Dear Friends:
This issue of Cable Street is dedicated to our late comrade in letters Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, who died this past October 3. Words cannot express how deeply his presence is, and will be missed. Our collective editorial Tribute to him appears in the Table of Contents, just below these notes.
Chris’ memoir, Becoming, which has been serialized in these pages since Spring 2019,* thus concludes with the installment in our previous issue. There are, however, plans in the works to issue Becoming in book form, and we will keep you apprised of any and all developments in that direction.
Despite our grief, the process of gathering together of this issue’s cornucopia has been a joyous one. These pages abound in generative literary material: essays and lyric essays, fiction and poetry – all are well represented here.
Our features include the second of a two-part Pocket Anthology of bilingual poetry. This issue’s Colloquy is devoted to Peter Glassgold’s innovative translation of Boethius’ Consolation. The Remarkable Reads section hosts a full complement of diverse and resonant books, both timely and timeless. For those of you who follow the serialization of “Hermann Klemm: The Vanished Publisher,” please note that the next installment will go up in December.
On the visual field, Élise Goyette’s Portfolio is one of exuberant collage; and, as is customary, the issue is syncopated with InSights. Finally, our Colophon is a gorgeous sonnet by Pablo Neruda, one which treats of life’s resurgence, even in the midst of bereavement.
I will not dwell at length on the present global political crisis. Suffice it to say that we, the descendants of those whose stand against fascism in 1936 inspired this journal’s name,** now have an opportunity to reengage that struggle both in the streets and on the page. James Baldwin, among countless others, has affirmed that the artist’s foremost obligation is to describe the world as honestly and unsparingly as we can. Whatever the regime, our efforts in that regard remain essential. All the more so when the survival of sanity itself is at stake.
We wish you good holidays, fruitful reading and bon courage.
—Eric Darton for the editors
* https://the-wall-archive-issue8.weebly.com/memoir.html
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street
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