Letter from the Editor

Readers, aficionados, mavens, this issue introduces a different look.  See, we’ve let in more air and light, and incorporated a painting by Rachael McCampbell:  Something Hums with Desire and Possibility.  We like that title.  As Diane Keaton, or somebody, once said about Jack Nicholson, or someone—What’s not to like?

Also, two new occasional features debut here. The first, Poets-in-Progress, will initiate the curious into the mysteries of the workshop process, and give well work-shopped poets and poet-teachers news of other teachers’ methods of approach. 

Consider, a half-century of creative writing programs has produced whole genealogies.  Los Angeles poet and editor Jackson Wheeler studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning Carolyn Kizer, who studied with the literary titan of the Northwest, Theodore Roethke.  I studied with the great American poet Philip Levine, who worked with the brilliant Shakespearian scholar, poet and provocateur John Berryman.  All very interesting, and yet  little can be found on the web that looks at poems taking shape in these workshops or gives teachers a forum to describe their ideas. 

Elsewhere a new section called Visual Cues will showcase poems about art and art by poets—this in the interest of exploring ways in which various arts can wrap around each other, or wholly give rise to each other.  Were it not for Polia Pillin and her luminous ceramic work, J. Mark Beaver’s poem simply wouldn’t exist.

And so, readers, writers, let us know what you think of Speechless' content, and of course its look. As Oscar Wilde observed, only shallow people aren’t interested in the surface of things.

Suzanne Lummis

Spring 2004

Speechless Spring 2007
Copyright © 2007 Published by Tebot Bach