Both of the poems we discussed in Episode 7 were submitted for our “Monsters” Issue and both poems, Coyote and Coyotes,were written by Paul Nelson. Tantalizing and intriguing, we were “seduced into loving this animal that will eat your face,” as Tim pointed out. We now love coyotes and the unanimous “yes” votes prove we love these poems too!

As we prepared for Episode 6, something new happened: a poet whose work we wanted to read and discuss on our podcast said, “No.” It was bound to happen some time and it did—a month a half in. We talked about it and acknowledged that some people are simply not going to be ready, some people are going to let fear win over curiosity, and some people are simply not going to ever want their work discussed in such a public manner—a recorded manner that will always exist.

AWP 2016 in Los Angeles was la-la lovely. Marion and I flew out together, for the first time in all of these years of traveling to different cities. Our first bit of business? We discussed what our podcast from AWP would be about.

When we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was “this sounds fascinating and terrifying!” We’re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy).

We discussed Queeney’s pieces, “Last Case on the Murder Task Force,” and to be honest, we didn’t want to stop, even when all of the editors’ comments clearly illustrated how the vote would go! This poem’s craft is so beautiful to linger in, even though the images are heart wrenching and tragic.

In this episode we read three poems from Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano’s poetry. Though they were originally submitted for an unthemed issue, they felt more suited to our Locals theme, one of two themes for Print 8. We expected reading submissions for Locals to expand our horizons, to help us to see different pockets of the world in a new way, but these poems helped us appreciate the every-day right in our backyard of Philadelphia.

In this episode of Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile, we discussed six poems by Clara Changxin Fang, and two poems by Roger Camp. While we walked away with an impressive box score, we were more than impressed by the quality of poems we’ve received for our Locals issue! Just like our Monsters, Locals was broadly interpreted by submitters and we were not left disappointed. Sigh. We love our job.

In our second episode, we stuck with a theme: monsters! One of two themes for Print 8, reading the submissions for monsters has been anything but a nightmare, and the four poems we discussed on this podcast are examples of how broadly the theme was interpreted, just like we hoped.

In our inaugural episode, we discussed four poems from Emily Corwin, and three poems from Leah Falk. I don’t think it was just our happy-to-launch mood that caused such an impressive boxscore.