#0061 Lit Journal Matchmaking
How do the writing and art get together?
Here is my Editor’s Letter introducing the latest issue, which launched this weekend!
Of the many wonderful duties that fall to me as managing editor, I get to pair artwork with writing. Here’s a peek at some of the craft and mystery that goes into illustrating the poetry and prose in an issue.
When a creative contributes art and writing to an issue, the pairing can be obvious. In “All Dirt Roads Lead to Paradise,” Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl recalls her childhood summers spent in Mexicali; her Mexicali photograph makes a perfect match. Gretchen Bartels-Ray? She named her poem and painting the same: California Buckwheat. A natural — set in Nature — pair.
Sometimes certain themes or settings catch my attention. Without giving anything away, Donald Patten’s The Covid Nightmare paired with “Transformation” by Stephen Myer immediately takes readers into the threatening noir world of Stephen’s story. Chris “The Poetic Genius” Green’s poem “Juke Joint Medicine” and Marsha Solomon’s I Lift My Brush share a musical theme. One of Mike Sluchinski’s poems is titled “tree snow for the san bernardino mountains“; one of Diosa’s photographs, San Bernardino Mountains.
Creative work in different media by different people that conjure the same response? Magical. I feel the echo of beauty-in-seeming-chaos in the poetry of Genevieve Creedon as in the watercolor on paper of Ellen June Wright’s Untitled. Likewise, a certain playful kookiness of Indiana Geodes by Ners Neonlumberjack hums at an equal frequency as the crazy-yet-so-true quality of dreams Stephanie Barbé Hammer expresses so well in “My Dream Landlord.”
Once in this mindset, I draw connections perhaps no one else notices. In J. B. Polk’s story, “Once Upon a Time in Labaraca,” earthquakes are sometimes “gentle shivers but more frequently… deep and prolonged growls of indigestion in the bowels of the Earth.” Or maybe “the earth is a surfacing whale. Waves are rippling over its back,” which is how K Roberts describes the feeling of an earthquake in “Degrees of Magnitude: Three Earthquakes.” Vanessa Colwell named her drawing Mario, but I’m guessing not after “The Dad Is Alright” writer Mario Tahi Lathan. After reading Matthew James Friday’s poem, “Getting Gas in Roseburg, Oregon” and noticing B. R. Lewis, writer of “Goodnight, Irene,” mentions in his bio that he lives in Roseburg? I wanna road trip up the coast.
As you peruse the issue, maybe you will connect more dots in this collection of contributions. Enjoy!
Next time: Is the cliché of the lonely and depressed creative true?
The launch today was great—really enjoyed!