Editor’s Note
PETER LABERGE
FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
For a variety of reasons, superstitions have always contended that the number thirteen carries with it bouts of inexplicable trouble. I don’t know if they’re onto something, but, after assembling this issue, I don’t see how it could be possible—not right now, not here, not in Adroit‘s brand-spankin’-new thirteenth issue.
The release of this issue is, in many ways, a celebration of sorts. The journal is riding off a month of record traffic and audience; it excites the editors and me to know our collective words are reaching more people more frequently than ever before. We are thrilled about the success of our emerging summer mentees and staff readers, who have recently represented the journal well as U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts, Best New Poets of 2015, Gigantic Sequins Teen Sequins, and Best Teen Writers of 2015. We are fortunate also to have started conversations, been a part of conversations, and (hopefully) inspired new conversations for the future. As the leaves outside have crisped and the days have begun to grow shorter, it seems it finally may be time for more words to come.
More than just the leaves have changed, however. For one thing, most student staff readers, mentees, and contributors have by now returned to the classroom for another year of growth. In addition, we are thrilled to welcome poet Lucia LoTempio as Adroit‘s new Managing Editor, as well as Garrett Biggs, Isabella Nilsson, and Jackson Holbert as newly-crowned poetry and prose editors. Beyond structural changes, however, it seems this issue in particular asks us to consider change in a variety of new (and familiar) forms. Sam Sax’s brilliant “fraternity” dislodges space and distance from convention, allows existence in the nebulous world of somewhere. Jessica Goodfellow’s stunning “Map of the Disaster Site” reckons with “permanent impermanence,” with “breathing in and out the black ink of not knowing.” Michael Bazzett’s beautiful “Departure” grapples with making sense of an ever-changing world.
And on the subject of change, it seems more important than ever to remember that someone is always in a different body, in a different place, living a different life. The world will never make sense to all of us simultaneously. The world will never pause to let us observe it. To write is to immortalize brief fleeting moments of self-clarity. To share—something, anything—is to inspire moments of this clarity in others. To read is to open the self to foreign clarity, and accept it as your own.
More than ever, we want to understand. But, as these poems show, sometimes it is best to accept the somewheres, to accept the impermanence, the ever-spinning world. Sometimes it is best to say I know I don’t know. Let these poems say that, let you hear that, and let us learn.
Autumnly,
Peter LaBerge
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
The Adroit Journal
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