A piece of writing is a trap...the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.
                                Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair

          It's curious how some ideas come from the least expected sources. I was eating popcorn in bed reading Tad Williams's book out of boredom when I came across this concept—and have since then been fascinated by it. In many ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, when someone writes a poem or novel, the work imprisons the knowledge or experience inside itself and at the same time attempts to lure the reader into its world.

          As traps serve to capture an experience or concept, I find myself agreeing with D.H. Lawrence when he observed that you have to have something vicious in you to be a creative writer, especially when the ulterior purpose is to capture the mind of the reader as well.

          In the 12 poems in this issue, I found myself drawn to the combination of patience (forty years they've scanned the skies for intelligence), daring (no other way, except through fire), bluntness (I love you), and subtlety (how some books aren't for reading) they managed to weave—the movement resembling an artificial fly as it skims the river's surface so as to lure the salmon out of the water. In this context, perhaps the editor is nothing more than a fish waiting for really good ways to get hooked.

          Using favorite lines from each poem, I thought I'd make a cobweb of the current issue:


Summer 2009

This secret is not yours. It belongs to a raven:
             as a teenager, something terrible lived in this girl.
             Her shoes may once have been white.

Words well into worlds not here before. This galaxy carved from a maple
       scar—
barbed, harmless, ultimately untaken.

                                       { she's been waiting for the spider to finish
                                       and for feeling the weight of not knowing }

Sometimes, in the shower, of all places, you return
to her lips like goodbye—

tenements of river silt and kids of our own racing in the rain,
            opaque as thin slices of potato, you can tell
                        after a last song finishes.


Wishing everyone wonderful summer reading.

Arlene Ang
Spinea, Italy