It’s mud season in here Vermont, that liminal space between winter and spring, when rapid cycles of freeze and thaw cause maple sap to rise in earnest and unpaved roads to turn to mush. The view out the window is an expanse of monochrome: overcast skies, bare tree limbs, dirty crusts of snow. Everyone is waiting for longer warmer days, for the first signs of pastel buds.
The process of delving into the poetry submissions for a new issue of Solstice is a bit like that. The outside world seems so grim and incomprehensible, and I wonder who will be able to find the words to bring passion and clarity to the conundrums we find ourselves in. As I make my way through manuscripts, resolute tendrils begin to unfurl, stretch, and blossom, lyric insights manifest from the page, and a whole new ecosystem of diverse poetic voices evolves, in conversation with one another and the world at large. It happens every time, and it never stops feeling miraculous, this business of poets sharing their craft to build a community of work through words that are provocative, insightful, amusing, startling in their perspective. From Saida Agostini’s layered meditation on maternal touch, to Betsy Sholl’s searing rendition of a concentration camp scene, there are poems here to bring color and wisdom to our liminal state.
May you find voices that speak to you.
–Robbie Gamble
Robbie Gamble’s essays have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Pangyrus, Pithead Chapel, Under the Gum Tree and Tahoma Literary Review. He was a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Summer Writers Workshop. He worked many years as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, and now divides his time between Massachusetts and Vermont.
