In a selection from Lew Welch's Collected Poems, we get a crystal clear look at Radical Vernacular Poetics. I don't have the tech savvy to drum up the lovely zen calligraphy circle that heads the page but the text reads: Step out onto the Planet. Draw a circle a hundred feet round. Inside the circle are 300 things nobody understands, and maybe nobody's ever really seen. How many can you find?
Between them, the poets in this issue found all 300 and then some. They found their 300 things on the bus, in hypnosis, on a social work call, listening to Elizabeth Cotton, thinking about Nicki Minaj, contemplating the edges of the mother body, finding ways to let the swamp gas speak, talking straight to the elephants in the room. They're all over the place, but they consistently let that place where they stand sing them out towards us. Radical Vernacular isn't only rural, and is not a movement. Forget what you've heard. A movement moves a bit forward and stops. A movement is identified by watching how its tracks appear in the mud, by how it's seen. Radical Vernacular is identified by how it changes the way WE see. It's WEATHER; we like it or not. It lights sheds and sheds light. Radical Vernacular needs no manifestoes, but each blink is a palimpsest, current-recurrent. These poets pitch our present tense. I hope you enjoy reading their work as much as I enjoyed collecting it. Michael Sikkema Grand Rapids, Michigan 2012