War Poetry Redux: The 'Blue Streak' Strikes Again!

Editors at the literary journal "As You Were," published by the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts, have published a special spring 2018 edition of the poetry journal "Blue Streak."

The issue features 27 poems from 25 military veterans and family members, and can be read on-line FREE here at this link.

The special project takes its name from a legacy poetry journal, which published its first and only edition in 2013. In 2014, most of the organization's fiction, non-fiction, and poetry journals were consolidated under the "As You Were" literary journal title. The latter is currently published on-line twice annually.

"When 2017 poetry submissions exceeded our capacity to adequately honor and celebrate in the pages of As You Were the poets who had shared their words and works with us, we decided to bring back—at least temporarily—the Blue Streak nameplate out of cold storage," poetry editor Randy Brown writes in a short introduction to the issue. "We don’t know whether or when it will ever be back—our regular poetry features will continue with the next issue of As You Were—but we had a lot of fun putting it together."

A website page describes the organization's publishing history and philosophy:

Our title ["As You Were"] also connotes a harkening back, an exploration of the self and the past. We’re interested in those words and works of art that are brave enough to cut through rank and time, presenting military experience honestly, free of the white-washing that can appear in today’s war literature and art. We’ve published numerous volumes since 2011, providing each contributor–regardless of whether that contributor has published 25 words or 25 books–with some form of one-on-one consultation if they wanted it.

As previously reviewed on the Red Bull Rising blog, the journal "As You Were" uniquely packages its submissions process as something akin to a virtual writing workshop. Unlike the thumbs-up-or-down approach of other journals, writers of all experience levels may engage in multiple drafts with peer editors and readers, while preparing pieces for publication. Regardless of whether a piece is accepted after one edit or many, however, the objective, however, is always the same: Help writers find new ways to document and communicate the military experience.