INTRODUCTIONS: A READING LOOP

        Dedicated to the memory of Thomas B. Gay, educator, painter, poet, friend.
        (read more about Thomas B. Gay)

Each spring we use this reading loop to bring to your attention a group of writers and visual artists whose work you may be encountering for the first time, and in this issue, the group includes several who have already made their way to other lists and anthologies acclaiming their remarkable work. We expect that you will be glad to discover them now—and to hear of them again later in their careers, as you no doubt will. Beginning with this issue, we wish to dedicate Introductions to the memory of Thomas B. Gay; a bequest from his estate funds the honoraria of the artists we introduce here.

Kathy Davis Warning: these elegant narratives are not what they seem. While the subject matter of her poems might at first seem relatively innocent—a conversation with a farrier, a bout of late-night wakefulness, a day in the life of a Grand Ole Opry comedienne—Kathy Davis leads the unwary reader into surprising and dangerous territory.

Adam Day From Poland to Kentucky, from 1910 to 2000, Adam Day takes us through time and geography into the core of compassion, caring, and loss, but his is not a sentimental journey. Rather than tell us how we should feel about life-changing events, he conveys much through shades of shifting light—ocean and fog and clouds, a “ghostly garage light,” “sun-glare,” and “a sun-shot haze of rain.”

Kavita Dorai Kavita Dorai is a multi-talented physicist who conducts research and teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. “A Distant Death” efficiently and lyrically sketches the grief of a parent whose soldier son has been killed in action and who himself retired as a Lance Naik in the army. The ritual of grief is one that crosses boundaries of culture and class, and Dorai’s foray into this familiar territory reaches beyond common knowledge into the necessary mysteries of fiction.

Anne Germanacos “Until We Go To Sleep” tells a story in bits, through accumulating segments of information that combine to describe parents disappearing into dementia. Anne Germanacos creates a collage of relationship and realization that suits her subject to a tee. As she writes: “I remember the day the word ‘house’ came away from the thing house and all it meant. I kept saying, house. House? How-s? Then word and thing sewed themselves together, the chasm temporary.”

Richard Jespers We seem to live in a time when very little experience, physical or mental, is not filtered through the web of some sort of drug, and is perhaps dependent on it. The witty and inventive approach of “Basketball is Not a Drug” creates an offbeat journey down the middle-aged turnpike that is revelatory for all readers, whether or not they are saddened by the end of the NCAA season. We suspect you’ll join us in hoping that Richard Jespers will continue to provide us with many more such voyages.

AJ Liberto Blackbird’s third commissioned piece from VCU’s top-ranked graduate program in Sculpture and Extended Media features a shopping experience in an environment which, as stated in its creator’s note, is friendly “for all walks of life spanning the eons of the past.” AJ Liberto centers his work in “notions of parallel worlds and cosmic matchmaking.” We are invited to amuse ourselves while thinking twice about the totemic icons that might define us when we make choices—in shopping or otherwise—without thinking.
Davis, Day, Jespers, and Germancos also comment on their writing process in Tracking the Muse.

Introductions texts appear in different sections of Blackbird but are organized in this alternative menu, a featured reading loop allowing easy navigation of the material.

An Introductions menu link appears at the bottom of every Introductions-related page. You may also return to this menu at any time by visiting Features.