Editor's Note

Poet and artist, Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli, began our cover art piece, My God, Your God, with only the slightest thread of an idea, setting down layers of color to suggest water, sky, an edge of land. Intending to "stir things up," Pavlicek-Wehrli used letter stencils to disrupt the basic elements of a conventional landscape. The red spine-like shape on the left intends to suggest the idea of a human presence. Where this shape moves into two yellow lines, the painting becomes a conversation, even an argument, between two different voices, represented in the no, the no again, then the yes. The right, wider side of the image is more muted, atmospheric, water-like and cooler than the red-yellow heat of the left. When the painting appeared to map an interior conversation that was vaguely theological, Pavlicek-Wehrli applied the stencils my god and your god.

Every issue of The Cortland Review develops in just that same way, the admitting of voices that sound from various corners to shape something new, and here we go again with new poems from Thomas Balkany, Bruce Bond, Kristene Brown, Jeff Burt, Regina Colonia-Willner, David Cooke, William J. Cordeiro, Cheney Crow, Sharon Dolin, David Faldet, Martin Jude Farawell, Sohelia Ghaussy, Ann Herlong-Bodman, Michael Lauchlan, James Lineberger, John Mahnke, Neil McCarthy, Michael Montlack, Dave Nielsen, Mark Thomas Noonan, Linda Pennisi, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Robert Lavett Smith, Phillip Terman, Randi Ward and Yim Tan Wong, with new fiction from Linda McCullough Moore and Kirk Nesset.

Welcome to Issue 65 in The Cortland Review's 17th year of poems online with ten features, so far, in HD video and our Jane Hirshfield feature upcoming in April, 2015.

Thanks to the entire Cortland Review staff, all of whom donate their time to bring you the best in poetry and fiction, thanks to the poets and writers who trust us with their work, and thanks to you readers for faithfully returning issue after issue, and especially to those who stop to tell us how you use The Cortland Review, your favorite piece in an issue, or just because you want us to know you're out there. You are why we do this.

Cheers, and a happy fall from all of us at The Cortland Review,
Chard DeNiord, Contributing Editor
David Rigsbee, Contributing Editor
David Moody, Audio Editor
Rick Tracy, Photography Editor
Amy MacLennan, Managing Editor
Anna Catone, Poetry Editor
Christian Gullette, Poetry Editor
Jennifer Wallace, Poetry Editor
Elizabeth Cornell, Fiction Editor
Ginger Murchison, Editor-in-Chief
and
Guy Shahar, Founder and Editor Emeritus

Cheers,
Ginger Murchison
Editor