We start this year with Colorado’s new Poet Laureate, David Mason. David answered my interview questions bravely, in a deeply personal and knowledgeable way, giving readers insight both into himself as a man and a poet and into the beliefs and musings of many other poets he’s studied intimately. I love the way many of David’s poems sound like they’re whispering secrets to me in the dark, and while we’re surrounded by mystery and people, we are, at the same time, completely alone. It also makes me happy that Mason enjoys playing with language, as in his poem “Self Portrait with Muscovite,” and that his longing to preserve and name things that are passing exists even in playfulness.

Mari L’Esperance, I’m delighted to say, is up next. Every time I read her poems, I feel a sense of inner calm. I find myself meditating, for instance, on just how small and beautiful the surface of the world really is; how the expansive inner world, just beyond the surface and simultaneously mixing with the surface, is what living is really about; and how emptiness, nothingness, which we may find in death, is peaceful, something to join with grace and ease. These days, I love a poem that relaxes me, and Mari’s poems are excellent at doing that.

If your socks haven’t been knocked off yet, try reading Thomas Reiter’s awe-inspiring poetry. Thomas uses poignant, original language to describe discoveries about places and their histories, and the way they align with his own (or his speaker’s) history. Just listen to the sounds, histories, and discoveries in these lines:

We’re all involved: the author, the characters in the poems, and the readers: we’re all fully engaged in finding out the secrets in these poems, working out our place among them, and forging our relationships with them.

I’m pleased as punch this month to include Judy Kronenfeld in the poetry column. Judy’s a friend to many of us on staff, and she’s a marvelous poet. One thing I think is cool about these poems is how different each one is. As you’ll see, Judy is very versatile; she writes using line breaks and she writes prose poems. More than that, her voice and subject matter are versatile. In one poem, she writes about a moment mistakenly and heartbreakingly understood to be a deeply intimate, though simple, touch. In the next poem, she writes a horrifying and yet funny critique of our increasingly mechanized society and where it’s leading us. At times she plays with sound; at times, she meditates. I’m very glad to be able to showcase a sampling of her work.

Tara Mae Schultz’s poem “The Red Shoes” is a wonderful juxtaposition of our wildest fantasies with the reality of daily life. The more I read this poem, the more real it becomes to me. The best poems have a way of doing that.

Our final artist this month is an engineer living in India, and we are delighted to welcome Ajit Peter to our pages. His poem is a devastating account of war and battles, written in a style we don’t see terribly often these days. I love that this poem can be read literally or figuratively, leaving itself open to readers’ interpretations, but still so filled with it’s author’s heart.

I am humbled and honored at the amazing poetry we’re receiving from such diverse writers. I hope you enjoy the poetry column this month as much as I do. And please come back next month for another State Laureate, and the introduction of our new Associate Poetry Editors: Monica Mankin and Nicelle Davis.