Issue > Editor's Note
Petrichor (scent of the first rain on dry soil)
36 x 36
Mixed media on wood panel
by Jennie Oppenheimer

Editor's Note

Celebrate with The Cortland Review as we begin our 20th year of continuous publication in text, audio--and for the last 5 years--video Poets in Person presentations. In 71 Issues and 56 Features, TCR has published the best of the best established poets as well as emerging ones, some with their first publication online and some with their first publication ever.

"Petrichor: (scent of the first rain on dry soil) is Jennie Oppenheimer's wonderful art contribution for our cover. Her mixed media paintings are the culmination of a creative practice that invites her to be both maker and witness, alternating between two states of mind: one of intentional mark making and the other guided by intuition, spontaneity and chance. It is a rich and engaging conversation that echoes her approach to life, a call and response with unseen forces, and a striving to make small poetic gestures out of happy accidents.

Jennie has enjoyed a rewarding career as an Illustrator, painter and educator. Her work is informed by a love of nature, poetry and intrepid global travel. She currently leads collage and painting retreats in the US and abroad that are designed to cultivate authentic voice and creative expression. For more information about her work or her art retreat schedule, contact Jennie at [email protected]

In Issue 71 The Cortland Review presents new poems by Peg Alford Pursell, Deborah Allbritain, Eloise Amezcua, Roger Desy, Jane Dodds, Valerie Duff, Hannah Fries, Grace Marie Grafton, Linda Holland, Betsy Johnson-Miller, Doris Low Kamenetz, Kendra Kopelke, Steve Langan, Sally Stewart Mohney, Jeremiah Moriarty, Mary Ellen Redmond, Sam Sax, Charles Harper Webb and Will Wells, as well as new fiction by Jacquelin Cangro, Mark Dennis Crimmins and Michael Don, and another of Contributing Editor Chard deNiord's brilliant essays: Like a Book at Evening, Beautiful but Untrue, Like a Book on Rising, Beautiful and True.

If you are on Facebook, check out who has come by The Cortland Review page to "Like" us and wish us a Happy 20th! Then scroll down to meet the people we are so proud of--the entire brilliant and dedicated Cortland Review staff, the people who work to bring all of this fine poetry to you, some of them for a very long time. Give each of them a "Like," too!

Cheers!
Happy Spring!
We're glad you're here reading!
Ginger Murchison
Editor in Chief


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Valerie Duff

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Chard DeNiord

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Like A Book At Evening, Beautiful But Untrue, Like A Book On Rising, Beautiful And True