I'm honored to be included in the fabulous new issue of Guesthouse. Special thanks to Jane Huffman for her thoughtful discussion of my poems--
I struggled to end this foreword, perhaps because all 30 of these pieces move with tremendous, ongoing energy. I feel propelled forward by their stories and songs, which tell not of ends but of beginnings and middles, upsets and restarts, histories made and re-made. And so instead, I’ll let Ethel Rackin have the last word, whose triptych of modified ghazals beautifully and strangely embody the issue’s theme of “origin.” They re-imagine the “ghazal,” a traditional Arabic poetic form, first recorded in the seventh century, that requires several formal elements. Rackin chooses to emphasize a single traditional parameter — that the poet name themselves. As such, these poems honor the form’s ancient origin to an extent, but they stand on their own, formless and irreverent. “Tomorrow is gone—,” she writes in “Red Ghazal,” which could stand in as a thesis statement for Issue 8 at large. “Raise the red lantern / blue heron nights / faded red sun / end the errands / the distractions / [. . .] / your last day’s come / Ethel Rackin.” I extend the same call to you, reader, as you enter to Issue 8.
Jane Huffman, editor-in-chief
