From the Editor

Thank you all for your continued support! Especially the generous contributors and thoughtful readers. Doing this
journal is a labor of love for me.

I wanted to talk a little about poems, why I like poems in general, why I like certain poems in particular. For me, a 
beautiful poem can be expounded upon for miles and miles. Certainly, scholars do this regularly. But as an everyman,
I'd like to speak to the Everyman. While I was writing my drafts, though, it hit me that there was a certain elephant
in the room that I'd better address as soon as possible.

Like Vaibhav Madhok, a currently featured poet, I ask myself, "Who Am I?" In the context of being editor, I am just
another individual who is making personally meaningful choices as to which works he thinks should be in the magazine. 
I do ask myself constantly why I am making these choices, and I notice some objective trends. But ultimately, it is 
subjective. If you've been reading the "From The Editor" sections in previous issues, you'll see that I look for poems 
that are of a particularly subjective nature, and those that have a substance to them. In addition, I have a leaning 
toward spiritual, moral, argumentative, confessional, or prayerful works. I also am a fan of contemporary, 
unpublished, and free verse. And this will come across in my selections. By maintaining a vision of what I would
like Subjective Substance to be, I hope to join readers and writers of poetry in sustaining a culture of literary art.

The poetry is out there. The poets are coming. And who am I? Just another person with a vision. Thanks for sharing
it with me!

Omar Azam