Editor’s Note

Ashley Renselaer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Dear Readers, 

Salman Rushdie once said: “A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel cannot diffuse a bomb…but we are not helpless…we can sing the truth…stories are at the heart of what’s happening”. In the aftermath of the brutal attack on Rushdie three weeks ago, his words now penetrate our senses with great power and heartache. Writers and poets are indeed the truth-singers who help us see, feel, hear, and understand the world and ourselves. Art helps to free us from our fears and biases; it shatters our ignorance; it allows us insight into the lives of others; it gifts us empathy and humanity. In our present day chaotic world, we need poetry and storytelling more than ever, as they grant us a place to contemplate our commonalities, our particularities, and the realization that we are much more alike than different. 

These sentiments are corroborated in Words & Whispers’s ninth issue: Hanna Pachman’s beautiful poem “Memory of Famine”, speaks of loss and human connection: “A revolution happened, when a boy / gave me a platter of showing up / and proved to me that invisible illnesses / are hard to notice for the average human. / He was the light coming / in through the trees in a graveyard.” In “Truly”, Toti O’Brien masterfully invites us to reconsider the age-old parable of redemption anew: “Little is known of pre-split. Pre-diaspora. / There are rumors. That he asked for his part of / inheritance ahead of time, to go live the life / in the capital town up North or abroad…” Elsewhere in the issue, Savannah Cooper sweeps us into contemplations of self within a haunted house mirroring a haunted body: “But this house is younger / than me, and I wonder how I reveal my years, / the dust lining my ribcage, the groaning / of muscle and bone. Perhaps my kneecaps / are haunted, crackling and popping / with every bend, ghosts playing jazz / and snapping transparent fingers”. In Alix Perry’s beautifully crafted musings in “Voicemail II”, imagery lingers with energy and poise: “Someday, under the moon, our / liminal spinning will evoke the whistling / of a steam engine’s debut, serenading the / valley long past skepticism’s stingy curfew”. 

In Rushdie’s words, a poet’s work is to “shape the world and to stop it from going to sleep”. This is precisely what our country, and communities need; poets and writers giving us the fundamentals of humanity; protecting against division, and hatred; cultivating sympathy, and love. I invite you to open the door to Issue 09 and step into the interior world of others. Enjoy!

Humbly,

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