a note from the editor

The global political landscape can be disheartening to watch, as the leaders of countries like the United States and United Kingdom continue to ignore the climate crisis. It may be cliché by this point, but it's true-the planet isn't dying, we are killing it, and the people who hold formal power are complicit. Fortunately, politics isn't the only mechanism through which humanity can effect change. In the right circumstances, poets have as much power as politicians (pace Shelley).

Last summer, Daniel Hudon told me that we have to write poetry to remind people of the world around them. His advice is true now more than ever. We ought to write about blooming flowers and chittering cicadas; we ought to write about the deaths of those things. We ought to show people glacial plains and meadows in equal measure.

Of course, poets are not alone in this endeavor. There are politicians with environmental consciousness; there are scientists who can measure the melting of the world and report back, there are playwrights and painters and graffiti artists, all aware of the existential threat that the climate crisis poses. Moreover, they-and we-are aware of the nuances beneath that existential threat. Yes, we will all die, but there are those who argue rather cynically, we will all die anyway, or, I've only got a decade or so left, it's not my problem. It is important to understand everything we will lose, before we ultimately lose our lives to drowning, or burning, or choking on fumes.

What we do in this journal is aligned with this larger goal. We capture ephemeral moments-trips with our children, walks in the woods, a noticing of how delicate vines climb man-made monoliths. These poetic remembrances figure into the column of what we stand to lose. A life without the moments our poets chronicle in these pages is a life less beautiful.

This noticing and remembering is part of our duty, not as poets, but as members of humankind. May we never cease to note (and talk quite loudly about) the little things. Really, they are not little at all. Let us enjoy these not-so-little things together, dear friends. Until next time.

— Cory Willingham, Editor

<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #7: Summer 2019, Volume 4 Number 1