Volume 28, Issue 1 (2014)

Letter from the Editor

All art exists in conversation — at least, I think that’s so.

In our literary tradition, we see Fitzgerald calling out to Shakespeare’s tragedies, Eliot wrestling with Ovid’s perspective on transformation, Ginsberg taking up the mantle of Blake’s prophetic tradition. Flowcver, the act of creation is grander than standing on the shoulders of our predecessors; rather, it’s standing alongside those shoulders to whisper in our predecessors’ ears in the hope that they’ll whisper back, and more often than not, they do. To be an artist is to enjoy an exceptional birthright— the rich inheritance of the ages and all who came before, a lacework lattice of art borne of sweat and tears and time, and all of it enmeshed. I call it a conversation because it can be nothing else — it’s interdisciplinary, reciprocal, symbiotic, an exquisite feedback loop with the dial set on forever.

The works featured in this issue exist in a similar conversation, but they can do one layer better — when one calls out, another can answer. This is a conversation that transcends the workshop classrooms in which these works have grown up together like neighborhood children to encompass critiques over coffee, marked manuscript powwows, two AM craft talks between friends turned editors. These works have blossomed into fruition through one another, because of one another, with the help of one another, and so too have the artists behind them.

To share time and space as artists is to share the same breath. Let these works speak to one another, and when they speak to you, return the call.