
EDITOR'S NOTE
✧☾✧
At the end of the first month of 2025, I can’t seem to look in any direction without seeing efforts to contain chaos – from individual battles with illness and financial hardship to the devastation of wildfires here in California to the state of the nation, maybe even the world. Chaos – often intentionally – makes us unsure, unsafe, estranged. It can set into motion a lonely and chronic anxiety that makes an introvert like me want to withdraw.
I’m no expert on activism, but I do feel its kinship with art so strongly right now, keeping an eye on what students are creating. But even if we’re not writing political poetry, it feels like now is an important time to hold space for group creativity. For a container, for expression, for something that doesn’t have to be tied to a dollar. Or to an argument.
It may be winter still, but we have the buds of several love poems in this issue. We have people-watching on the beach, considering the white horizon, and a spell to summon spirits. We have dense poems and fragmentations. Many poems insist on moving great distances (in subject and geography). They choose to focus on the striking forces, experiences, and relationships that can happen in an intervening time.
I want to extend a big thank you to the brilliant new readers who helped put this issue together. They go above and beyond to read poems thoughtfully and astutely.
In this issue, you can spot more than one translator, a few prolific old hands, and even a first-time poetry publication (yay!)
Read good books.
M