It’s no secret how much I love libraries, really I should find a t-shirt to let me count the ways. No doubt Etsy will be creeping ’round my browser soon.

It’s thanks to the tireless work of librarians, we the people gain access to the world, discover cultures outside of our own and if we’re lucky discover things about ourselves along the way.

Recently, I was scavenging the upstairs of my hometown library because browsing yields treasures. I crave getting lost among anyone’s bookshelves. The random discoveries are always the sweetest. On this day, I found myself with, Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes, edited by Alison Swan in my hands. Over four wonderfully-curated sections, the book covers freshwater experiences in and around the Great Lakes of Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. Though some pieces played with memory and looking back, it also gave me inspiration to engage with our present.

This collection opened my heart to writing about place when you’re actually living in it. (Often I’ve written about place after I’ve left.) It made me want to write about our relationships to nature and how that relationship impacts our ways of thinking and our treatment of other humans. What are those elemental powers that only a large body of water can inspire in us? When I go to the shores of Lake Ontario for a reset, I am thankful for the screeching gulls and ghost fishing boat disappearing into the fog, for the lighthouse that always looks like it’s a different distance away, for the full spectrum of green blue purple gray black of the water, for the frozen waves on the breakwall, for the broken breakwall, for the poetry of this port city.

In the coming years, I wonder what I can give back to this place which has allowed me so much clarity and inspiration. I try to bring that spirit into my writing classroom. I hope that it pervades my written work.

Over the past seven plus years, I’ve seen multitudes of inspiration from The Citron Review. Though I’m sure I have favorite themes or even styles that one could distill, I’ve always read with an openness to myriad life experiences. Our submission queue continues to surprise me and challenge me. So, we strive to give you that same feeling with our selections.

If you want immersion, Florence Murry‘s, “Halfway There” will take you all the way. In Beth Hahn‘s, “Black Cherry Jell-O” and “In Lieu Of” I was overwhelmed with the presence of navigating losses that happen little by little and sometimes all at once. Reading Sarah Sorensen‘s, “The Mandevilla Clutches the Rail Like a Submissive On Tinder,” I just about spit out my coffee. Nature constructs those metaphors in broad daylight! Rina Palumbo’s “the picture” reveals the complications of seeing and not-seeing while Amanda Hays Blasko, “the poetics of journal, i. gray as graphite, soft as lead” highlights the difficulty of finding those words for what we experience. When we enter the woods with Michelle Ross in “Childhood,” we might feel a tiny bit of hope for our memory in visceral moments. Finally, we zoom in closer than ever with Diana Anaya‘s hand series, “My Sister’s Hands” and “My Mother’s Hands” and “My Father’s Hands” and “My Hands.”

Each of these writers has given us something natural with which to connect. Maybe as readers, we’re exploring our own human nature or observing the patterns of nature nature. I’m inspired to continue this process of discovery with you.

But first, I’m going to the lake. Sun sets at about eight. And there’s time to hit the library.

JR Walsh 
Online Editor
The Citron Review