Editor's Note

Bombay Gin 35.2 Summer 2009

There is someone studying past human collective consciousness right now by analyzing 1999 ice core samples from Antarctica. Contained within the crystalline layers of the polar ice cap are the past electromagnetic patterns of the Earth. Antarctica is one of the harshest climates on the planet. It would seem to me that one who traveled there, collected these core samples, then returned to his or her respective, temperate climate would feel as though he or she had gone to the dead and come back. Come back with this electromagnetic information to share with the “global village.”

This journey to the dead and back reminds me of the shaman Anne Waldman invokes in the archive piece of this issue. She likens the role of the poet to that of the shaman, one who goes
to ends to collect information, returns, records and shares that information.

Anne summons an image of John Ashbery, holding in his head a poem title or a single word and taking a walk to collect the rest. The human body, according to those studying the polar ice caps, interacts with the Earth’s electromagnetic field, constantly exchanging energy and information with the Earth, within the field. Just by walking around.

While editing this issue, I noticed many “coincidences” among pieces—lots of nautical references within the book and many more in the submission pile (which is common); K. Silem Mohammad, Sherman Alexie, and Marc Nasdor all work with the sonnet form (a little unusual); the recurring word “sarsaparilla” appears in Philip Jenks and Simone Muench’s piece as well as several others from the submission pile (downright odd). David Buuck’s piece even recounts a “forced” collective consciousness.

Perhaps all these ideas happened to be part of the greater collective consciousness. The poet as a receiver and recorder of this. If so, the book becomes a receptacle for it.

If Bombay Gin has anything in common with the polar ice caps, it may be this role as collector of global information. Only, unlike an ice core, Bombay Gin won’t give you frost bite.

JenMarie Davis Editor-in-Chief