Dear readers,
On Thursday, I awoke to the news that Anne Carson had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. My first encounter with Carson was If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho—her translation of Sappho’s entire collection of surviving work. Unlike previous translations, Carson used square brackets and empty spaces to signify where Sappho’s original text was lost or destroyed. Instead of filling in the gaps, Carson allowed the negative spaces to speak for themselves.
This inquiry into what is missing and what remains unsaid has seeped into the way I read and write. I spent a whole year studying the modernist poet H.D. (another one of Sappho’s translators!) and how her forms of literary silence are intertwined with her lesser-known queer identity. Silence invites us to linger for a moment and consider what has been lost. But rather than rushing to recover this loss, we find new ways to talk and write about it.
In this issue, our writers reflect on some of the slower, more mundane parts of their lives: the moments where silence is pervasive and words fail to capture what already goes unnoticed and undiscussed. Yet these pieces find ways to imbue silence and stillness with new life and perspective, while honoring what makes them important.
Beatrice Beale Tate meditates on what she had not experienced and had not lost during COVID-19 through the lens of a fictional novel. Sharon Chou reimagines the everyday lives of the Lowell Mill Girls. Eleanor Belifanti revels in doing nothing at a school that demands constant productivity. Hailey Wondem reminisces on the tiny details of a friend when they were still a stranger. Among many more beautiful pieces.
Most daringly,
Angel and Hudson
