The difference between a large group of musicians tuning up and the movement of a full symphony—this is what it’s like to be behind the scenes here at Cable Street as a new issue comes together. At first, an oboe and a viola are tuning to discordant notes, a flautist is chatting away with a tympanist, a phone is ringing, the lights are all on at once before the stage plunges into darkness. How can it all possibly coalesce in time?
Then a group of poets shines across centuries and countries to bring together a pocket anthology of haibun, the interweaving of haiku and prose. This is echoed in Charles Beadle’s novel about painters, Dark Refuge. The mind as refuge—though more light than dark—comes through both the interview with Paul Elie and all four essays, from Ian C. Smith’s “In my hippocampus archive lies the freefall shock of romantic love” to Eric Darton’s quotation from Tom Bisio about how, in Ba Gua Zhang, “the mind and spirit are still and calm, while internally and externally the body constantly changes and transforms, able to create infinite techniques seamlessly linked together.”
If there is a triumphant refrain in this issue, it is certainly poetry. Are we “safe here, where it is fluid / Away from the barnacles of language” in Rose Margaret Deniz’s poems, or do “We take the fruit, like communion / into our unkissed mouths, open in small O’s” with Gigi Marino?
We will certainly learn something central about ourselves, whether in the midst of Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno’s Memoir excerpt or as we, too, ask “Where hide / the cornered beasts? / In the desire of poets?” in the translation of Maria Teresa Horta’s Estranhezas. As we seek this and more, will we find the Vanished Publisher, Hermann Klemm?
A symphony within a symphony, the Remarkable Reads is not to be missed—eight reviews that live up to the section’s name.
The perfect mind-palate cleanser, this issue is our first to feature two portfolios: Calvo’s incredible photos from the animal kingdom of Costa Rica, and Winkfield’s many-faceted, absorbing paintings.
All of this leaves me sitting here, stunned, amazed, and thankful to all of these artists and editors for bringing such a full and absorbing issue together.
— Hardy Griffin, for the Editors
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