Not quite yet

In high school I listened to The Doors and their song, "The End," keeps playing in my head as I walk around Bloomington, as I sit at my desk at IR.

The last two posts have noted that poetry and fiction will close for the summer as Indiana Review slows down with only two editors holding down the fort. Not only are submissions closing, but my time as editor is coming to a close as well...but not quite the end yet! We still have 3 weeks before the official changing of the guard and 2 weeks until those submissions are closed (so get on it, and send us your work!). Still, less then a month left to wrap things up is making me me nostalgic.

So what does one do when they are feeling nostalgic and looking forward to the activities of the next three weeks. Why read poetry of course! Here's a poem for the occasion:

Be Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire
translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

All my IR love,

Alessandra