Fitting with the dark of the season, the poems found in our most recent issue orbit a sense of seclusion. In Laura Tanenbaum’s “New Years 2023,” this feeling is found in “quiet desert rooms…witnessed only by a scrub jay and a doll / half-stuffed in a box.” Andrew Vogel’s “Envelope” carries it in the way “each morning the street pries itself open / only to collapse on the sparseness of night.” In Meredith Davies Hadaway’s “Across Time,” the gentle pull of seclusion arises through visualization: “To see the world un- / peopled—a field of snow / carved from a white sky.”
Additional to the poets highlighted above, Vol. 25, Issue 5 includes poems by John Minczeski, Molly Johnsen, Xiaoly Li, Judy Kaber, Julie Didcock-Williams, Glen Mazis, Alan Swope, Gordon Taylor, David Radavich, Beth Paulson, Shaun Holloway, Jonathan B. Aibel, Anna de Noailles (translated by Marilyn McCabe), Bonnie Jill Emanuel, Elizabeth Garcia, and Susan Goslee. You’ll also find Erica Goss’s review of The Damage Done by Susana H. Case, Dave Seter’s review of The Dreams We Share by Raphael Block, and David Applebaum’s review of Paradise Loft by Laurence Carr.
Enjoy!
Catherine Campbell, Managing Editor
