Reports from a Small Press Burnout: The Drunken Boat

Photo by visualsofdana on Unsplash

“As I was going down impassive Rivers,

I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:

Yelping redskins had taken them as targets

And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.”

First stanza of “The Drunken Boat” by Arthur Rimbaud.

(Note to Arthur: “Native Americans”)

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The Drunken Boat is an online poetry journal which has arisen to change the very way we think about ourselves, our manner of living, art and the nature of existence itself. The poutily-bespectacled and tattooed sailor-editors call it an “international journal of literature and the arts.” Their grand mission is to seek out “marginalized and underrepresented artists.” Nothing less than a shattering of outdated norms and a slaying of white male cronyism will suffice. Nothing less than the dolphin’s pajamas, nothing less than Neptune’s squirting boobies.

The journal is stuffed like Noah’s Ark with poets who have come to the United States from all places on the globe to pursue the elusive MFA program. As everyone knows, nothing could be more daring or contribute more effectively to the destructuralization of capitalistic greed than getting an MFA degree. The writers at The Drunken Boat are all poor suffering marginalized souls who in their marginalization…