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What’s New, What’s Not

By: Martin Lammon

I’m writing the week after the fourth anniversary of the attacks against our country on September 11, 2001. These past four years, so much has changed, so much hasn’t, and so I thought I’d take this opportunity to address what’s new, and what’s not.

Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans, perhaps our nation’s most unique city, a combination of Old World savoir-faire and New World joie de vivre. I had many friends and acquaintances living in the city and throughout Louisiana. In New Orleans, there was Biljana Obradoviç and her husband, John Gery; Richard Ford, John Biguenet, Mona Lisa Saloy, Rick Barton, Bill Lavender, and Peter Cooley (a contributor to Arts & Letters); so many others. From Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere: Ernest and Dianne Gaines (our first issue featured an interview with Ernest); Dave Smith, Darrell Bourque; so many others.

I know that I am writing this introduction two months before most readers will have the issue. But I am certain that, in the weeks ahead, “what’s new” will be the ongoing response to a Gulf Coast post-Katrina. Longtime friend and contributor to Arts & Letters, Bret Lott, is the new The Southern Review at LSU in Baton Rouge. He is working hard to support students and others displaced by the hurricane. Anyone interested in helping his heroic efforts, please e-mail me and I will put you in touch.

In Iraq, little has changed. Since I referred to that war in my introduction to our last issue, over 2,000 Americans have now died (compared to over 1,500 the last time I wrote). Some might say that our casualties could be much higher. But as I wrote in issue 13, let us never forget that each man and woman who dies is a tragic loss to those who loved that person. Let us never accept any numerical analysis of “acceptable” losses.

What’s new: In the aftermath of Katrina, President Bush has called for billions of dollars to support poor and displaced people, including a plan to fund educational programs that will help local residents qualify for jobs to rebuild their neighborhoods, businesses, schools, in sum, their lives. What’s not: Our country still has no clear plan to address huge deficits that, after Katrina (in conjunction with the cost of two wars and tax cuts), may double earlier estimates this year.

Forgive me. This introduction strays from the issue at hand (in your hands). These days, the world distracts me from my work. But I’m especially proud of this issue, which includes former contributors Janice Eidus, R. T. Smith, Luke Whisnant, and Alex Grant. I’m even more pleased by all our first-time contributors: Donald Morrill, Todd Davis, Cecile Gray, Jo McDougall, K. L. Cook, and 13 other first time contributors. As editors, we especially enjoy publishing new contributors.

This issue features ongoing series that our readers look forward to: Gwendolyn Turnbull interviews award-winning playwright Tina Howe (who this year joins our Editorial Advisory Board), and our World Poetry Translation series features Kirk Nesset’s translations of Eugenio Montejo, Venuzuela’s premier contemporary poet.

Among our new contributors, I want to especially acknowledge the winners of the Arts & Letters $1,000 prizes in poetry and fiction, Joanna Goodman and Jacob Appel selected, respectively, by Christian Wiman and Julianna Baggott (who has two poems herself in this issue). Works by E. K. Narey and Kathleen Graber (as well as second-time contributor Alex Grant) were selected for honorable mention. Arts & Letters brings Goodman and Appel to campus this fall (November 18-20) for readings and other programs. In our spring issue, our drama winner Phillip William Brock (selected by Naomi Wallace) will see his award-winning play published, and we will bring him to campus for a production of his play, March 24-25.

This year, I’m especially proud to announce our first endowed prize in the Arts & Letters competition. The Arts & Letters/Rumi prize in poetry will honor our late friend and former Poetry editor, Susan Atefat-Peckham. For more information about the prize and our endowment, please visit our web site at http://al.gcsu.edu.

In this issue, also new is our “Notes on Books Received” section. In the past, we usually featured essay-reviews on books from a single press, but lately we’ve received so many books from a variety of presses, or books from authors we’ve published (or considered publishing) that we’ve decided to shift to shorter reviews by our editorial staff. This way, we hope to acknowledge more books that we feel our readers might be interested in acquiring. We recommend all books noted here, but I emphasize that reviewers have critical autonomy in their assessment of books assigned to them.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge some “news” for our MFA program, starting with our new hire in poetry, Laura Newbern, who also joins the editorial staff this year. And I want to congratulate one of our Assistant Editors, Miller Oberman, who was recently selected for a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, worth $15,000, from the Poetry Foundation (publishers of Poetry Magazine). Such “news” represents for me what our MFA program, and what this journal, expect from our editorial staff and our contributors alike: Great Writers are Great Readers.

I hope that in the months ahead, when I write the introduction to our spring issue, the news will be better for those whose lives have been wrenched by hurricanes and wars. I hope that what’s new will improve upon what’s not.

Arts & Letters

Campus Box 89

Georgia College & State University

Milledgeville, GA 31061

(478) 445-1289

al@gcsu.edu

Arts & Letters accepts submissions from September 1 to March 1 (postmark deadlines). For complete information, see submission guidelines.