Editor's Note

The Cortland Review is honored to present "Lost in Shanghai - Garden Light," artist Victoria Veedell's contribution to Issue 72. In this, as in all her abstracted landscapes--emotional reactions to the environment, whether in the Pacific Northwest, Shanghai, China or the countryside of Japan or even around her home in California's Bay Area--she arrives at a serenity, allowing for a connection to a deeper level of consciousness. She begins, she says, with a loose under-painting, usually of bold yellows and pinks and continues to build up the surface through successive layering and glazing of colors until an image emerges and an inner glow appears. She has been painting the landscape in one form or another for over 20 years, including in residencies in Vermont, India, Japan, California and Iceland. Her work, exhibited nationally and internationally, is included in many private and corporate collections.

Alongside Veedell's offering of calm in the natural world, The Cortland Review presents new poetry from D.M. Aderibigbe, Sebastian Agudelo, Bruce Bond, Fleda Brown, Nick Conrad, Ellen Devlin, Fay Ann Dillof, Peter Grandbois, Danielle Hanson, Mark Heinlein, Karen Paul Holmes, David M. Katz, Laura McCullough, Michael Montlack, Aaron J. Poller, Mike Riello, Eric Paul Shaffer, Kenneth Sherman, Phillip Sterling, Laura Van Prooyen and Jeremy Voigt and new fiction from Hafeez Lakhani, Kelsey Rexroat and Michael Schrimper.

Find escape from this summer's unseasonable heat in the serenity of Veedell's "Lost in Shanghai - Garden Light," a cold glass of iced tea and the best in poetry and fiction the TCR staff presents here. A hearty "Thank You" to each and every one who has produced with skill and talent this issue 72: Guy Shahar, Publisher and Editor Emeritus; Anna Catone, Jennifer Wallace and Christian Gullette, Poetry Editors; Elizabeth Cornell, Fiction Editor; Amy MacLennan, Managing Editor; David Moody, Production and Audio Editor; Eric Berlin, Associate Editor; Rick Tracy, Photo Editor; Dallas Lee, News Editor and most of all this issue's contributors. All of us together welcome you to TCR's 21st year and Issue 72.

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