Loss isn’t generally isn’t what comes to mind when we think of summer. And yet, this issue’s stories and essays are situated in mourning and letting go. In Lissa Franz’s “MonkeyMonkeyGirl,” a child’s decades-ago disappearance still haunts her sisters and mother. During the pandemic, in Janice Deal’s “BAE,” a couple’s college-aged daughter slips ever further away from them as she chooses to live among an enigmatic religious community. A woman and her overly critical father attend an academic conference together and find an unexpected opportunity for détente in Meghan Louise Wagner’s “Thought Experiments.” In Yvette DeChavez’s “Two by Two,” a young married mother meets a couple who challenge her notions of faith, motherhood, and desire. Judith Cooper’s essay “Heart Dissolving, Skin Marinating” is a fever dream account of her experience with a rare cancer, a stream of consciousness weave of clichés, word associations, and gallows humor. Aaron Kang Smithson meditates movingly on architecture, anemoia, and the loss of his father in “Palimpsest.” And in “Down and Out in Disneyland,” Maya Bernstein-Schalet considers the connections between escapism and addiction as she tries to make sense of her beloved cousin’s death.
With this issue, though, we also celebrate the long tenure of Steven Schwartz, who has masterfully curated the fiction for Colorado Review since 2011 (as well as from 1984–87) and is now stepping into the role of fiction editor at large. Of his seventeen-plus years on our masthead, he says: “It goes without saying—though I’m saying it—what an honor it’s been to publish so many talented writers over my years as fiction editor. But it’s important also to note my sincere respect for the writers whose work was not selected. All these efforts, whether resulting in publication or not—and let’s face it, writing is hard and isolating work—speak to our common purpose in pursuit of excellence in craft. Literary magazines shine a supportive and irreplaceable light on the writing of both established and emerging writers, and I’m grateful to have had the privilege to read and work with so many of you.”
And we, in turn, are so very grateful to Steven—not just for his expert editing, but for his unwavering support, in so many forms, his generous mentorship, and his abiding friendship. It has been one of the greatest joys of my career to work with and learn from him these many years.
This issue is therefore the debut of Jennifer Wortman, who moves into the role of fiction editor. A talented writer and editor, Jennifer has a long history with CR, beginning with an internship in 1998 and then rejoining the masthead in 2013 as our associate fiction editor. We welcome her warmly and look forward to many years of her keen editorial curation.
And finally, dear reader, we welcome you to the summer issue. We are ever grateful for you, in times of both letting go and celebration.
—Stephanie G’Schwind, Editor-in-Chief
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The poems in this issue find themselves in precarious times. There is a hole in the roof that birds would slip through (Kareem Tayyar). There are meadows catching fire (Maureen Thorson). Leaf cutter bees are going extinct, and coral reefs are turning white (Martha Ronk). But these poems also know how badly they are needed. As Anna Konradi writes in “Good News,” “If a child can- / not cry / a good poem / wails doubly.” Poems can offer our despair back to us, which might feel like a weight too heavy to bear, but what if this very weight ushers in a necessary urgency? Or, somewhat conversely, what if the levity of poems like Lorraine Lupo and Kyle Schlesinger’s collaboration, “Napkins for Mannequins,” provides a reprieve from the anguish so many of us currently feel? Both urgency and reprieve ready us for beauty, and in times like these, we cannot risk overlooking beauty. Like so many poems in this issue, Andy Butter’s “Goodbye All That Time,” which happens to be the very first poem you will encounter in the pages that follow, offers us a model for looking, for receptivity even in the face of despair: “Nothing I could see felt beautiful / but then a turning and / [. . .] in the center of the holy city / a turtle turned its jeweled eye / to the light.” May these poems turn our eyes to the light; may they help usher in the summer we all need to see.
—Sasha Steensen, Poetry Editor
Featured in this issue:
William Archila, Maya Bernstein-Schalet, Anthony Borruso, James Brunton, Andy Butter, Judith Cooper, Ben Cooper, Janice Deal, Yvette DeChavez, Lissa Franz, Brett Hanley, Bob Hicok, Anna Konradi, Nick Lantz, Lorraine Lupo, Hoa Nguyen, Julie Danho, Masin Persina, Martha Ronk, Kyle Schlesinger, Aaron Kang Smithson, Kareem Tayyar, Maureen Thorson, and Meghan Louise Wagner
