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Editors' Notes Summer 2023
It’s summer and adventure is calling; I want you to hear it from these pages. I’m honored and joy-filled to hold open this space for both emerging and established creators in my favorite season. The weather alone doesn’t make me partial; it’s the sense of exploration. And please, do just that: Explore. This issue was curated like a mixtape, a playlist you can experience in order, or at random. The aim was to take you places and if you’ve been stuck in the mire routine can cultivate, hopefully, something in these pages inspire you to go somewhere (in mind or otherwise) and relish the moment. Be relished.
Fresh and saltwater vignettes abound, mountain ranges and urban terrain offer you grounds to contemplate. The range of styles, voice, and topic serve up amouche-bouche. Take several sittings to indulge your way through the Summer 2023 Issue.
Special thanks to our Contributors, to our Founding Editor Tayve Neese, and to Faith Earl who worked with me to produce what you see today. As a final note, I point to a Barbara Guest quote, “Regard the poem as plastic. It is moveable, touchable. It is a viable breathing substance.” Remember, you are a poem. -Fati D.
Fresh and saltwater vignettes abound, mountain ranges and urban terrain offer you grounds to contemplate. The range of styles, voice, and topic serve up amouche-bouche. Take several sittings to indulge your way through the Summer 2023 Issue.
Special thanks to our Contributors, to our Founding Editor Tayve Neese, and to Faith Earl who worked with me to produce what you see today. As a final note, I point to a Barbara Guest quote, “Regard the poem as plastic. It is moveable, touchable. It is a viable breathing substance.” Remember, you are a poem. -Fati D.
The world is thawed, and the child in all of us remembers the freedom of summer and looks out. That’s what the Summer 2023 Issue of The Banyan Review is all about. The lines from Lumina Millers Blue Drum, "We soil our feet in Lake Superior's grit./ Her fervent wake hits on time,/ a Pisces of a bass drum./ His cautious blues drift over/ and hold under a swelling moon." and t.m. thomson's Tidal, "decayed bedding of sedge & fern & rush/ spreading mud with hands webbed/ like bat wings & a tail like/ orca's tongue," come to mind.
In this issue, we find a collection of moments rooted in pure presence and motion, from ocean swimming to club dancing. The thru-line here becomes that ability to be fully alive in a moment, both through living it and through reading it again. And that’s the gift we hope to offer you in these pages.
-Faith Earl
In this issue, we find a collection of moments rooted in pure presence and motion, from ocean swimming to club dancing. The thru-line here becomes that ability to be fully alive in a moment, both through living it and through reading it again. And that’s the gift we hope to offer you in these pages.
-Faith Earl
