To Our Readers - The Georgia Review - University of Georgia

To Our ReadersJudith Kitchen wrote her first semiannual essay-review of new poetry collectionsfor our pages nearly twenty-five years ago (Summer 1988); her title was“Speaking Passions,” and she discussed volumes by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Li-Young Lee, Heather McHugh, Linda Pastan, and William Stafford. For Winter2012, Kitchen looks at Alice Derry, Kathleen Flenniken, Lola Haskins, JohnHodgen, and the current United States poet laureate Natasha Trethewey underthe title “With a Little Help from My Friends,” but as far as the essay’s tone andenergy are concerned she could quite appropriately have called it . . . yes . . .“Speaking Passions.” I consider this latest offering to be among a small handfulof Kitchen’s best among the almost fifty she has written for us—a number thattranslates to about 250 books highlighted across 800 or more Georgia Reviewpages—and I urge you not to miss it.Writing in the aftermath of 9/11 about the public-political faces of poetry(“In Trouble,” Summer 2003), Kitchen remarked that “I have promised myselfnot to comment on any poem about September 11, 2001 until the year 2006—or, at the very least, until we can begin to understand the larger context inwhich our loss of innocence is just one part.” I recall these measured criticalwords now because the lead piece in this issue, the story “Luminaria” by ChristopherRoss, is the first work we have published whose underpinning is thatsui generis American tragedy. I claim no inherent virtue for either Ross or TheGeorgia Review in the decade-plus lag, but I believe that as you read this richfiction you will recognize the value of Kitchen’s insistence on the importantperspective only time can bring.Christopher Ross is making his first appearance in our pages, as areDavid Roderick, Doug Ramspeck, and Brian Simoneau—and Jeffrey Meyerswearing his essayist cap, though he’s done several reviews for us. We alwayslike such an infusion of new voices, which this time balances nicely with acouple of blasts from the relatively distant past—Patricia Corbus and LaurieKutchins, who were last with us in 1996 and 2004, respectively—and withthe latest appearances by some long-term semi-regulars: Coleman Barks,Stephen Dunn, and Paul Zimmer. (I’m not sure how to classify MaxineKumin, whose various appearances in The Georgia Review include a poem in2009, a poetry chapbook feature in 2001, and a poem in 1956—this last perhapsmost relevant to her essay offering here about the broad, career-longarc of her development and radical shifts as a poet.) The never-conservative[ 703 ]

704 the georgia reviewJulia Elliott makes a second GR stop with her story “Rapture”—in Summer2006 we featured “The Whipping”—and René Houtrides makes hersecond with “Griffonia” (see “Knife, Barn, My Harvey” from Spring 2007).I mention this mix of Georgia Review contributors not because it is unusualbut because it isn’t, yet it may generally go unnoticed; we aren’t the Girl Scoutsaround here, but in our own way we do subscribe to the opening two lines oftheir classic motto/jingle. (We don’t have a first-ever-publication-anywhereauthor in this issue—a favorite category of ours—but we do have one waitingon deck.)The just-released Pushcart Prize XXXVII includes two GR offerings, HarryCrews’s early-career memoir piece “We Are All of Us Passing Through” (Winter2011) and Adrian Blevins’ poem “Tally” (Fall 2011), so we offer our congratulationsto Blevins and pay our respects to the memory of the recently deceasedCrews (1935–2012).If you are in attendance at the 2013 Association of Writers and Writing Programsin Boston, please come to our session featuring readings by four of thecontributors to our University of Georgia Press anthology, Stories Wanting Onlyto Be Heard: Fiction from Six Decades of The Georgia Review. I warrant irrevocablythat Jack Driscoll, Jim Heynen, George Singleton, and Liza Wieland willall regale and/or amuse you with their distinctive writing and reading styles.(Oh . . . and if you haven’t purchased your copy of this book, please considerdoing so now. You can get it from us or through the UGA Press.)Two practical reminders: (1) You can now subscribe to The Georgia Review indigital as well as print format. Either version can be yours for only $35, and forjust $10 more you can have both. (2) Our Spring 2013 issue will bring a smallrise in our subscription price, so you would be wise to renew now at the currentrates (and to purchase those gift subscriptions you’ve been thinking aboutbut haven’t yet acted upon).Correcting an oversight: Longtime (1977–2000) Georgia Review editor StanleyW. Lindberg, my boss and friend for seventeen years, passed away in the firstmonth of this century, but in ways large and small he is still with me nearlyevery day. I was greatly pleased when portions of his 1987 monograph, TheLegacy of Erskine Caldwell, fit so well into our Georgia Writers Hall of Fame issue