

"Take it easy, but take it."

 

 

Bruce.