Letter from the Editor

Beauty…

Surrealist Andre Breton said “La beaute’ sera convulsive ou ne sera pas” which translated, means: beauty will be convulsive or not at all. The relationship between beauty and passion resonated with us for this issue of TCR because of the varied ways beauty was represented in our featured titles and prose. We found beauty in the naked quivering heart of characters and the masterful way that our writers painted them. We loved the despicable dog-shooting narrator in Grant Clauser’s “Devil in his Time,” and were moved by his horrible and gorgeous “cow gut stinking from the front door” in his “Banshee Coming Down the Road.” Lalanii R. Grant peeled her own skin back in her terrifyingly beautiful and convulsive “Beautiful Again.” Flawed characters gleamed with accidental shame like the care-giving cheater in Meghan MacNamara’s “Banded” and the zeppelin of loneliness paraded through Charles Rafferty’s “Too Beautiful.” We gasped at the subtle and stormy longing that sailed in Mathew Brennan’s “Water is Wide.” We hope you enjoy the vulnerability and rage, cleverness and poise in the beauty issue of TCR.

Antonia Crane
Senior Editor
The Citron Review

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