A few weeks ago I was at a coffeehouse where friends were reading poetry and, boy, did I want to go home and have a crack at it myself. Now, I can write doggerel at will – a limerick, a quatrain for a birthday card – but I have never before thought to attempt real poetry. 
In the cold light of day, I’m daunted by the thought of achieving such resonance and lovely economy of words. I’m built for prose. But even so there are points where I’m driven closer to the poetic process. Writing headlines, for instance. I am very bad at writing headlines, but sometimes I am able to unhinge my literal mind from my imagination enough to yield something that works. A few posts back, I came up with a beauty for a story about four Norbertines studying at the English language institute on campus: : “ESL, O.Praem.” Nine letters, two periods and a really elegantly placed comma. Almost as beautiful as a haiku in its clarity and restraint – I’m still happy about it!
All this is in my mind because there’s a natural compression over the course of making a magazine, and I just completed that process for the Spring 2012 issue. You start with – well, what you start with is the whole world, actually, and all the words in it. From then on it is all a matter of narrowing focus: You watch a theme emerge; target story ideas; identify sources; winnow phrases; eliminate the externals to let the story take shape; hone the lede; frame with headline and subhead; let a nutgraf crystallize … and repeat the process in design.
Not much of this looks very poetic, at least while you’re wrestling with it. But, then, it comes time to consider the cover line and “On our cover” copy. Three or four words outside, a paragraph inside. By this point, frankly, I am usually thoroughly tired of the whole endeavor, and quite out of words. But I sit with it: The editor steps back and considers what has been made. A word comes to her, a phrase. She sets them next to the image; crosses out two words, replaces them with one; crosses out another, replaces them with three. Words begin to accrete on her legal pad. She tears off her first sheet and starts a second; a third. She circles a thought on the second page, another on the first. It begins to feel that there might be possibility here. An idea just slightly out of reach begins to sing.
