The Aughts in American poetry were about dynamism, and momentum. A publishing boom overtook America in the mid-Aughts, and swept into view a publishing reality that made, for those with enough passionate dedication to be both interested and relevant, almost anything possible. Part of this boom was online, still newfangled as of twenty years ago, and part in print. Ocho, based partly in Illinois, partly in New York, was a stomping ground where all kinds of roads converged. I was lucky enough to edit an issue, #11, in 2007. With a few decades hindsight, the shock and awe for having been there for the introduction of Steve Halle, Mary Walker Graham, and the rest, triumphs over any other emotion I might feel. The shock and awe is also in Brian Kim Stefans’ sublime sestina; and Christopher Goodrich’s proto-Asian peregrinations. Ocho #11 is about roads converging by the kind of chaos theory explosiveness which made the Aughts so memorable to live through the first time, now again in 2024.
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