w i n t e r 2 0 1 8
Susannah Habecker © 2018
poetry
how is it George Burns
Three Poems Cecilia Woloch
What the Dead Miss Laura Foley
Instrumental: A Ghost Ship Elegy Anne Cheilek
Two Poems Nils Peterson
Two Poems Ross White
After an Eight-Inch Snowfall in April Steve Mueske
I Made Myself Sick Reading Frank O'Hara
Merridawn Duckler
Pinching Windows Thomas Cook
Faith in Humanity, Part 2 Jim Daniels
_ _ E _ O O _ O _ Jill Talbot
Two Poems Nin Andrews
From the Archives Joseph Radke, Winter 2007
visuals
from the ether
On the new issue— And 20 years Publishing online!
It’s been nearly six months since we released the Summer 2017 issue, but we think it’s well worth the wait. We’re so proud to present not only an exciting selection of new work from these terrific poets alongside artist Susannah Habecker’s striking images, but to offer a completely redesigned DMQ from top to bottom, from platform to font to finish. It’s our first major redesign in the 20 years that DMQ Review has been publishing online. As Marta, one of our editors, said, “Everything looks GORGEOUS! Fireworks were exploding from my computer.” We hope you agree. It’s a marvelous new website.
Certainly it seemed more an imminent disaster back in late summer 2017. The anachronistic web publishing software—Frontpage 2003 for you tech nerds—that I’d inherited in 2003 when I took over editing the journal from founding editor J. P. Dancing Bear, disappeared into the bowels of an equally-ancient computer when it unceremoniously crashed.
Suddenly, simply planning for our next issue became a question of even having one. While I was assured that the long-obsolete program could be recovered with some effort, this would only allow us to continue doing exactly what we’d been doing for the past 15 years, unable to make any upgrades or significant format changes. Team DMQ decided to take the leap from technology-1998 to 2018, 20 years in human terms, a millennium in terms of online innovation.
Annie, Hugo, Marta, Mary, all of us worked hard to replicate what we’ve long-sought to provide you here—an uncluttered place where you can encounter a poem, a piece of art, a still moment that’s contemplative but not austere—while now taking advantage of improved performance and aesthetic innovations.
However, our human history—20 years of carefully archived past issues—was at risk of being lost with the old site. These irreplaceable issues feature early work from such well-known poets as Dorianne Laux, David Alpaugh, Kay Ryan, Jane Hirshfield, Nick Flynn, Bob Hicok, Ilya Kaminsky—alongside voices just starting out, including my own first online publication (August 2002). Thanks to the heroic efforts of our entire team of editors, each back issue’s pages were meticulously cut and pasted into separate PDF files, rescuing the work of poets and artists stretching 20 years back into the ether.
Please visit our Archives to enjoy this amazing heritage for yourself.
Speaking of heroic efforts, all of us at DMQ Review stand in awe of editor Annie Kim who executed the entire transfer, working nearly a second full-time job it seemed in these last weeks not only to create new pages, style, and layout, but to herd the rest of us—poets!—to complete the task on time. And we mostly did. Thank you, Annie, from all of us. This issue wouldn’t exist without you.
Lastly our deep gratitude also goes to the patience of each of our stellar contributors who likely wondered if their poems would ever be published. We appreciate your generous good faith these past months.
But look at us now! We hope you will. We’ve not only survived, we’re beautiful! And we're celebrating 20 years of publishing poetry and art with you. Yahoo!
from the Ether,
Sally Ashton
Editor-in-Chief