Erin Sweeten Preface Unsplendid 2.2 is hot off the virtual presses, and I'm delighted to kick off this issue with a short introduction. Putting together a group of poems for the journal with my fellow editors always inspires happiness because it affirms once again that there are plenty of good poems out there, worth reading and rereading. Sometimes readers and submitters try to put their finger on the particular aesthetic of the journal, but I'm not convinced that they (or we) have fully articulated it, beyond our embrace of poetry in form. I'm not convinced that we can, given the wide variety of tones, forms, and subjects that make their way into each issue. As I reread this particular batch of fine poems, though, I did notice something new about my personal aesthetic (I can't speak for my fellow editors, Jason and Doug).
I've been classed "outdoorsy" by city friends for my habit of finding a way, most weeks, off the concrete and out of the line of sight of any habitable structure. Despite my affinity for the fractured geometries of wild places that exist without taking me into account (as opposed to wilfully planned urban settings), poems about nature do not have a particular appeal for me. I enjoy many poems that address natural themes, but seldom because their subject is a mountain or a bird. I like them for their felicity with language or their sharpness of vision—in short, for their humanity.
There may be no more difficult challenge in poetry than to successfully incorporate the nonhuman: a swath of golden poppies growing according to some unseen pattern of sunlight and bird droppings, perhaps, or a feral cat knocking the lids off of garbage cans. That paradoxical impression of haphazardness and inevitability that is so palpable in the wild vanishes in the attempt to capture it on the page, particularly with poetry's imposition of human patterns on its subject. Nature's presence in a metrical poem works best—most of the time—when it doesn't stand alone, but is instead applied to some more human concern, as Robert Frost so ably demonstrated, not to mention the Romantics before him. The trick is not to strip it of too much wildness when you co-opt it.
This issue of Unsplendid contains several strong poems that balance the power of nature with the limits of thought and experience; Emily Leithhauser's "Elms" and "Boston Arboretum" come to mind as fine examples. Most of the poems in the issue, though, are firmly ensconced in social life and inhabited locales, a territory where both new and inherited forms seem more at ease. The rhythms and reflections of poetic creativity mesh particularly well with the rhythms of relationships and civilized life. The busy New York subway is the setting for Austin MacRae's "Grand Central Freeze" while Dennis Finnel, in "Literacy Project," focuses on a tutor/student encounter. In this batch of poems you will also find love, death, trash, and coffee, among other engines and residues of humanity. Enjoy, and let us know what you think.
Phoenix, AZ
March 1, 2009