Is Confession Good for the Soul? Time to Find Out

Welcome back to Blog del Sol! Did you miss me? No? Well, I understand; our relationship is still so new. We're still figuring out how we feel about each other. But I missed you. Not to make you feel guilty. Just saying.

So, in the interest of strengthening our relationship, I have a confession to make: I am a recovering print-only snob. What I mean is that I used to be one of those people who thought that online-only publications--well, I thought they all sucked, to be blunt about it. And this was not a situation where I had perused a great many online publications and had developed an informed opinion on the topic. No, I was mainly just prejudiced based on the medium a publication appeared in. Does that make me a mediumist?

A recovering mediumist, that is, because fortunately I have been disabused of my narrow bigotry by such publications as storySouth, failbetter.com, and Web del Sol's very own La Petite Zine. These journals and others like them are publishing some of the best prose and poetry available on the literary scene today, period. Disregard them at your peril! You’ve been warned, callow youth (or jaded elder).

To prove my point, check out the two short but great poems by Kathryn Mockler in the latest issue of La Petite Zine. These are poems that tell stories--not personal stories, but very human stories nonetheless. The first one, "Wedding Reception," envisions how God and the Devil might get along if they were seated at the same table at the event named in the title:

You've got
a good sense of
humour, God said.
I don't know why
I never
liked you.
God patted
the Devil's shoulder
affectionately.
I don't know either,
said the Devil.
I think it
might have had
something to do
with bad
behaviour.

Mockler's second poem, "Rock Out," is suffused with grim humor:

This weekend
I'm going to
rock out, he said.

Good for you,
I said. I'm planning
to kill myself.

The language is simple, but spiked with strong verbs and clear voices. And both poems give a sense of payoff that poetry too often lacks. You read these poems because you enjoy reading them, not because you're trying to get in your RDA of poetry. So do yourself a favor and go read them in full. Go on, treat yourself. You deserve it.