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I hope fall everywhere is as beautiful as it is here in Atlanta. I can't remember this much
color and this many leaves still on the trees this late into November. I just want to stand out there in the
celebration it is. I feel that way, too, about Cortland Review's Issue 41. Instead of a falling, however, Daniel
Wallace's cover art gives us a burgeoning, and I envision this piece must have come into full bloom in the same
way Cortland Review's issues do. We start with something central, a core piece if you will, and build around that
with an eye for style, content, and color, still keeping to the Cortland Review aesthetic of what art is, and
everybody here with a hand in. Dan's piece, ink, charcoal, acrylic and collage on paper, is aptly titled
"Proliferation."
A painter/printmaker living in Baltimore, Maryland, Dan was born in New York, New York. He moved to Baltimore in
2001 to attend the Baltimore School for the Arts. He studied at The Glasgow School of Art in the fall of 2006,
and is currently a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. His paintings and prints have been exhibited
many times at the institutions he attended, as well as by business establishments, and currently hang in private
collections. Seriously intent on a career in art, he has received commissions for fine art, logo design and poster
design. This is the kind of art that, while it reflects how the world increases and flourishes, it's colors and
brush strokes propose an emergence in an intense calm and stability-exactly what this Cortland Review Issue wants
to stand for in our social, political, and emotional climate.
Amidst falling stocks, failed institutions, and a general uncertainty for those seeking or trying to hold onto
jobs, Cortland Review remains a steadying influence with another issue of the best writing around, and just in
time, too, for the fireplace season, moving, inclusively, via your armchair, from "The First Day of Spring" to
"A Christmas Story." And listen while Ross Gay praises his teachers:
. . . Tom Lux, who's just the kind of unbelievable teacher who is so deeply generous and thoughtful and considerate
and an amazing reader of poems, and who has an amazing ability to put the poem that the poet wants to write in front
of his own desires for the poem . . . and . . . Marie Howe . . . Joan Larkin . . . Rivard . . . and [Gerald Stern]
. . . a model for how to ingest the world in a way that a poet might do it-you know, he's really really really
engaged with the world. Deeply engaged with the world, so that his heart's really out there. And that's something
you don't learn how to do, necessarily. . . .to be deeply sensitive to the world that you're living in
With that, I'm sensing this is a good time to spill a secret only those who have hung on this long will know: TCR's
December Feature, one month away, is a Gerald Stern celebration with Gerald Stern poems, an essay about him, a book
review of his latest collection, "Save the Last Dance," and poetry from twenty of your favorite poets that he's
personally invited to the party. Whatever else you miss in the busy holiday season, you won't want to miss this!
Distinguished by its ten years of audio archives, once again TCR offers audio from all our poets via Adobe Flash
Player, probably already downloaded on your computer. With
Flash, audio is instantaneous. If you can't hear the audio, you need to download
Flash Player which
is free here. Audio
designated by the RealAudio symbol from Issues and Features prior to 2007 are still accessible via
RealPlayer. RealPlayer can be
downloaded free here.
NOTE: TCR is looking for a volunteer who will help convert our archived RealPlayer files to Flash files. If you have
some spare hours each week and want to give something back to the literary arts, please contact us at
[email protected] to become a TCR
hero.
Remember, too, that each available book title mentioned on our homepage and in our contributors' bios is linked
directly to amazon.com. You can help Cortland Review by purchasing any amazon.com book title via a TCR link.
We appreciate the support we get through your book purchases.
Thank you to all the Cortland Review staff for the dedication and hard work this represents.
Here it is. Issue 41
Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving!
Ginger Murchison
Editor
Haven't finished watching all of TCR's AWP (NYC '08) Tenth Anniversary Readings? Via the videos on YouTube, you
can still catch one of the best '08 AWP events at:
Laure-Anne Bosselaar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NFMA1pD4pQ
Anne Marie Macari:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp4Mcu6ADuM
Maurice Manning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK5HPu2JTds
David Rigsbee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdSPo4sTOKw
Patricia Smith:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BE_G5kNIJM
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