Tomer Inbar's Camellia

Tomer Inbar was the editor of Camellia, a great little poetry magazine out of Ithaca, NY.

It was a zine, but those two little staples held together a plethora of great literature.

Inbar managed to establish a definite aesthetic for the mag: minimalist, oblique, small poems and prose poems that usually packed a surprising metaphysical wallop.

Think the Imagist side of William Carlos Williams meets the slyest Japanese poetry.

There were some great translations in here. I believe it was Inbar who translated a splendid poem (on Frankenstein!) by a contemporary Japanese poet.

A handful of my friends published here quite a bit and I invariably liked the works by them Tomer selected. Celestine Frost and Jeff Vetock both published in the pages of Camellia on several occasions. I think Jeff published some translations of the Brothers Grimm here.

I think I alienated Tomer Inbar (if one can alienate people one doesn't really know) by sending him a bipolar letter one time.

I didn't do that often at all, but when I did they were usually "doozies," to use the vernacular of the clearly insane.

Camellia ran for a dozen or so issues, I believe, and they were all keepers.

I look forward to finding my old issues when I next scour my former dwelling.

This postcard from Tomer (who has a really unusual, beautiful hand) shows the character for "camellia" and was brushed by Satchko Kawayama.

What a classy postcard, custom made for a classy magazine!

I'm showing it two ways here.

The "correct" orientation would be with the artist's woodblock signature at the upper left. I think.

But I much prefer this, incorrect as it may be, the other way I uploaded it.

I guess my orientation is different.