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.”)