Many thanks to Jessy Randall and Dan Shapiro for guest-editing our May Music issue.
Jessy has been guest-editing issues for a long while now. Hunt through the Snakeskin archive and you’ll find some – the Alphabetical Issue, for example, or the Monsters one.
I like occasionally turning over the zine to someone else, because I am aware that as an editor I have prejudices and preferences – and there is a danger of being predictable, getting in a rut.
Jessy has an aesthetic that is different from mine, and she finds different sources of poetry.
This is particularly true of the Music issue. I have never taken much interest in pop music later than Harry Roy and his Orchestra, so many of Jessy’s choices were puzzling to me. In fact, there is one group of very short pieces, by Nate Logan, that I find quite impenetrable, though I suppose they mean a good deal to fans of pop. I’ll take Jessy’s word for it, anyway.
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