Radar Poetry is excited to celebrate the New Year and our one-year anniversary.
To mark this auspicious occasion, Issue 5 features an interview with renowned poet Edward Hirsch, whose collection Gabriel: A Poem was released by Alfred A. Knopf in 2014. The insights and revelations he shares in this interview compel us to think in new directions about poetry. Change is in the air, and he reminds us of the ways our interest in and understanding of poetry continue to evolve.
Hirsch tells us, after the death of his beloved son, "I used to believe in poetry in a way that I don't now. I used to feel that poetry would save us… [Poetry] has its limitations, as people do, and I've come up against them. It is a great art, not a salvation." After reading well over 1,000 submissions in the past year, we must confess that we do not feel saved. Rather, we feel elevated into the secret society of unsung editors and at one with our fellow poets as we continue to write our own poetry.
While we never plan for the interview to link in any cohesive way to the poems in each issue, we can't help but notice how things tend to come together. In Issue 5, it's the power of the parent-child relationship that is explored by several of these fine poets. There are also poems that enter the realm of pop culture, where they balance humor and pathos in disarming ways. And poems that dwell in the well-traveled world, where there is no shortage of mystery.
So here's to another year! We raise our pens and cursors to everyone reading, writing, and dreaming in poetry.
Rachel Marie Patterson and Dara-Lyn Shrager, Editors