Issue Eight – May 2022

Letter from the Editor:

When you try something new, you hope for the best and then steady yourself for reality. In the past, Rockvale Review was a poetry and art journal, with music thrown in for good measure. We received a lot of submissions and published some really fine poems in seven issues. Then, we took a year off and came back to the world of online journals with a new vision. We wanted to expand the scope of the journal to include not just poetry and art, but also short fiction and creative nonfiction. This was to better connect the journal to Rockvale Writers’ Colony, a sister entity and retreat center for creative writers. (For more info on the colony, check out the website, rockvalewriterscolony.org.) We opened for submissions in January with five editors, three of them brand new to RR, but highly experienced in writing, reading, and editing our two new genres. We said to the universe, “Send us some good work!” and the universe graciously complied.

Then, a sad reality hit – the death of a spouse and two months of floundering – and what was initially meant for an early May release was relegated to the impermeable arms of grief. When you’re in the throes of loss, you find yourself, sometimes desperately, seeking some sort of consolation, some sort of distraction from the intensity of the moment. You don’t know if anything will really help; in fact, you doubt anything could, so when it does you’re sort of mesmerized with the sweetness of it.