85. 1913 } is not really sure.

Today, mass-emailed, the announcement that 1913: A Journal of Forms, will print only if funds are successfully raised via Kickstarter. My stake in the project is “When You Speak Your Desire for Another,” actually one panel of a triptych, hacked from my submission that 1913 solicited. I was pleased to be asked and included, if mildly frustrated by the selective communication by the editor.

I like the idea of being in an issue of 1913—my first experience with the journal was #2, which impressed me very much with its actual heft, a striking, Tiffany-blue cover, and with the inclusion of poems by John Taggart and Fanny Howe.

The Kickstarter pitch is peculiar. To summarize: help fund a print edition of #6, unless you think 1913 should go digital. Of course it shouldn’t go digital; read the editor’s faltering query and you'll understand why not:

…since 2003 we at 1913 have been devoted to printing (yes, actually printing!) a paper journal chock full of the baddest in contemporary writing and art of all forms, alongside galleries of predecessors. …Print journals come with attendant joys, as well as their inherent costs. Is it time to move 1913 a journal of forms online, to new conversations of form? Or is there something about a print magazine that still necessitates, converses, engages?

Is it time to go digital because printing costs money?—that’s the crux of the matter, not, Is it time to go digital because digital can offer something to the form?

1913 makes fine books. Their journal is a desirable object, crammed with the poetry of many innovative poets, not least of all me. My wish to be in a print issue of 1913 is sincere. I hope that, in spite of their unfortunately hesitant pitch, money will be contributed.

$25 gets a copy of the issue (if the funds are raised to print it). If issue 6 is anything like its predecessors, $25 is a very reasonable price for a copy. My payment for the poem-fragment they’ve taken is a contributor’s copy of the print issue—that is to say, my contribution is already made.