Notes from the Editor

Ideas are like fish, says David Lynch (Catching Big Fish).
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water.
But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.

I have been mulling over the quote from David Lynch’s book on mediation and creativity for a few weeks now. Part of the thrill for me of the turn to autumn, blue skies breezing through to cooler evenings, is the pull to go ­in. We are turning towards the dark even as we pick the last of the blueberries, peel the apples, or put up the pears—a last ramp-up of activity, the harvest, before the quiet of winter. We stock the larder to prepare ourselves for the turn.

Perhaps this collection of poetry will serve in a similar manner. It, too, represents a harvest and a kind of “putting up” for those pieces that call you back for another read.

Within this issue, where Sam Siegel crowns each series of poems with his whimisical magical landscapes inspired by his sojourns into the natural world of Vancouver, BC, you will also find that Arianne True’s “Seattle Sonata” struck a chord with several contributors—the many ways to think of home as well as the multiplicity of circumstances that can make it irretrievable. Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right when he said you can’t go home again. Or is home something you carry with you, no matter the changes in geography, a constant thing like a resonance in your core that can’t be removed? Is it, as Arianne suggests, a matter of blood—that as living organisms within the organism of a community, we are part of the life blood of any place we inhabit? For Ry Cooder (“3^rd Base, Dodger Stadium”), home is “just a place you don’t know, up a road you can’t go.” Colonialism, gentrification, or so-called progress have repeatedly and radically altered the landscapes many have called home. Enjoy the thoughtful explorations on these pages and see which voices most strike a chord within you.

As you dive into this issue, I hope you, too, can go deeper, and catch the Big One–that big idea that sets your creative world on fire.

With gratitude,
Rachel Barton