Dear Reader,
Who knew that a can-can dancer from the posters of Toulouse Lautrec would pull a poet to Montmartre more than a century later? Would you expect not one but two poets to seize on O’Keefe’s view as seen through a cow’s pelvis? What of Wassily Kandinsky’s gallloping horse? Or Bruce King’s horses in the rain? The murals of William Cummings and Judith Baca? Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Poppies? Add Turner, Hopper, Hassam, Ossawa, and de Chirico. Théo Rysselberghe and Taras Shevchenko.
Each poet took a moment to step into the shoes of an artist, to try on another lens onto the world. We reap the benefits of their curiosity and creativity in the pages of this issue.
And don’t forget the inspiration of selected poets: Mary Oliver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Margaret Atwood, Eavan Boland, Erica Goss, Gerry LaFemina, Meridel Le Sueur, and musician Jacque Derrida.
What a glorious community! Our ranks do swell when we reach out. The forty contributing poets comprise a blend of new and familiar voices, the sum wrapped in the Wisdom Cloaks of artist Helen Geglio, with an intensity of hand-stitching-like-mapping, enough to bring you center.
This is the twentieth issue of Willawaw and may be the last, at least for a while. I’m feeling a pull to move on, to cross an horizon not yet visible. It is with great joy that I offer this most recent anthology with the hope that it will help to sustain you though these interesting times. We are so much more than the chaos currently fomenting. Keep the faith.
Yours in poetry,
Rachel Barton
