Issue Eleven – November 2023

Issue Eleven – November 2023

Letter from the Founding Editor

Although it’s not officially winter yet, this past week has been chilly and damp. The Thanksgiving holiday came and went, families gathered and departed, Black Friday purchases surpassed predictions, and a Beaver Moon rose bright as a gold coin in the early-dark sky. I spent the last week pondering the words of 38 writers and settling into the images and emotions of 41 pieces of writing which are found below. I felt sobered, even awed, by what I read and I pondered the meaning beneath the words.

It’s that time of year, isn’t it, when we wrap our coats around us and listen to a different season. What comes to you as winter comes to us? As leaves fall and green fades to brown, what bones of the landscape can you see now that you don’t see in heavy-laden summer? Sometimes I look at writing that way. Can I see the bones of the work beneath the words? Can I find the real meaning under the language that covers it?

I think I can in the pieces of writing that make up Issue Eleven. If I sit with a single poem or prose piece long enough, I get a sense of its voice. I’m rewarded with a deeper, more profound understanding of the way in which the piece speaks and the message it’s trying to employ.

It works the same way with art. The artistic talents of our Featured Artist, Helen Vlasic, aren’t truly captured with a glance. If you sit with the colors, the shapes of the faces, the expression within the eyes of the portraits, something rises out of the composition that’s strikingly important. You can almost hear the voices – the pain and the joy – that come with and within the art.