Issue 6 Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

Last weekend I went on a date to a sculpture garden and spent a very happy afternoon wandering among the sculptures and trees. There was a pair of enormous bronze hearts full of the debris of everyday life—hammers, coffee pots, scissors. There was a shining metal ring that pulled the sky down into the trees with its reflection. There was a leaning house with mirrored windows.

I noticed that the sculptures I was most drawn to were the ones that had tried to harness the shapes and textures found in the natural world: the tall, vaguely humanoid statue made of upward-bursting branches; the granite head pressed to the ground covered with lichen, their colorful spreading skins now as much a part of the artwork as the lines that the sculptor had carved. The rusting copper abstraction of spheres, holes and angles which harmonized with the landscape in its raw materials as much as it opposed the landscape in structure. These sculptors didn’t impose their ideas upon their creations so much as they worked to bring out shapes, angles, patterns and textures that already existed in the natural world. They worked in harmony with their materials. 

Please bear with me and my transcendentalist tangents. What was it my date said? “I take you to Walden Pond one time…”

But here’s the point: in the same way that a sculptor will attempt to access the intrinsic beauty of the arc of a tree or the heft of a stone, a writer will attempt to uncover the basic truths of human nature through the written word. The most successful stories are the ones that tap into something higher than the self. The goal of writing is to bring to the surface that which already exists around us. Grief, love, anguish, joy—all are fundamental truths of the human experience. Writing for truth takes a delicate touch. It can’t be done without close listening. 

I often think about this quote from Michelangelo: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” I think there’s something to be said about writing to reveal a truth that already exists. 

The three writers in this issue have done a phenomenal job of chipping away superfluous material. What they’ve revealed is clean. It rings with authenticity. Graham Marema’s story, “The Empty Village of Little Men” is a fanciful story of gnomes which veils a profoundly moving discussion of grief. Jordan Ranft’s poem “Letter” handles grief in a different, but no less moving, way. There are lines from “Letter” that will shape the way I see the world around me for months to come. And in “Saint Joan,” Chelsea Lane Campbell discusses what it means to be known in a voice full of thoughtfulness and grace.

With this issue, Volume 17 is complete. I’m so proud of the strength of these works, and I feel so lucky to have had a hand in drawing these voices into the light. What a selection to end on! I hope you enjoy these pieces as much as I do. 

Warmly,

Aspen Kidd

Editor-in-Chief