Thanks for my contributor's copy of your Autumn '96 issue. My initial excitement over the look of the magazine--the colour photocopies with "windows" is a great idea--translated into a deeper excitement as I looked throught the content. The Monty Reid poems, in particular, stand out. A very impressive contributor's list, and the "must reads" are a great addition. The layout's fun without being overly distracting. You're doing important work, and I hope you can keep on slogging through these early stages because this could become a major journal.

The second reason for my letter is, unfortunately, less praiseworthy. I've always thought that the worst kinds of typos--because they cannot be caught with a spell-check and because they are so embarrassing and silly--are those that form words. Well, on finally looking closely at my poem "Onomatopoeia," I saw that my lyrical intent in "violinback sheen" had become the bizarre "violinback sheep." I nearly laughed out loud. It's too bad the typo wasn't caught, but at least it's an amusing one, and has given me an idea for a series of musical animal poems. (Really, I just might write these!) If you do have a place for printing corrections, I'd appreciate it if you could do so in your next issue. I don't know how many people read such things, but at least it would show readers who remember the poem that I'm not utterly strange and obsessed with woolly creatures.

Best of luck with QWERTY and thanks again for soliciting my work.

Yours sincerely,
Stephanie Bolster