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| magazine - RHINO 2008 - editors’ notes | |
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EDITORS’ NOTES Every year, it seems the poets reflect, if not anticipate national and global issues, but as our Managing Editor Emily noted about this issue, "To me, there's less focus on the world's current (and forever-lasting it seems) craziness...we're turning a little more whimsy to divert our attentions and keep us going." In reviewing the poems included I was also struck by their palpable tension of the tender and the wacky, the tentative and the urgent, a chorus of "let's say" or "I would say" and "must, must." From the early poems presenting us with "grief song" and "the green of life," through a slew of language about language, this issue's poems present us with "fingers talking" among the overheard conversations of grandmas and fox-wives, till even the earth speaks, reminding us that "all of it is threatened all of the time," calling on us to "actually hear what's what." And for those who don't hear? What better closing than this: "Oh well. Let them ride into the sunset for all I care." -- Jackie "We're waiting for the apocalypse," says the narrator casually, in "Bukowski & I watch the Weather Channel." Ho hum. The focus is on the rain. So many ordinary items go surreal, in this issue, and all sorts of animals roam the 2008 manuscript. Earth and elements - water, wind. Perhaps we've given up on world crises and disasters, & it feels good to set the mind free to go a-wandering? The poets seem to be "excusing" themselves, in more sense than one. "I just wanted one story minus anything blue," says one, and later, "I couldn't trust my saucer as far as I could toss it." "We divide ourselves in our small spaces from the world outside," says another. "This is what I would tell you, would tell you," says another, "if not for the conclusion." When the world is irrational or out of control, one has to be creative with conclusions, and solutions. "He thinks he’ll be a fish. He'll know his way/ through the thick and dark. The smoke will be his water," says another poem. Because everything is strange. "I thought: / “I’ve been killed near Rjhev”/ says another poem (this one in translation), "....But there was no bullet in my body." "Because what shatters here/ is neither despair/ nor vertigo/ but the pure exhilaration/ of being allowed to fall," explains another, and yet another observes that, "The ground lets black umbrellas out." No wonder the animals have taken over. Perhaps they can be useful. -- Helen Poets are tuned to a rarified wave length -- high and faint but true. They get the message before the rest of the world. Here is the message coming through for 2008: Communication is not working between people nor between people and nature; The world has broken down; We no longer fit comfortably into our own lives; Old plans are useless. Humans are no longer in control. Nature is taking over -- rains, flood, mud. Full of rage and decay, we are becoming our feral selves as we attempt to shed our skins, to separate from the natural order. Desperate to find clues to explain the world, we seek a Rosetta stone, a road map, some rules but nothing emerges, nothing equals X even though we go to the author's house (God?) for answers. But poets never give up. Even now they sense the exhilaration of being allowed to: fall to the bottom; start again; learn a new language; be Darwin bringing asparagus to Patagonia. The poets in RHINO 2008 "get it." They have captured our wild, dysfunctional world. Readers, you are in for a fascinating ride and at the end of it you will "get it" too. Enjoy! -- Deborah
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