Standing on the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists

I don’t remember who it was that described to me the poem as being a home and stanzas as being rooms. What I do recall is that the analogy changed the way I saw into writing, my own as well as others. Once that door was opened for me, I was able to enter and find the windows. I was able able to look out, turn, look in. This is where, surrounded by family members, I got the confidence to accept such an endeavor as editing a supplement of young poets. —Thomas Sayers Ellis

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. . . Every generation differs from its predecessors in some ways (as it reinvents them), and resembles them in other ways (as it reinvents them) . . . Perhaps, if these poems are young, it is in that they search out extremes, of voice, of experience—as poetic events, their needs are palpable. Sometimes the voices in these poems embody the fundamental questioning of life and of identity which has so often made youth into a storm in our culture. Many of these poems tend towards outrage, many others of them toward investigation; often, these poems appear not to be surprised by anything, but that mask soon slips, as well as it should. —Joseph Lease

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