Vol VII, No. 4 – 2024

Media oracle and philosopher Marshall McLuhan claimed that ads are the good news portion of our media. While the current events of the world and the state of media are unusually troubling, literature offers a much more relevant form of “good news.” Not with happy situations. Literature instead can present the sometimes harsh events of the world and our lives in ways that evoke community, connection, solace, and perhaps, deeper insight.

With that possibility in mind, we invite you to explore timely and poignant poetry about war from three writers. Elina Sventsytska and Oksana Maksymchuk have penned award-winning poems in Ukrainian that reflect on their lives. This issue features one poem translated from Ukranian into English and another originally written in English, both delving into the anguish of war on ordinary people. Writing about a war from almost 100 years ago, Chris Pellizzari returns to our pages with two poems about the persecuted poet Federico Garcia Lorca trying to survive the Spanish Civil War and Franco. 

We don’t have to be focused on public events such as wars to find this form of good news. The family in Mary Lewis’ “Hat Pin,” the trauma survivor in Ron Riekki’s poems, the meditative remembrances in Eileen Oldaag’s tankas and DS Maolalai’s poem on the sound of horses—all grant us access to the news of the world that doesn’t foster despair but leads us to look more closely at how we live and act and how we can, even under trying circumstances, connect with each other.

Be well, stay safe, help each other.
Leonard Lang, Editor

New Books from Our Contributors

  • Darren Demaree Neverwell, his 19th poetry collection was released in 2023 by Harbor Press

Contents

Prose

Mary Lewis
• Hat Pin

Poetry

Oksana Maksymchuk
• Duck and Cover
• Contact
Elina Sventsytska
• A War Is Not a Hundred Days
Chris Pellizzari
• I Will Hide in Granada
• After Lorca’s Murder in Franco’s Spain
Ron Riekki
• I promise myself to stop writing about my trauma
• I am getting older now and so
• Walking
Dion O’Reilly
• Soquel Creek
 Eileen Oldag
• Tankas from an Ordinary Day
Elizabeth Hill
• Bowling Ball
Mazi Kazemi
• Get Out and Stay Out
 DS Maolalai
• A Surprising Number of Horses
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