An early poem by Wallace Stevens begins with the lines, "Look in the terrible mirror of the sky / And not in this dead glass, which can reflect / Only the surfaces—the bending arm, / The leaning shoulder and the searching eye."
This, it seems to me, is what poetry is all about: An attempt to delve beneath the surfaces of life, to uncover essences, whether beautiful or terrifying, and to examine what poet David Whyte calls our "astonishing interior architecture." (See Editor’s Notebook.)
The local poets featured in this issue all do so, speaking eloquently—though each in a distinctive voice—about the hidden lives that circulate around us at every moment. They speak of loneliness and devastation and confusion.
And they speak of beauty and of hope. Above all, they speak of the daily miracles that might otherwise escape our notice. "You do not bite a fig so much as kiss one," writes Kindra McDonald, in one such moment of rapt attention. "It melts tender on the tongue and makes you blush." This is what poets do: They connect us more deeply to life and to one another. They share their inner voices, and in so doing give voice to our own deep yearnings.
We are privileged to introduce these poets to you. We could not have done so without the help of Michael Khandelwal of the Muse Writing Studio and Workshops. For this issue, Michael essentially served as guest editor, sifting through entries and selecting some of the best poetry being written in this area. I say some of the best, because we did not have the space to publish all of the poems that merited attention. We will continue featuring local poets on a monthly basis. If you’d like to submit a poem for future consideration, go to www.the-muse.org and click on the Port Folio Weekly tab at the top of the page. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy the poems in this issue.
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