The Maynard
Fall 2017

Introduction

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to the Fall 2017 issue of The Maynard.

First, we have a few zesty ch-ch-changes to announce. Richard Bisson and his adroit poetic sensibility joined the editorial team to help select the 24 poets we’re eager to share with you. Moss Whelan, an alumnus of the journal’s early days, has rejoined us on the social media team. To stay up-to-date on The Maynard’s news, learn about opportunities for your work, and for tidbits of poetry trivia, history, and other poetic goodies, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. With this issue, Zoe Dagneault’s year-long internship culminates. We thank Zoe, editorial board intern extraordinaire, for her very fine efforts on the 2017 issues and wish her the very best as she moves on to her next writing projects.

The late John Ashbery (July 28, 1927 - September 3, 2017) writes in his poem “So, Yes,” “Let’s celebrate then, let there be some refreshing change/ overtaking all we were meant to achieve and didn’t.” So, come, join the party, read and listen to the poets that our collective process has freshly prepared for you. For this issue, the five-person editorial team read and contemplated over 800 poems. Each of us selected the most-exciting-to-us poems which were then the subject of our sweaty, mid-August debate.

The poems in this issue speak to each other in myriad ways and on levels we’re still discovering. That’s the best way we can describe our rationale for selecting these poems. They speak to us, to each other, to the current ‑ologies of our days on earth, and we hope dear reader, they speak to you. Sara Shield’s surrealist wonder is the poems’ visual gateway, an optical trip setting the tone for this issue’s hard-hitting and softer-landing poems.

Enter and join us in welcoming back to our pages Simon Perchik and leaf kotasek, whom we first published in the Fall 2016 issue. This time, Perchik offers two surreal scenes, and kotasek captures two crystalline moments. We also welcome back Sergio Ortiz, whom we first published in October 2008; his ekphrastic, inspired by a Remedios Varo painting, is an active lesson on mourning. Correspondence with Sergio Ortiz during the editing process has been chilling and remarkable, as he lives in Puerto Rico, where the loss of Internet connections underscores how cut off residents on the island are. To finally reach him two days ago and share a brief exchange over poetry and line breaks made both him and editor Jami Macarty cry. The Maynard sends Sergio and everyone being neglected in the aftermath of disaster love love love.

We’re also welcoming new-to-The Maynard voices, too, like Andrew Warner’s fun ode to love “like like i love you” whose visceral openness to the present finds a response in Christopher Levenson’s no less loving reflections on time past. True to its title and subject, Lynn Viti’s “Twin Dream” amplifies a heated delirium, and the sparks of Ben Gallagher’s intelligent, thoughtful moves in “Quantum Buddy” are similarly ungrounding. The importance of play—with words, with each other, and with time—is crafted in Dominique Bernier-Cormier’s phosphorescent (literally!) take on mini-golf in “Pamplemousse.” Dani Spinosa’s typographically inventive work inspired some polemical reactions from editors—evidence of important art?—and delivers a conceptually powerful political message. A lyrical retelling of a biblical story in Savanna Scott Leslie’s “Judith” adds a strong voice to gender politics. Brian Koester’s “Limits” witnesses and confesses familial violence. Jasmine Sky’s “Ecstasy Like Water to Soften Leather” concerns violence, too; however, this account is an exploration of reparation. There’s also Conyer Clayton’s five-line mystery, “The Malice in My Footsteps,” Laura Yan’s particular rhythms that ante into the conversation on the experiences of first, second, and third generation immigrant women, and more engaged, bold, and curious gems for your eyes and ears.

Happy reading and listening, and thanks very much for being a part of The Maynard community!

Nick Hauck, Jami Macarty, Ram Randhawa,
Zoe Dagneault, Richard Bisson
Editors, Fall 2017 issue
The Maynard