Lavender: new journal; new poem; was the Faerie Queen swathed in lavender?

Proud here, yes, but not too proud to reveal I did not know the meaning of epithalamion when Mary Meriam, in response to a comment I had made on a listserv, invited me to submit to issue #2 of the journal Lavender. The theme being Epithalamion, which, when last spotted by this blogger, was in the fine hands of Edmund Spenser, 1552–1599, in his poem entitled "Epithalamion."

Spenser died young, at age 41. And lived in different times. From wikipedia: "Through his poetry Spenser hoped to secure a place at court, which he visited in Raleigh's company to deliver his most famous work, the Faerie Queene." Poetry as political influence? Make it so.

I digress. The word epithalamion is generally used to mean a song or poem in honor of a bride or bridegroom. Editor Mary Meriam's comments are the theme she choose and response from poets are wry and can be read here, here being http://lavrev.net.

My poem (it's all about me, always has been, always will be until I catch on and God knows when that'll happen), "Longing for a Blue Sky," is there (click on the title), next to Emily Roysdon's very beautiful photograph, The Piers Untitled (#2), 2010. I write "I take the Hudson River as my lover / the Southwest as my comforter / Mount Shasta as my tomb."

While I don't want to tie down my meaning, I did have in mind when I wrote those lines an early decision of mine, in my twenties, to end my days/retire in one of the three beautiful landscapes I knew, the Hudson Valley, northern New Mexico, or northern California.

Other poets in this issue are Marilyn Hacker, Rose Kelleher, R. Nemo Hill and a host of others accessible through, ta-da, the table of contents.