Why We Like It

Here at the CR office we come across a lot of different kinds of volunteers. There was one volunteer who earned a perfect score on his copy-editing test but who came in dead last in our goetta-eating competition (we like to celebrate Cincinnati’s German heritage); another ran screaming when we asked her to feed Pete, …

It’s not unusual for poet Ruth Williams to disappear on occasion. These absences are often preceded by some sort cryptic comment from Ruth, like “I have, each year, lived past the day I will die.” Then, a week or so later, she’ll return, clutching a pile dried leaves on which she’s jotted existential musings using …

This week’s “Why We Like It” feature is a double whammy. It’s written by Becky Adnot, a long-time volunteer who is soon to join our staff (fall 2011); so this is also a “Why We Like Her” feature. For one thing, Becky has read submissions going on three years now—purely for the love of it. …

On a particularly frigid Wednesday of last month, volunteer Brandon Whiting appeared for his office hours in nothing but an elaborate feather jumpsuit. This was not unusual in itself—feather suits are actually required office wear—so we didn’t think much of it. And when he began touting the benefits of an “all-marsh” diet, we figured he …

When not in the office, Assistant Editor Matt McBride retreats to the caves of nearby Kentucky, where he renounces the material world and lives on a strict diet of hickory nuts and wild honey. We don’t talk about it much, except to point out when he’s meditating aloud or has twigs stuck in his hair. …

Here at CR we’ll occasionally “lose” a volunteer. We do our best to ensure that these incidents occur infrequently, but when you have a staff directly exposed to as much incomprehensibly good literature as we do, someone is bound to cut ties with reality now and again. Sadly, this was the case with Katherine Zlabek. …

Dave Nielsen is a new volunteer here at CR, and as a reward for reading the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover—a task he completed in a mere 21 hours—we gave him a back issue and some old electrodes we had lying around. When Dave returned the following week for …

When one of us finds a poem or story in our pages that we especially like, it’s common for us to adopt the voice of that piece for the rest of the day. On any given week in the office, you might hear us conducting staff meetings in the omniscient past, or addressing the fax …

Blogophiles (whom we dub, during the time you’re reading our blog, as CRogophiles): get ready for installment seven of “Why We Like It,” weekly (sort of) segments that expose the pulsating hearts of poetry and prose in our pages like coronary bypass surgery—only what we do is less gross and sounds more mellifluous. This week …