chocolate is a verb

colors, flavors, whims and other growing things

Monthly Archives: January 2022

found poem: They’re wearing out

found poem: The space

found poem: in my assessment

found poem: warty

found poem: history

found poem: nights

found poem: Once Upon

found poem: being whole

found poem: Beset

found poem: Thoreau’s

found poem: white

found poem: concise

found poem: everyone’s

found poem: envision

found poem: and eagles

found poem: a stranger

found poem: TIME

found poem: on the wrack

Negative Capability Journal

The time elapsed between submitting a poem and receiving a reply (yay or nay) can be days or months. If the answer is yay, more time, typically some months, will go by before the journal is published in print or online.

Today, my trip to the mailbox yielded up this impressive issue of Negative Capability Journal 2021 and I was thrilled to find two of my found poems included, on pages 14 and 15. But oh, the lengths they traveled to get here!

I submitted the work for NCJ’s culinary-themed issue in 2015 and within a week received an acceptance. A year later, I sent along a note asking whether the issue was still moving forward. A couple of months after that, I got an apologetic reply in the affirmative. In 2018, I queried again. In early 2020, I received an encouraging note. With no further word, I yielded to negative capability, figured the publishers had refocused on books and that was that. Until today.

Somehow, the stove got fired up and Negative Capability Journal cooked up a 120-page collection of delectable writing, visuals, comics, etc. It’s not yet listed on the website, but is a repast worth waiting for. Thanks, NCJ!

(By the way, by negative capability John Keats meant “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”)

found poem: flattering

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