In September 2020, I joined Wild Roof as a volunteer reader. Two years later, it’s my honor to write our editor’s note for September 2022. It’s been a game-changing two years. Esther Sadoff captures our world so succinctly in the opening line of her poem “September”: “A thousand adjustments.” This is where we are. It’s a scary time to be in the world. Is all of our rainwater completely unsafe? Are we unsalvageable? Who are we? Why weren’t we prepared for all this? John Tessitore mulls over this notion in “The Second Law”—“I should have been better / prepared for the inevitable.” Can any of us prepare for what’s next? I don’t have the answers, nor will I have them, but it is through reading that I am brought back, closer to clarity, reality, and sometimes even levity. I hope this issue of WRJ can do the same for you.

But we must also consider a painful reminder. The attack last month on Salman Rushdie confirms that it is never a “safe” time to be an artist. Why? Because works of art are radical acts of truth-telling, of reveal. Art is where uncomfortable, unexpected truths are discovered and rediscovered, where we’re confronted with reflections of our world and ourselves. A writer like Rushdie implores us to probe human nature and to contend with its consequences. Such inquiries resist complacency. This is what an artist must do: resist. Lately, I’ve been holding on to Rushdie’s definition of the poet’s work as outlined in The Satanic Verses:

“to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start / arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.”

To see, to vocalize, to express. To be bold. To shake up. To shake out truths. To tell a version of the truth, to ask us to consider new and other truths. This is what the artist does. This is what Cassie Premo Steele outlines in “We Look to the Stars” and what Chloe Ford offers in “Here’s How.” There are many instances of truth-telling here. Indeed, the entire issue is full of brave vulnerability and a willingness to explore, even if what we find is difficult—especially if what we find is difficult. 

I hope that you find everything you need here: clarity, reality, levity. Steaminess, heartbreak, loss, beautiful simplicity, a breath. After a long, hot summer, this issue of WRJ is like a salve to the skin.

Anna Schechter