The natural and human-made disasters that challenged our planet while this issue of Corridors came together made our collective editorial eye especially sensitive to the writer’s genuine need for a sense of place. Western landscapes figure as full characters in Mona Houghton’s “On the Desert-Side of the San Gabriel Mountains” and in Cheryl Klein’s “The Friendliness Manifesto,” while the mystery of Christine Poulson’s “A Trick of the Light” is fed by the English countryside.
In the excerpts from Katharine Haake’s novel, The Time of Quarantine, the planet’s demise directs much of the story line although there is evidence of a paternal ruse, too.
Steve Joyce’s narrator in “Love at Devereux Point” would never ponder why “love is like krill” without the Channel Islands. The subjects of Patty Seyburn’s “Ode to Ikey Solomon” and “Elegy for Richard Munslow,” as well as the grandmother in Kenneth Gurney’s “Intruder” would lack back stories without England and Chicago, respectively. Alinda Wasner’s “Home Improvement” and Ellen Foos’s “Evening Out” may not mention a town or state, but their poems do unfold in neighborhoods that feel homey and familiar.
Alan Reed’s cover photo and illustrations tease a natural magnificence even from the commonplace, while the photo-poems by Olivia Ambrogio and Netty Hoagland, all shot on Cape Cod, remind us how much artistry has been inspired and nurtured by the coastal shores.
Perhaps politics will continue to make science less trustworthy by constant challenge, but the work included here bears witness to a beauty that we do trust and cannot afford to lose.
— Jane Dobija, Editor