Verdad Magazine Volume 31

From the Poetry Editor

Welcome to the Fall 2022 issue of Verdad!

Dear Reader, 

As this is my last issue as poetry editor of Verdad, I’d like to begin with some gratitude: Bonnie Bolling, our editor-in-chief, brought me on nearly ten years ago, and I’ll always be grateful for the time I’ve spent working with her. I also need to thank Rochelle Cocco, our web editor, for her tireless efforts in taking the poems we select and giving them life on the page. It has also been a real pleasure to find new poets in the world whose voices I’ve tried to amplify in my time here. For all these folks, I am grateful. This issue has six of those poetry voices I hope you’ll enjoy, and a review of one of our earlier contributor’s newest poetry collection. 

Marjorie Becker won me right away with her long, wild titles, like ‘Replete with Seers Singing Scheme, the Sapphire Light Itself Prepared a Theme, a Way to Wonder, Blunder, Ponder Flight as Generous as Porch Light When It Comes Around, Illuminates the Skies at Peace and Wild Prosperities Again, Again< and Once Again, Again.’ On the other end of the spectrum, George Freek, whose poems borrow from Chinese poets and traditions, gives us brevity and resonance, pointing us to scenes where  “an embalming darkness / smothers the pines” and asking “How does one see correctly?”. Michael Lauchlin complements this with his own ‘Elegy with Questions’ asking, “With so little, how did you make it / from each day to the next?”. Meanwhile, Phil Nast speaks of one of those resonant moments of divine sublimity in which “for a moment I felt as if the me / in me rode my shoulders, as a child might.” Providing a further spark of hope, Greg Sendi’s speaker–in dialogue with Mozart—says, “it’s important / not to make a religion / out of one’s limitations, right?”. By contrast, John Tustin, in a poem whose speaker is bereft with loneliness, reports, 

Time has killed all of my friendships
and I am so lonely now
that I call out for the crows to return
but they gave up me a long time ago.

It was also my treat to spend some time reading Millicent Borges Accardi’s collection of poems Through a Grainy Landscape in which the speaker’s parents tell her (and us) so pleadingly: “please, listen and listen and listen / for a moment, listen for your whole life.” So, with gratitude and hope that even in the loneliest of times, we need not see time kill the friendships and literary kinships we make over the years—I also ask you to listen for a moment, to listen for your whole life.

 

                                                                —Bill Neumire