On Fortnight and productive melancholy

Not that December isn’t quite cold, forlorn, or capable enough of procuring a sea of dour expressions by its own wintry devices, but Fortnight Literary Press would like to further evoke your blasé mood by publishing an Emo Edition of the monthly journal.

Some might call it a literary misstep, a stylistic faux pas, to resurrect that blackened, overwrought contrivances of our darker years – the fantastic desolation accompanying the suburban adolescent life, the lamentations of unrequited first loves, the woe of middle-class. Not many pulled it off with Hamlet’s eloquence or had channeled deep-seated insecurities — the utter incapacity to be understood – through the flourish of iambic pentameter. Instead, Chuck Taylors and black lacquer sales soared while spirits plummeted by their own overemphasis, and suddenly boys and snugly-fit jeans were not mutually exclusive categories.

While the fashion industry capitalized on selling the look of the misunderstood, millions of pages of melancholic poetry sprung into being, which later with the onset of adulthood, was to be burned for fear of inadvertent discovery and immediate, uncontrollable judgment, or worse, sympathy on the part of the discoverer (who may or may not be a loved-one, an archenemy, or a posthumous biographer). The superb bonfire, the mass eradication of the evidence that might bring about shame, is while on one hand, somewhat impressive due to the scope of this phenomenon, is also rather depressing, ironically.

Melancholy has brought about quite a number of dazzling good poetry through the ages. Just take one Middle Ages or Renaissance literature class and that point is proven more than a dozen times by men with big names like Donne, Wyatt, Shakespeare, Spenser. Some of it can be overencumbered with extravagantly elaborate metaphors for that simple emotion of sadness, but some of it crystallizes the most potent and intricate depths of sorrow with such arresting lucidity, with such grace, that one can’t help but wish to have the means to articulate it so well.

For the month of December, we are imploring you to dig deep into your soul and your archives for material that may resemble an item belonging in that reductive category, Emo poetry. We ask you to submit to our humble, collegiate literary journal, funded by both the Undergraduate English Department and arts.umich.edu, at the risk of coming to terms with a self that you might not be proud of but whom was necessary.

And a note from the mouth of one of our editors:
If you’d like, take advantage of the rare opportunity to talk about your work by writing a 100-word commentary on the events leading up to your submission’s creation. Let readers begin to comprehend the incomprehensible despair that led to your triumph!

Deadline: December 1st.
Email your submissions to fortnight-sub@umich.edu and visit us online at fortnightlitpress.wordpress.com

Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.