Flight 22.3 celebrates summer with an all-poetry extravaganza. Included are a collection of brand-new knock-outs from some of today’s finest writers; a specially curated collection of poems by women from our Founders Archive, including work by Diane Seuss, Ada Limón, Claudia Emerson, Victoria Chang, Jean Valentine, Maggie Smith, and Lynda Hull; an insightful, behind-the-curtains conversation about publishing between our managing editor, Caroline Richards, and Meridian’s poetry editor, Gabriel Costello. This flight will set you soaring into summer.
Illustrating this flight are prints by artist Tanja Softić, whose work in photography and printmaking have inspired artists globally and locally for decades. Read her full interview to learn about her style, craft, and inspiration, and see photos from our visit to her Richmond studio.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the writers featured in this flight—
Featured artist Tanja Softić’s body of work compels and provokes with themes of migration, memory, cautionary tales of nostalgia, and “what is full of possibility.” In her interview with Art Editor Camryn Claude she describes her inspiration, her process, and her fascinating undertaking of overlapping construction by mixing printmaking, photography, and painting to create beautiful, exploratory, and cutting-edge work.
Andrew Collard’s “Late Bulletin” explores the unavoidable cycle of estrangement and hopelessness that arises from living in modern America. As national news stories flow into the speaker’s consciousness, grief and despondance run deep. Yet, even as everything appears to fall apart, the speaker points to an implicit American expectation: to sing “this song of love we call economy.”
“But maybe the way forward / is for all of us to stab everyone we disagree with,” Bob Hicok writes as others criticize a religious philosophy in “Satanic Verse.” In this poem, the speaker is defiant against those who demonize faith, commenting on how easy it is to vilify those they disagree with. Hicok’s poem “Slippage” also shows a difficult situation: the speaker’s “tragedy.” Still, it’s “too early to leave for [their] funeral.”
Dong Li’s translations of contemporary Chinese poet YE Hui demonstrate a deep attentiveness to language and image in relationship to story, tone, and perspective. Hui’s masterful use of digression, line-break, and description shine in Li’s translations, which entwine the beauty of nature with the obscurity of the human experience.
Through an exhibition of language, Ian Cappelli’s “Clarifying the Inner Chorus” delves into the disconnect between art and artist, and the emphasis on the art’s presentation and perception rather than its creation. Capelli’s diction is deliberate and sonic: “In the museum,” he writes, “there is a soundless installation / dedicated to the rooms in which / music is performed.”
Mcleod Logue’s poems “Pine Apple, Alabama” and “Blood Orange Child” both give the reader a sense of mourning through language that reads like a retelling of a memory long ago. “Pine Apple, Alabama” explores mourning through reminiscence and shared blood, while “Blood Orange Child” explores vacant space.
In “The Laboratory of Screams” Arthur Kayzakian explores how echoes of suffering remain long after the suffering has ended. The screams of dying soldiers, prisoners, and victims are “like the imprint of an old ghost trapped in a glass jar,” mirroring the echoes of suffering that can be felt to this day. Whether “tarred black” or “brown due to their historical texture,” they remain as testimony to our history of violence.
Full of hope, exultation, and praise, Robert Thomas’ three sonnets from his series “Sonnets with Rudder and Notch” celebrate the beauty of the world and all its curious facets. Angels shine “without profaning you with light” and unexpected stops off the highway lead the speaker to uncover new senses of wonder. In “Sonnet with Sniper and Arcade” the speaker concludes simply, “What we think matters is not what matters.”
In Julia Kolchinsky’s poem “It’s not the dark” the speaker explores a childhood where she was raised in fear and taught to swallow her emotions. Within the walls of her young son’s bedroom, the two cast shadows on the ceiling. The speaker, worrying her son will inherit her fears, promises that he will be allowed to learn love and trust. Dasbach writes, “caution will be easier to teach / than love.”
Cameron MacKenzie’s interview with Appalachian poet Annie Woodford delves into the poets desire and persistence to capture the spirit and folklore of Appalachia in a distinctly interior manner. MacKenzie describes Woodford’s attentiveness to the natural world as “both loving and unforgiving at once,” while Woodford describes her love of language as something especially tied to place and belief: “I’m in thrall to language, especially when it seems so unselfconsciously rooted in place.”
Bilinda Straight asserts with surety “I am in the present with swallows” in her poem “my daughter letting go.” This reach towards presence and wonder tugs at the fabric of Straight’s language in her ruminative “Death by Kitchen Window.” An attentiveness to movement and dispersion, the speaker’s ability to observe “the before and after,” and an emphasis on care and watching characterize Straight’s poems.
In Interviews: Blackbird managing editor Caroline Richards interviews Meridian poetry editor Gabriel Costello.
From the Archive: A collection of women poets previously published by Blackbird whose writings have shaped the cannon. Authors include Jean Valentine, Maggie Smith, Diane Suess, and Ada Limón.
In reviews: Andrea Jurjević’s In Another Country, reviewed by Matt Schroeder. Dina Folgia reviews Sprawl by Andrew Collard.
