EMIT AND EDIT

William Carlos Williams' poem "The Right of Way" brings all editorial circumstance into perspective, in its own way:1 The Right of Way In passing with my mind on nothing in the world but the right of way I enjoy on the road by virtue of the law- I saw an elderly man who smiled and looked away to the north past a house- a woman in blue who was laughing and leaning forward to look up into the mans half averted face and a boy of eight who was looking at the middle of the man's belly at a watchchain- The supreme importance of this nameless spectacle sped me by them without a word- Why bother where I went? for I went spinning on the four wheels of my car along the wet road until I saw a girl with one leg over the rail of a balcony In this poems paces and destinations it becomes clear what the difference may be between a bypassing sensibility, weaving mere gestural glimpses into stories of human connection, and one that pauses to investigate a more abiding human ambiguity. Whatever else the nature of the encounter is, it is an encounter that has to stop its vehicle to investigate its avocation or its activation; has to halt its careless hurtling, to unfold into a real relation, not slide by on a blur of glimpse and type. Among the writers we've assembled here you'll find redemptive rhetorics of weather, decipherable stars, children who don't speak for years, parents who can speak no longer, people calling people animals, signs of disappearance, a word that's given, then is folded like a map to secret places, some "small speakings," and several foreign languages.