Poetry Introduction for Issue 25
As usual, I am proud of our contributing poets for Silver Blade Issue 25.
Deborah P. Kolodji is our Featured Poet and her introduction and interview are found here. To show a small sampling of her talent, Deborah Kolodji (Pasadena, CA) shares her favorite form, haiku: two singular pieces “spent lilacs” (Gromagon Press) and “morning launch” (Scifaikuest) subtly science fiction, followed by a fanciful series of linked fantasy and Sci Fi haiku [“Bashō after Cinderella”*(Rattle), part of which won the 2013 Dwarf Stars Award; “Bashō on the Back Road to Camelot” (Dragons, Knights, and Angels); and “Seasons of a Time Traveler” (Mythic Delirium)]. Her set closes with a beautiful science fiction poem “Equations of a Sonata” that’s as much of a love poem as it is a eulogy.
This segues nicely into a poem “Weathering” by Sandi Leibowitz (Astoria, NY), also about loss, and without sentimentality. The delightful storytelling prose poem “Deaamoo’s Passage” by Deborah Guzzi (Monroe, CT), organically continues what the preceding poems started.
The somewhat darker work with the chant-like structure in the poem “House of the Blind” by Marchell Dyon (Chicago, IL) has nuances of both a rant and a prayer. Like Guzzi’s poem, Dyon’s also has a spiritual subtext. The prolific Australian poet, John Grey (Johnston, RI), presents a very dark poem “The Tattooed Lady”.
There’s a different kind of darkness in the last two poems, both bring mystery and fantasy. An Academy of American Poets Award winner, Laura Madeline Wiseman (Lincoln, NE), brings us an unusual fantasy poem “Crossing the Fairy Threshold”, which is part of a growing collection of fairy neverland poems, and John Reinhart closes us with the pensive and poignant piece “lost in the forest”, which is part of a longer previously published piece [“Dark Light” (Interfictions)].
Please enjoy their work.
John C. Mannone
Poetry Editor
Silver Blade