Retarded First Issue

This clearinghouse for information apposite to the inchoate Corresponding Society has been maintained without a private Internet connection and sans the expectation that anybody realizes this blog exists. Considering the unavailability of a readership we have been sporadically posting material with, as our exclusive design, the lackadaisical hope that traces of pertinent data are made available for a possible audience curious about this dawning project. The editor-in-chief has been assuring the lot of us that the manuscript was going to print “this Saturday” every week for nigh three months⎯but alack: new problems are wont to arise unexpectedly, the book is apt to be gently revised, expanded, or otherwise tinkered with, and haste seems unwarranted considering there is no clamor from the general insisting we immediately produce the saleable product. A brief explication of our retardation, dear non-existent reader, would surely include mention of how we lost the entirety of our funding in two casually injurious blows, how we waited in perpetuity for revisions from lethargic contributors, how we had to flaunt our amateurism by asking the printer how one goes about designing a spine, how we are ignorant if not contemptuous of publicities that might drive us on to necessary exposure, and suchlike impediments⎯but it is senseless to analyze the matter in earnest in this context. Apparently the proofs have been shipped; a prediction of availability of the first issue of Correspondence within two weeks might not prove entirely spurious. The enthused words we have been offering about the work in essays posted on this very blog still apply, reasonably. We want to offer this exciting work to whomsoever we can elicit an interest from⎯at an idiotically affordable price (set according only to the dream of selling our whole print run and recouping enough to pay for a second issue). That is what’s going on.

Letter from the Editor

Oh, silly world, how drunk am I, and it isn’t even worth it. I have edited afore said journal—spending the majority of such time high on amphetamine-like pills, or sloshed on booze, or hoping to be somehow fucked up on a combination of those two. There are few poets in these dark ages, I say, few, few poets. These are loud, loud ages—a strange staccato, strange tremble of image-sounds that are microwaving brains. Oh—waste. I have wasted many dollars on these silly ways. I say—oh, fuck it, blow your brains out, what a waste; there are many worthless motherfuckers claiming they can write and draining all my time away.

You are all fucking worthless, you wouldn’t notice meter if it wasn’t scanned before- hand, and you wouldn’t even chance to do a scansion if a text wasn’t clearly broken off in lines.

There are few, few poets, barely any writers, and you all think it’d be worth it, if we somehow had a cause that was fore-front in our skewed and empty minds.

There is writing here that’s worth it, but you’re not smart enough to see—issue two, I swear’ll be full of some words ‘bout police and poverty—you are small, small minded, not worth a shit or glance—I hope I die and shrivel up, before I join that worthless dance.

—Christopher Sweeney (Editor-in-Chief)