What I like about the online venue is the freedom to go from one poet's/ writer's spot to the next. Each online literary journal is like a writer's clubhouse/ fort (this can go for print journals too, but one has to pay their "entry fee" as in subscription to get into print land-- something I am willing to do when I have a steady income or if I fall hard in love with a publication).
I've been looking at reading as play lately. Mostly because when I'm on the internet, I think of it as play, and this past month I've been reading a lot of online literary journals.
And even though, as a reader, it's really easy to get into the online literary clubhouse, it's still fun to be inside. I'd like to start spot-lighting some of the writers I've fallen upon through online journals.
First Spotlight
Whilst internetting this past week, one of my favorite emerging writers I've fallen upon is Melissa Broder. Her book, When You Say One Thing, but Mean Your Mother was released by Ampersand Books in Feb. 2010. The work I've read of hers on On Earth As it Is must be shared: I fell in love with lines like: "I believe god knows these things about me/ so I needn't say them with heart." (From Pennsylvania Prayer). And "She’s been/a bad babysitter. Deliver us/from Burger King with In Touch magazine" (From Prayer of Teenager Waifs).
I am also a fan of her piece on The Del Sol Review in which she again riffs on teenage magazines. I like Broder's work for this reason: it embraces pop culture, and (unlike a lot of the pieces I've been reading lately) she uses narrative while playing with inventive language. She's not trying to be avant garde in the wrong way and she knows how to depict angst as a bittersweet thing.
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