Dear Word Salad Faithful –

Welcome to the summer edition of Word Salad Poetry Magazine, this is the first issue of our eighteenth volume, which means that we have now entered our eighteenth year of publication.

Why not beat the heat with the poetry beat? Here’s what you can anticipate from this issue: Gary Beck invites us once again to indulge into a realm of reveries with three new poems, Stuttgart Recollected, For Man Who Dies and Instant Attraction; Scott Urban takes us for a test drive down memory lane with two new musings, No Engine Break and HALYBURTON PARK, Saturday Morning. In Karen Finnigan’s new poem Slow Drip, she discovers inventive ways of breaking her voice from the confinements of solitude; words rebound and skip like stones off the behemoth backside of water … always constant. Always flowing. Richard L. Provencher paints a vivid portrait of President Obama in Before Obama that purges honesty in a cathartic way. Finally, Michael Brownstein introduces A World of Roses and Complain where he tosses one-liners your way like the tossing of water balloons: lines dribble across the page, new vistas of imagery burst at the seams upon impact, leaving the drenched reader dumbfounded.

That is only a mere taste of what is in store … for the main course, click on the Current Issue tab on the Home Page to read on.

Under normal circumstances we are a quarterly magazine; however as of late Word Salad has been working on borrowed time, due to many technical difficulties. We apologize for not being as prompt as usual.

We would’ve liked to publish more poems for this issue; however, fear not! Those who have submitted toward the summer edition and are not appearing in this issue, we are considering your work for the fall issue of Word Salad, which would be Volume XVIII, No. II.

Plus, from now until August 31, 2012, we are accepting new submissions.

In other Word Salad news, we are proud to announce the near completion of Revelations: The Best Poetry of Jean Jones, which will be available soon in e-book format. Bruce Whealton collaborated with Jean on making an anthology of selected works that have captivated poetry audiences for two decades. Bruce himself wrote two introductions for the e-book, one focuses on his working relationship with Jean that (like poetry) has stood the test of time; the second delves into Honesty, the very ingredient to Jean’s wizardry of the written and spoken word.

More details about the launching of Revelations will be posted on this site at a future date: to learn more about Jean, and to read some samples of his work, click on the About Us tab on the home page and then click on About Jean Arthur Jones.

From all of us here at Word Salad, we appreciate your longtime readership and commitment to our poetry endeavors. We look forward to more of your submissions for the next issue.

Happy Reading!

~MJD Algera