Poetry Reviews

Today is another Red Cedar Review day. On Wednesday, we began looking through old editions of the journal. We're publishing an anniversary issue with content from the last fifty years of material. It's a lot to go through, which is why we're starting now.
One of my jobs as the poetry editor is to condense all the reviews in one easy-to-read excel sheet. I'm a master at making one of those, and I just finished the first draft. It feels satisfying to be able to see that we already are making headway on this project.
I'm not working on this project alone. Gavin Craig, who use to work for The Red Cedar Review began a blog archive of all our work (as well as other literary magazines.) When my poetry readers have sloppy writing, I can just look up the correct spelling of something on there. The only thing I don't like about this is that I can't add notes to his notes about the journal.
For example, Jane Vincent Taylor published a poem with us in 2000. She's since become a more notable poet and her book What Can Be Saved is amazing. She also has other great poems, like "Ice Broken". I got to meet her when I was a sophomore, and she's lovely. I want to note her contribution in the blog.
Also, I noticed that we have published Carrie Preston several times. I initially noted this because she was the former editor of the journal, and I think we should consider asking the former staff members who have gone on to become writers to come back at the issue release party. On a lark, I googled her. Turns out she's a poet and academic now. She has published other poetry too. Now I have another note and something to tell Emily and Ashley, our current editors.
Actually, I wanted to mention to Emily and Ashley that, as long as I have access to a computer, I can continue to contribute to the group over the summer. This summer, a group of staffers is going to go through the archive and digitalize everything. I believe it will be available on ProjectMuse. I was thinking, if I and other readers have access to those journals as they are digitized, we could continue to read and review them, which would allow us to have a lot work done before the school term starts up. I think this might be a great idea, especially since it'll allow me to stay involved in the project longer than I thought I would otherwise be able to.