In my letter from the editors for Sweet Tree Review’s Winter 2020 issue, I spoke about the ways that the ordinary can be extraordinary. I examined, prompted by the stunning works in that issue, the way forgotten things, covered in dust and tucked away from the world, hold palpable surprise and beauty. So much has happened since that letter. For most of us, the concept of a pandemic was a far away thing. Just a concept, a word, really. The idea that we could lose more than 500,000 lives in our country alone would have shocked me, dropped me right to the floor. Over this last year, we have endured unmistakable tragedy. We have lived with fear, consciously or otherwise, on a daily basis. Now, as we approach the one-year mark of when our world was turned upside down, how do we begin to process what we’ve been through? How do we hold the events of this last year in our hands and begin to understand them? How do we start to move forward when we are still so much in the ongoing?
In her 1975 commencement address at the University of California, Joan Didion said, “I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture.” In this event, we will make progress. But while we may not yet feel progress in our daily lives, while we still may feel fear more than anything else, we can continue to live in this world. We can look at it, as it is now and as it has been over these past twelve months. We can process and examine each puzzle piece, understanding how they fit or don’t fit, and acknowledging their place in it all. We can tell our stories and the stories of those who we’ve lost.
The fiction and poetry in this issue examine their own worlds too. They do not look at our past year, but at their own pasts and possible futures. They try to get the picture, gazing up at odd angles and down from impossible heights. They try to see the scope of each moment even when it feels like peering through yellowed and warped glass. They live and they work to see.
We hope this issue brings you many moments of light, many spaces to pause and see something that you can hold. We hope this issue brings you a breath of relief. And when that breath passes and you move back into living and seeing your own life, we hope it makes that living a little brighter for today.
With warmth,
Hannah Newman & Jesse Ewing-Frable
Sweet Tree Review