Editor’s Note

Ashley Renselaer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief

As we embark on the publication of our second issue, we find ourselves in a world defined by the minutia of a global pandemic, city- and nation-wide quarantines, and stay-at-home orders. Separation from loved ones, solitude, anxiety, and emotional disconnect seem to dominate the narrative of our lives. Moreover, our experience of art has undergone a revolution of its own; no longer can we enrich ourselves in theaters, concerts, museums, and poetry readings. Rather, in our own physical confinement –in our homes--, we reach out for art through our digital devices, devoid of the physical human closeness between the art, the artist, and us. In this new configuration of our lives, the act of reading has become the only true way of experiencing emotional intimacy. As William Wordsworth once wrote of poetry, it is “the spontaneous overflow of feelings” and “deeper passions”, living in poems, that “excite sympathy”. It is indeed true that the rendering of emotions in poetry and in fiction builds the foundation for emotional connection, capturing the reader’s heart, and further enabling them to understand themselves better. If there is a way out of our contemporary solitude and isolation, it is through our ability to relate to the multitude of emotions that lay bare before us in the written word. In this way, art connects us to our longings, fears, and imagination; to the possible and impossible, allowing us to feel whole, understood, and comforted.

Words & Whispers Issue 02 paves the way. Find comfort and inspiration travelling along the complex paths of memory with William C. Blome’s poem Susquehanna Sketches, 

“Given a lifetime of late night walks, my favorite is to strut a huge semicircle girdling a bluff some two-thirds of the way up an elevation of the river’s eastern shore, but I only do this in late November”.

Slow read the poignant and exquisite recollections in Raymond Hammond’s remarkable poem Easter at Natural Bridge,

“we had arrived in the still silvery / shiny morning fog and walked up the trail / past salt peter cave which was really / just a rock-shelter, past the lost river / which anybody else would call a spring, / not making it all the way to lace falls / because of time and the fact I had stopped / to see every forest floor flower / amazed at their early resurrection / into this crisp morning air of the first / flowers to flower in the spring: blood root / dutchman’s breeches, columbine, trillium, / the mayapples, and jack-in-the-pulpit, / and, of course, the lily of the valley”

If you read the conclusion of Hammond’s poem, you will be presented with a delightful convergence of enlightenment and memory. Continue to be captivated by the subtle emotional power of Elyse Hwang’s Musing of a Quiet Old House. Allow Joann Mazza’s emotionally gripping and challenging poem Life Review to startle and inspire you. Perhaps, you will conduct a “life review” of your own? Dive into the unique creative force of Nachi Keta’s fiction A History of Climate Change and question your notions of what constitutes evolution. Feel the impact of intelligent criticism and resistance to societal norms in Kimberly Lee’s BEAUTY RESOLUTION SE-03.30-UL and be compelled to re-evaluate your long-held beliefs.

Find your innermost intimate feelings reflected in every word and syllable of this issue. Break your loneliness by connecting with the ever-evolving humanity inhabiting these poems and fiction. Breathe in the beauty of the familiar and the unexpected. Let these words and whispers end your isolation and make you connect by discovering new emotions and unforeseen dreams. You have all the time in the world.

Humbly,

Ashley Renselaer
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Words & Whispers Literary Journal