This month, we’re celebrating the second birthday of Connotation Press and all of the amazing artists
we’ve had the privilege of sharing with the world, and we’re looking forward to all of the good things that the coming year will bring. I am deeply grateful that, as Poetry Editor, I get to live in a world of artists in this purple palace – at least, in the connotation of one – and that those artists work in so many different genres. I love that I share this space with food writers and now a food show, an exceedingly (and often snarkily) charming travel column, and fantastic creative work in many more genres. Being part of Connotation Press has been like hanging out on a foam rubber moon. There’s plenty of give so that each of us editors can shape our section and so that all kinds of shapes can comfortably squish right in. Like the song says, “It wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me.” Thanks for believing in us and making our non-paper moon a reality. And now, everyone take a deep breath in and blow out the birthday candles. It’s time to start a whole ’nother year!
Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, shares with us rich, colorful stories of her worldwide and local adventures in a wonderful interview as well as poetry inspired by the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Carolyn’s poems shift between earth and the ethereal and back, full of sensually rich imagery like the art that inspired it. I also feel inspired by her cooking suggestions. I think I’ll try out some new dishes!
Sandy Longhorn returns to the column this month with three poems and a great interview with Associate Poetry Editor Nicelle Davis. I love Sandy’s Midwestern magical realism and the landscapes she navigates – dens and alleys with a coyote; the human body with a yellow jacket and her venom. Ms Longhorn’s poem “The Nature of Conflict,” starting out soft-spoken as fleece, perfectly captures a kind of conflict that can arise even from love. I am drawn to Sandy’s tone over and over again; there is something about it that speaks to and comforts me.
Diane Lockward joins the column this month, and I think what I like best about her poetry is the way it peeks into other people’s lives in a way that feels secretive even though those lives have been publicized in a way, in true crime
books for example, or when those people leave an artifact behind for others to find. The feeling of these poems reminds me of being smitten with detectives when I was little, and makes me realize all over again how connected we all are—how the things we learn about others affect our lives, and how our lives affect the way we understand other people.Paul Scot August brings to the column three water-, memory-, and dream- filled poems that made my heart hurt but filled me with music and the sound of the ocean. I’ve scratched sad music into the sand, watched waves at night, and joyfully inspected and rearranged driftwood and other little treasures the ocean deposited on the sand, and Mr. August’s poems brought me right back to these times as he, in delicate detail, related memories by both dredging them up and attempting to momentarily drown them.
Laura McCullough contributes two delectable food-related poems to this month’s column. These poems delight the senses and leave me hungry, with rich flavors on my tongue and fiery images in my head. At some point, I just have to try the foam she writes about.
Rose Hunter also brings us two poems this month. These poems are strong and hard, and I love Roses’s voice here: fierce and rough with just a hint of fragility. She got me with the lines, “shh, I say, I have to live here, and / don’t step on a toad.”
Step on inside, folks; we all live here. Be sure to come back next month, too, when Mari L’Esperance and J.P. Reese will join the column as Associate Poetry Editors – I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us. And don’t step on a toad.