Editor Note

From the Editor

By Molly Hill

Dear Writers and Readers,

It’s been pretty gray and slushy in our part of the world. Monochromatic. Lots of old snow and black ice—typical January. Not to worry though, we’re bringing you a collection of poems this month that’s arriving just in time.

While we don’t have theme issues, we’d like to dedicate this particular issue to the concept of escapism: the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. (Merriam-Webster)

There’s so much change happening this month, and for those of us in the U.S., well we’re having a significant “administrative” change. It’s hard to know how to be and lots of suggestions: mindful, resilient, resistant—the list goes on.

Enter our ten creative poets and one incomparable artist. Farah, Vivian, Maya, Arah, Melody, Emily, Katrin, Moira, Peter, and Rachana—thank you for your wit, vulnerability and imaginative poems. And cover artist Karen Ahn (karenahn.com) sent us artwork saturated in color, magic and talent. This is a slimmer issue but we think you’ll agree there are gems here. Our gratitude to these contributors and to all of our submitters. The future looks to be in good hands.

Enjoy the escape.

Molly Hill

Editor

From the Editor

By Molly Hill

“ Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives.” Carl Sagan

Welcome to Issue Four —it’s exciting to be able to bring you another round of creative work for this final issue of 2016. Blue Marble was founded in late 2015 with the intent of being a “creative collective.” We put out the call to young writers, photographers and artists to send us their best work— and the results have exceeded expectations. What a great year it’s been reading submissions.

To our young writers and artists: we hear you. Thanks for your work, your opinions, your emails, as well as the tech help and suggestions you offered. It’s an honor to read your work and we’re grateful so many of you have discovered and are enjoying the journal. We’ll continue quarterly publication in 2017, and plan to start out the year with a poetry-only supplement appearing online in mid-January.

**With a few small grants and donations we continue to be able to pay all our published writers for their work. However this issue has its very own benefactor. Many thanks for the kindness of our “December donor” who was generous enough to cover the cost of paying all published contributors. (Thank you A!) Your generosity is humbling, inspires us to continue working hard, and we’re proud that your donation goes entirely to our writers.

And speaking of benefactors, we’ve had a year of beautiful art on our homepage thanks to Minneapolis artist Chris Howard, who seems to have just the right image for every issue. Thank you Chris.

Enjoy these voices from around the globe!

Molly Hill
Editor

From the Editor

By Molly Hill

Issue Three is here! Or four—depending on how you do the math. Because we’ve had a large number of submissions and wanted to get more work up online we slipped in a short summer issue near the end of July. Now with Fall rolling around we’re officially launching our third of four quarterly issues.

We’ve grown both in size and scope, reading many more submissions for each subsequent issue, and finding new voices here in the U.S. but also across the globe. We continue to seek out additional sources of arts funding and are lucky to be sustained by donors whose generosity allows us to keep on paying our writers and artists. Thank you donors!

Hope you enjoy the beautiful homepage art Autumn Woods, done by Minneapolis artist Chris Howard. We love that her colorful creativity is the first thing you see when you click over to Blue Marble.

Enjoy the Fall issue, and many thanks to all the writers, artists and photographers who keep our inbox overflowing. Keep it going!

Molly Hill

Editor

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. E.B. White

Editor’s Note

By Molly Hill

February 2019/Winter Poems

Our brains seem to like novelty (think impulse buying, social media posting, and that endless scrolling)—we’re looking for what’s new, what else is out there, and what we might be missing.

In other words:

Striatal Activity Underlies Novelty-Based Choice in Humans

In a 2008 study from the scientific journal Neuron, researchers identified the brains’ positive response to new stimuli. It seems we are in search of that bright shiny object in our peripheral vision. And while we’re not advocating even more time on social media (and yes we’re also science geeks), we’re encouraging and advocating for a lot of newness in 2019.

The novelty in our submission queue is evergreen; we’re fortunate to read work from all over the globe and it’s such a pleasure to edit and email with our young writers. Our goal has always been to be an expansive journal in scope and voice and being novelty seekers ourselves we’re especially open to writers, forms, customs, and traditions that pull us away from the familiar and into a new place of learning and discovery.

We’re excited to bring you our newest collection of Blue Marble writers—the poets of February 2019—> we think your brain will really like them.

Molly Hill
Editor

From the Editor

By Molly Hill

Welcome to the first issue of Blue Marble Review! We’re glad you’re here and hope you enjoy the creative work found in our inaugural issue.

This issue features writers who are athletes, take photos, spend their free time drawing, and love Shakespeare. A few are studying philosophy, economics or math, and more than one mentioned a teacher who has made a difference in their lives. Some are figuring out middle school, halfway through high school or newly navigating college. All are creative.

We’re lucky. With the generous help of supporters who believe in the arts, and in supporting the creativity of young writers we are able to pay our artists and writers a nominal fee for their work.

To those of you who spread the word about the journal as well as read, edited and tech-supported us on our way to publication, many thanks.

We’re grateful— for the large volume of submissions we received, and the variety of voices we had to choose from when selecting work for this issue. To all of the writers and artists that sent us work: keep writing and submitting— we’d love to see what you’re working on next.

Molly Hill

Editor