Issue 6: Editors’ Note

March 2024

Dear Readers, 

Although we didn’t set out to make this issue with a theme in mind, as we began to compile the poems we couldn’t help but notice the powerful notion of saudade weaving its way through them – a Portuguese term loosely translating to a nostalgic melancholy or longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone. From reflections on mortality and health, to reminiscing on teenage summers, to capturing the precise moment of losing love, our authors masterfully take us into the simultaneous beauty and pain of reminiscing and yearning. 

This issue reminds us of the vehicle that poetry offers to travel through moments passed; both those we wish to return to and those we rather wouldn’t. In the current state of the world, the ability to hold grief, joy, and longing simultaneously becomes an even more difficult task. We are often called to reflect on what was in order to continue moving forward into what will be. As Evan Schnair writes in his poem I Know That Fish and Honesty, “I am living/in this moment; no matter what/the poem does.” 

May this issue offer you a portal through which to pause and reflect, however it finds you. And may we remember that this present moment will become yet another we reminisce on one day.   

Sincerely,

Tamara, Rachel, Dorit