Our aim is to publish work that promotes discussions about literature's relationship to a sense of place, as it emerges from the exploration of individual histories and the environments they inhabit. Volume 2, Issue 1In This IssuePoetryDavid Eadington: Hanoi Market, Closing Henry Kearney, IV: Landscapes of the Body The Old Man Martin Ott: Body Catch Arthur Rimbaud (Translated by J. F. Quackenbush): A Season in Hell (excerpts) Claudia Sherman: The Scientist A Good Night's Work Ad Reinhardt Ballade JoSelle Vanderhooft: On the Necessity of Rain in a Dry Season FictionFrom the EditorsWelcome to the second issue of Xelas Magazine. In the interim between our first and second issues, we've had to say goodbye to John Maroon Chinworth and Chris Daikos. We are sorry to see them go, but wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors. Joining the Xelas Magazine editorial team is Margaret Clark, a Toronto-born fiction-writer and poet now residing in British Columbia, Canada. Margaret and I have spent many nights (and often mornings) excitedly discussing the directions in which we want to take Xelas Magazine. Our vision is to create here a kind of meeting place with a strong sense of and allegiance to individual histories. We aim to emulate the setting of a small town café, where very richly defined characters--residents and travelers alike--might converge to deliberate on the world as they know it. We are very pleased to bring you the selections in this issue. When reading them, we were first struck by their developed sense of place. More than that, though, each piece grapples with the limits of understanding: from works like Louise Norlie's "Endnotes" and JoSelle Vanderhooft's "On the Necessity of Rain in a Dry Season," which attempt to reclaim knowledge from beyond the grave, to Martin Ott's "Body Catch" and Zinta Aistar's "The Finger," which struggle with epiphany on the edge of death, to the offerings of J.F. Quackenbush, Claudia Sherman, and David Eadington, which treat language and culture--foreign and native alike--as the next unexplored territory. Yet throughout this collection, there exists a sense of resignation, too, in the face of how great a distance remains between what is observed and what is understood. This is perhaps best encapsulated in the final line of Henry Kearney's "Landscapes of the Body," which reads: What else would you have? suggesting that greater truths always lie just out of sight, and out of reach. We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you, and as always, we offer our sincerest thanks to our contributors, without whom none of this would be possible. Sincerely, Jennifer Armentrout and Margaret Clark |
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