poetry

Why We Read: 2

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Being a project dedicated to growing Colorado literature, we ask ourselves this question at the Almagre quite a bit. Why build a journal, paper no less, and expect others to read it?

For us, the easy answer is this: pick up a copy of Issue 3, open it, fan the pages, breathe in the spine’s scent. Take it, sit with it, create a silent space. Then…explore the poems within, the stories, the essays, the art. We know that the Authors and Artists in Issue 3 will give any reader their money back many times over…restored in full with ideas, new perspectives, as-yet-learned words, and renewed optimism in the power of imagination.

But that is self-serving. And it’s really about more than our journal. It’s about participation in all that’s going on. Literature promises truth; and that is even when it distorts history, or kneads it, bends it, warps it, or is about hypocrites and thieves and liars; or deals with gouging, skullduggery, banditry, or lowlifes. Literature promises truth, because it triangulates around it, shines a flashlight one way, then another, producing a changing shadow that can provide deeper understanding. The point is, literature begs us to know that any given subject requires curiosity and examination from multiple angles. This curiosity should never end.

We’ve entered an age of alternative facts…and that is a worrying thing. In certain venues, we prefer it one way—facts as facts—a thing which doesn’t build on alternatives but on additions. With literature (fiction and nonfiction), we are faced with an honest proposition: “Here is my side of the story,” or, “Here is a side of the story.” By taking the time to do this, we acknowledge that a gain in understanding is a journey. A matter of course. For those who believe they have reached a destination, we feel pity.

To read is to fend ignorance, acquire knowledge and wisdom, to join the polity as those who would prevent a world of alternative facts. For many of us, it is the way forward.

With Profound Gratitude to all our Readers,

Editor & Artist, John Lewis

 

John & Carol Stansfield Present The Almagre Review’s Second Literary Event: April 20 @ Hooked On Books

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Come join us for our second literary salon in anticipation of Earth Day. Thursday afternoon (5:30 pm to 7:30 pm), John and Carol Stansfield will read authors Edward Abbey and Enos Mills, downtown @ Hooked On Books. Admission is FREE!

Janice Gould Presents at Colorado College

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The Almagre Review’s first literary salon, April 6, at Colorado College. Janice Gould and the audience read and discuss feminist author, Kate Chopin, and her fiction piece, “The Story of an Hour.”

Contemporary Heroes; Hooked On Books

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Yes, in the spirit of leadership, the theme of issue two, we’d like to honor bookstores and especially their proprietors.

The Almagre Review wants to take a minute to thank Hooked On Books for their enduring dedication to Colorado Springs’s local authors. One might not realize this, but Jim and Mary Ciletti devote a tremendous amount of time and resource to writers who publish and sell their work locally.

The bookstore, we all know, is a diminished institution. This is not because we read less than we used to; that is a misconception. We read more than ever. But, we read differently. Deep attention to long, rich works grows scarcer by the year. We collect information like grains of sand blowing through the air. News by captions! This is the age of trying to form complex world-views out of a chaotic constellation of information. Our contemporary consumption of the written word has conferred all its disadvantages upon the local bookstore.

Companies like Barnes and Noble can manage, but even then, not all the large companies survive–Borders went out of business. And for the mom and pops bookstore? To find one is a treasure, to support them–a public service. There’s a touch of the heroic, born of faithful dedication, to Jim and Mary Ciletti for their labors in sustaining a brick and mortar location for story enthusiasts like us.

As a gesture of friendship, take the time to stop by Hooked On Books, or any bookstore. The Almagre recommends this from a place of deep gratitude. While there, let Mary or Jim know, that it was at the urging of Colorado’s newest literary journal. Most importantly, ask the proprietor, “what book by a local author do you suggest today?”

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Issue 2, December, Promises Special Contributors

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When Joe and I started The Almagre Review/La Revista Almagre, we wanted to build a journal that promotes local and regional talent. Often, the most important voices are the ones yet to be discovered. Our goal is to be a stepping stone in helping these authors along their journey toward literary success.

It’s with pleasure we share that two very special contributors will appear in our next issue; Clay Jenkinson and Mike Callicrate. Mr. Jenkinson is the creator of The Thomas Jefferson Hour heard every week on NPR, and Mike Callicrate is the owner of Ranch Foods Direct. As pleased as we are that both of them join us in conversation, it’s the up-and-coming authors that form the spirit of our publication.

The Staff at The Almagre are dedicated to building issues where new talent can appear beside established voices. We do this as a way of saying, no matter where you are in your literary trajectory, our pages welcome people of all backgrounds. We might buy an issue because someone we love to read is in there, but one of the chief delights is discovering a new favorite author who enriches our future reading experience.

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Why Readers Matter

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image1Our publication’s newest reader. And we’re thankful to the parent of this greatness-in-the-making for sharing such a candid moment!

Writers ask a lot of their readers. It’s more than just time. The solicitation is quite intimate, begging more of a total investment.

We can’t speak for everyone, but here at our humble publication, we know how slippery and temporary ideas are…all ideas, great ones especially. Once committed to paper, an idea finds a quasi-permanence.

So in the age where most stories are told through moving images and sound, the written word in all its static glory must rely on its most powerful quality. That quality is this intimacy…the theater of another’s mind. Here, a poem or novel moves in, like a circus, it sets up camp, unfolds its tents, un-carriages the animals, and builds a show between the ears of another human. Think of this invitation, this opportunity to inhabit each other. It’s a unique dialogue. When the reader shares his time with all those set pieces stored in the attic of his imagination, those wares built from the thread of experience, he gives the writer her reason to be. He also gives her the stage for her ideas. The necessary loop is complete and the current can flow.

We all remember that thing the last exquisite novel provided which a movie cannot produce. The scenes and scents and people moved through our head. We were not passengers, we were not emotional patients strapped to the operating table. We were part of the story. In some ways, it was even about us.

Thank you to our readers who have taken the time to be a part of our journey. We look forward to the big sky horizon of the West and all the future stories waiting to fill our pages.

~John Lewis,
Artist/Editor
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