Many of us on the staff of Solstice lit mag, a Boston-based, international journal, feel the reverberations of the tragic events at the Boston Marathon. Our cover, by the well-known photographer, David Fokos, shows the undergirding of a bridge over Storrow Drive. We chose this cover image many months before this year’s Marathon, but we feel it is especially timely now.
Also, be sure to view our videos in this issue. Performance poetry by our new reader and poet Regie O. Gibson, and a video collage of “Silvertone” read by poet Dzvinia Orlowsky.
We encourage you to delve into this Spring Issue. Our fiction ranges from stories about the vagaries of love in pieces by Wolos, de Wentzien and Sahl, to Agar’s delving into psychiatry, to Herzog’s mythic probing into Native American history, to McCaffrey’s retelling of a fairy tale, to Anderson’s story confronting death.
In nonfiction, we also present a range from dealing with death in the essays by Blake and by Goldstein, to abuse and mental illness by Waldstein, to the ironic piece about an eccentric relative by Lawrence, to the deconstruction of an eggplant by Sven Birkerts.
In poetry, we highlight our new poetry editor Kurt Brown and our new assistant poetry editor Ben Berman. Please read their poems at the beginning of our poetry section and do read Kurt Brown’s and Ben Berman’s poetry editors’ note below. Also, in the Book Reviews, experience Kurt Brown’s poetry reviews (Poemviews) in the style of the poet critiqued.
We also welcome to our ever-growing staff as our new eBook co-editor, Debbie Merion and our new eBook intern Jenifer DeBellis. Solstice lit mag is in the book publishing business!
And why? Because we want to promote literature and diversity and cause you to pause and meditate and explore the complicated facets of our joyous, suffering world.
Strength to Boston and to all our readers.
Lee Hope, Editor-in-chief
Poetry Editors’ Note:
We are happy to offer an eclectic group of poems for this issue. From Christopher Buckley’s ruminations on the intersection of the cosmos and the 1950s, to Natasha Sajé’s pean to the Fisher Cat, the poems assay the seasons, consider the piped-in music of airports, the trust love evokes, complex memories of childhood, the mysteries of lineage, the coherence of chaos, cross-cultural differences, and advice to aspiring lovers and writers. Many poems cross our desk in the course of assembling an issue, but these stayed lodged in our imaginations. That is the true mark of accomplishment. We hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as we did.
Kurt Brown and Ben Berman
