Ovid’s Metamorphoses begins, “I want to speak of bodies changed into new forms.” Quoted in the poem “Dawn Again,” Ben Meyerson takes Ovid’s words of change, speaks those words of change, forms and re-forms those words. The present issue of Interim comes in a moment of change. Over a year ago, a pandemic began. That pandemic continues, and as statistics and guidelines and vaccine numbers shift, many are taking their first steps outside after a year marked by isolation. We emerge, aware that the world has changed this past year, finding ourselves as reader and writers changed.
As poetry must, the poems of this issue speak of change, metamorphosis, history, and newness inside the weight of history. The poetry of Stephen Bett speaks the words of poets, quoting their lines, transforming their lines, and speaking alongside their speech. The poetry of Thea Matthews and Nicholas Samaras speaks of streets and landscapes transformed and inhabited by protest. The poetry of Rachel Han and Livia Blum and Jay Aquinas Thompson speak of fire, Heraclitus’ element of change, and speak of a transformed environment, the California calendar marked by a season for wildfire.
Dawn Again—we may hope so. Our poets’ speak: “[D]awn upon the flat pasture”—“dawn hidden in the / intricate nerves & / muscles of this illuminated / hand”—“to recapture the category of the hopeful”—“I hope you will remember what is luminous in this new dark. // I hope you will find me on the other side”—“Was that you / who said every dawn was an image of dusk, you who made / yourself an ocean.” From the other side of change, we may speak of new forms. From the other side of hope, we may write and read in hope.
–Andrew S. Nicholson
Associate Editor