This water All water
This moment
All time
oygen12 has been uploaded to the printer.
When I receive the submissions and begin reading, a theme emerges. Work is then selected on the basis of how the poems from different contributors speak to each other. Choices are not based on how clever or polished a poem is. Not that it does not matter because in modern poetry every single word choice is of vital importance. Caring about how we use language is what elevates poetry.
Plato would banish the poets who do not speak the truth; who lead people into indulging unhelpful emotions.
The poets in this issue encourage us to be who we truly are. They ask us to look out through eyes that are clear and bright. And have courage in our hearts. As well as to acknowledge and accept uncertainties.
The Place Where We Are Right
From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring.
The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard.
But doubts and love dig up the world like a mole, a plough. And a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood.
Yehuda Amichai 1924-2000 Born in Germany, Hitler's rise to power caused his family to leave and settle in Palestine when he was 12. The horrors of World War II and his service in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war deeply affect his poetry. While writing in the Hebrew language he speaks of the universal. According to Amichai all poetry is political no matter what the subject matter, because 'real poems deal with a human response to reality, and politics is part of reality, history in the making.' Everything is a reflection of politics, that is, how we relate to each other and the world around us.
