We're starting a new web series, entitled "Meet the Editors," that will let you do just that, get some idea of who we are. Whether or not that gives you any sense of how we edit or maintain the journal is another question.
These are basically brief e-mail interviews, in which an editor can answer one or more questions in order to give you the flavor.
We begin with faculty Editor Jake Adam York, who's been here since the beginning of Copper Nickel in 2003. York is Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at University of Colorado Denver. He is also the author of three books of poems, Murder Ballads (2005 Elixir), A Murmuration of Starlings (2008 Southern Illinois), and Persons Unknown (2010, forthcoming).
He answers all three of our internal interview questions.
Your 57-minute mix?
1) John Lee Hooker's "I Need Some Money" -- I'm going to start here. Hard to find someone more enjoyable or more primal than John Lee Hooker. And why beat around the bush: buy some Copper Nickels already!
2) The Minutemen, "Shit From An Old Notebook" -- we get some submissions that would fall into this category. Sadly, the authors of these submissions should be listening to The Minutemen more directly: "Let the products sell themselves."
3) Funkadelic, "Funky Dollar Bill." Do I really have to explain why you should like this one?
4) Hank Williams, "Rockin' Chair Money." Best poet to come out of Alabama, so he's got my regional vote, and the song raises the question of earmarking. If Hank has "Rockin' Chair Money" where is the "Poetry Money" or "Short-Story Money."
5) Nappy Roots, "Dime, Quarter, Nickel, Penny." It's out of order, but I like catalogues that change the running order. Also, I dig the Nappy Roots. As a Southerner, I go in for anything with a kind of twang and hats off to Nappy Roots for getting a Southern flavor into Rap in ways very few others have done. Something about this album makes me want to read Frank X. Walker poems.
6) Townes Van Zandt, "Dollar Bill Blues." Another classic for me, so it goes right in.
7) The Dexateens, "What Money Means." Here's a genre-bending band, moving between country, country-rock, and punk. This one's more of a country-rock song, bringing in some Skynard flava here and there, but you can hear a harder distortion that explains why The Dexateens type themselves as a punk band. (A note to authors: I, personally, like to see this genre mixture.)
8) O. V. Wright's "A Nickel & A Nail." Is this the saddest song ever written? At the very least, it has some of the best imagery I've heard, ever. When do you have a nickel and a nail in your pocket? This has never happened to me, and now I want it to.
9) Dudley Perkins, "Money." I love everything Stone's Throw puts out, and Dudley Perkins's "A Lil' Light" is one of my favorite ST releases of all time. There's a nice blend of funk and hip-hop here that draws into the question some of the money-folding motifs in Gangsta and makes them, almost, more enjoyable.
10) Tom Waits's "On the Nickel." A theme is already visible. I don't need to explain this one either.
11) Duke Ellington & Charles Mingus, "Money Jungle." Awesome. One of the best if not the best musical collaboration between artistic giants who normally don't work together. I think the delicacy Mingus achieves on the bass here is mind-boggling: the quick flutter of the fingers. Mingus is so precise, and I think in ways we normally don't appreciate. Ellington actually makes Mingus better here, and I like this when artists challenge each other and make each other better.
12. Madvillain, "Money Folder." See #9 & #10 above.
13. Sun Ra, "Next Stop Mars." You can figure this one out, too.
14. Bumble Bee Slim, "No Woman No Nickel." You won't catch a rapper with a name like this, but maybe we should bring some of this back. Almost comic, but pathetic as well. A fine, historical mixture of modes and emotions.
15. Johnny Cash, "Delia's Gone." Classic -- or near-classic -- murder ballad. The seed of this song goes back to the early years of the 20th-Century, maybe even further back, but here Cash is keeping the classic lines and updating them. I dig the play of tradition and innovation. (See #7 & #9 above.)
16) Nirvana, "Pennyroyal Tea." Who thought unplugging Nirvana could make them rawer?
17) Alvin Youngblood Hart, "If Blues Was Money." An underrated revenant performance, I think. Hart's still working it, but this cut, from his first album, is really remarkable, in terms of the tone he's able to bring out. (See #15 explanation, too). And this rounds us back to the John Lee Hooker opening, suggesting something of the kinds of arcs I consider when putting an issue together.
What book do you wish you had written?
Probably Joshua Poteat's Ornithologies. When I read it I was transfixed: Poteat seemed to answer most of the technical questions I think about when writing a poem: how much story a poem should have, how much music or good-sounding language. I always learn something from a Poteat poem, and I feel smarter for having read it, but I also come away with the feeling that I just watched someone very careful draw something extremely pleasurable and exact out of language, which too often seems like a tool rather than an opportunity for beauty.
What sort of shoes are you wearing & why?
Camper Peu with a red sole (featuring these foot-massaging circles that look like tiny manholes) and red elastic laces. These are maybe the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. It's almost like being barefoot in terms of the kinds of maneuvers I can execute in these shoes (good for walking, OK for running, good for skateboarding and mass-transit negotiations), but better since I don't actually hurt my feet by touching anything sharp. Score.
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