Editor's notes

We have no actual way of knowing how long humans have been making poetry. The word poetry comes from the Greek word poiesis which means to make. Poetry began as an oral form, spoken or sung. Language is suggestion or gesture, so to utter a word is to make a symbol. Language is a reach, how we reach. Language is not a puzzle but it can be if one wants. Poems are not precious, they’re lived in. A poem shares genetics with music and comedy: breath, a precise level of withholding, all born and inextricable from a body. A poem is a crystalized object and a chipping away. A poem is interior design. A poem is a root of sound. Language is a single continuum of shadow. A poem is a direction. A poem has its own agenda. A poem is a gasp, a grasp. A poem is a call and response relationship with the world.