What? Another issue of Goblin Fruit is LIVE??? Aw, heck! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?

Okay, okay. All kidding aside. Yes – the Spring 2011 Issue is out!

And you know what? It’s special.

And you know why? Because I’m in this one it’s Goblin Fruit’s FIFTH ANNIVERSARY!!!

Hurray! Yippee! Three cheers!

They’re doing all sorts of cool things here. Wick and El-Mohtar have their usual, hilarious Note from the Editors, they have a PRIZE DRAWING, and their featured poet, Catherynne M. Valente has put up Act I of a four-act colossus, A Silver Splendour, a Flame, which she says will be, if she does it right, her “Cantos.”

Cat blogged about it yesterday:

This is a Persephone poem. It is a very long Persephone poem. It, in fact, will not complete for one year. The “acts” will come out on the solstices and equinoxes for the next year, as is appropriate for Our Girl. It is a sprawling thing, with much experimentation and madness. It is Persephone as a Vaudeville show. It is difficult and it is thorny and it is, I hope, beautiful. I hope you like it. I hope you’ll all read it, whatever you think about poetry, and Persephone, and girls scribbling verse. Give it a chance.

I started reading it yesterday, thinking just to peek — it is, after all, quite long — and then I fell in. Into a pool of my own slobber. I mean, I can’t even, AAAUUGGGHH!

But don’t take my word for it. I’ll just except this leeetle bit, for those of you who love the old gods:

Hermes on banjo--what kind of low-rent show is this?
But there’s old king thunder banging down the drums
and Orpheus, just as pretty as the gossip rags say,
pumping the spit valve on his horn.
Sure, but Demeter’s the big draw, the prima donna,
with a chest like a galleon and a mezzo that’ll knock you,
if you’ll forgive the turn of phrase, dead.
And the conductor? Well,
you can find his name on the program, but we don’t like to brag:
the man in black with his bone baton
and a Puritan look, calling the cues like hits to the chest. Point. Point. Point.

And then there are all the other poems. Which are, as usual, rich and needling. Mine is neither, but it does rhyme “Lucifer” with “due to her,” so it can’t be ALL bad!

Go on. Have a taste. I dare you.

We last covered Goblin Fruit with the Winter 2011 issue.