About the Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster and The Same.
Fickle Muses Blog
January 26, 2007
When I was mulling over what to call this myth magazine a couple years ago, my search was centered around one question: What kind of name would express mythic arts without also expressing a limitation to one mythic tradition?
This led to a series of ridiculously long, dull titles (“Journal of Poetry and Fiction on Myth and Legend,” among the worst). For a while I was stumped, until one day “Fickle Muses” popped into my head. Of course, it completely violates the second condition of the question, coming as it does from the Greek/Roman traditions. But as modern myth has made the muses more the gods of art than of ancient Greece, I thought I could get away with it.
At first, I just thought Fickle Muses sounded neat, but since then I’ve given the title more thought. Aside from the obvious association for artists, the term has an interesting relevance to mythic arts. Even the ancient texts within themselves are full of contradictions, and every generation has new twists to contribute to the old tales – religiously sanctioned or not. The resulting quagmire transforms victims to heroes, tyrannical regimes to prophesied saviors, gods to demons.
Perhaps the muses are presenting us with paths as diverse as the people who follow them. Then again, maybe they’re just messing with us.
– Sari
January 21, 2007
When I write with biblical myth, I usually prefer to focus on brief asides, events and characters mentioned almost in passing – it leaves more room for invention.
I read one such poem in Albuquerque a few years ago:
Birth of Dan: Bilhah’s Story
“Consort with Bilhah, that she may bear
on my knees
and that through her
I too may have children.”
– Rachel to Jacob, Genesis 30.3
Breath. Rachel’s breasts holding
my back, her legs close
around mine. Long, slow pulls
of air. Single syllables escape
my lips while my belly stretches to release
Rachel’s son. We move together
closer than sex. The pain isn’t one
I can find words for. It is not like spasm,
not like a blow. It is not like.
What I can tell is Rachel’s hands
gripping my elbows. She loved me first,
so I followed her, and bear her child
far from home in this land Jacob calls
promised. She loves me still, though she
was bartered to Jacob and barters
for him. What is he? Only seed.
Rachel is wind. I know her.
She may betray me
easy as her husband. Now we rake
together, fierce as entropy.
First published in The American Poetry Journal
I later learned that one member of the audience had responded to the poem by saying that she didn’t think the poet knew how irreverent the poem was. It was an interesting comment – not because she thought the poem irreverent, but because she saw something else in it that made her question whether the irreverence was intentional.
Since childhood, the fallibility of biblical heroes has been a strong part of their appeal to me – Moses throwing temper tantrums, Jacob tricking his family out of their property and blessings. If our highest role models can be so indecent and undignified, I thought, surely I can be pious without being perfect?
My sense of piety is a far cry from the view that to be pious is to follow the letter of religious law. But there is a kind of delight in knowing that faith can speak to faith, even for those who find it in an utterly different form.
– Sari
January 19, 2007
Sacbee.com has an interesting article on a modern bard who's doing a reading tour of Homer's epics: "Ex-CSUS professor on epic journey" (Login required. The article won't be available after Feb. 16.)
January 14, 2007
I read once (I cannot recall where) that the ideal size of a magazine is 48 pages – the length of a comfortable evening's read.
The online medium presents different needs. A Web journal is not the sort of thing one is likely to curl up with in the comfy chair – at least, not for desktop users like myself. At home, the Internet is something I squeeze in over a couple cups of coffee before work. Though for a longer journal, I can break it up and read a poem or story a day, I thought it would be simpler and truer to the medium to use a shorter format.
The other issue is frequency. A primarily subscription-based print journal will simply arrive when the new issue comes out, with no need for the reader to remember the publishing schedule. A free Web-based journal with no subscription requirement, on the other hand, must come out often enough not to be forgotten – I'd say anything less than monthly risks losing readers from sheer absence of mind.
– Sari
January 7, 2007
I first had the idea for Fickle Muses about a year and a half ago. I wanted to start a literary journal, but given the abundance of general literary zines, I wanted to fill a niche specific to my interests – thence the emphasis on myth.
I love both writing with myth and reading others' creations. Some of my favorite writers in the genre are Mary Renault and J.R.R. Tolkien in fiction and Louise Glück and Anne Carson in poetry.
When I launched Fickle Muses, I hadn't heard of any other journals focused on mythic creative writing. Since then I've come across the Journal for Mythic Arts. However, as they take submissions by solicitation only, I hope we serve sufficiently distinct purposes.
Though I began Fickle Muses as a matter of personal interest, I think mythic poetry and fiction can serve broader social purposes as well.
Living in the U.S.A., I've seen a narrowing in conceptions of religion over the last couple of decades. While the country remains religiously diverse, it is increasingly viewed as a Christian nation. Moreover, the popular conception of what it means to be religious has narrowed, emphasizing judgment over compassion.
While Fickle Muses is not a religious journal, in re-examining myths – stories born from religious traditions – in contemporary contexts, we explore how those traditions shape the world we live in.
I hope that Fickle Muses will give a sense of the plurality of traditions shaping the modern world and the complexities within each tradition. And, of course, share some funny, titillating, gut-wrenching, entertaining stories.
– Sari