From the Editor

Dear Reader,

It moves me that this eleventh issue of Bracken has been born, and I’m stirred to see how Bracken has evolved since its emergence in March 2016. This issue is one more turn in that evolution, akin, I think, to a further development in a human life. We find our purposes, and how to serve them, only as we grow, over time—coming into one’s own, it’s been called. It inevitably involves adapting to challenges—cultivating the gifts we discover under the press of our conditions.

Something about bracken ferns: they arise and grow best on disturbed ground. Well—our ground, Earth, is much disturbed in our era! Then why not let bracken, the fern, and Bracken, the journal, stand for what new life, beauty, and hope may come of disturbance!

I do believe the acute vision that makes for lasting art comes out of disturbance. The poet, photographer, painter, or playwright would just not bother if there were no trouble to stir the responsive affirmation of beauty or wonder that is art. Our arts work with, grow from, and thrive on the distress, despair, and powerlessness we witness and endure. Art makes hope out of hopelessness. Bracken grows in a burned-out lot.

Heidi Seaborn’s poem “Fish Story” begins “This story starts with a squall….” The poem would not have been written but for the devastation it shapes into an offer of company through our secret storms. Abbie Kiefer, in “I’ve Learned to Accept,” sings to us “of sparrows. Nesting in exhaust / vents, roof rafters, the hard hollow of a stoplight…,” offering us the sense of such unrelenting presences in our troubles. Kari Gunter-Seymour, in her poem “Until the Curly Dock and Buffalo Grass Cover Her in Green,” confesses “I pretend to be well-reasoned, a calm / flicker of light—not a shock of frantic flame…” and so joins us bravely in our own agitation.

We along with all forms wear down. Lynne Ellis, in her poem “Shore Body,” observes “Rip currents tongue / the curves of jasper, quartz, agate.” Time’s forces shape us and take us back. In her poem “At the Drive-In Volcano,” Jana-Lee Germaine speaks on behalf of all of us “leaning into plain force. Is this how it feels / to press back against the whole world…?” Here I remember also Lance Larsen’s line in “Channeling the Lesser Winged Gods” (in the voice of a swallow)… “I’m a living song that can hop and fly…,” and we’re moved to hear that brief song now, while we’re caught up in our own spin with time. Our evolved forms’ duration is at the constant cost of our individual brevity.

The visual offerings of cover artist Katrina Wolfe address and explore organicity itself with the eye of one who dances in the second-to-second erosion-work of time’s wind. Among this issue’s other graphic works, Chris Harris’s embody a steady reckoning with time’s press. I hope you’ll also find these two artists’ interviews uplifting as I do.

The brackens sprout, uncurl their fiddleheads, spread, and soon break down into the gritty earth they’re made of. They’ve been doing that for 55 million years. Dear reader, let’s lean into the gale and listen to the choruses at our flanks—these voices and visions of the artists in this new live cluster of Bracken. May we find renewed encouragement in such bold company!

Grateful for your care,

Jed Myers