From the Guest-Editor

The pleasure of and thus the reason for literature is that it takes us out of ourselves, lets us experience a world that, at least on the surface, is different and unfamiliar.  This unfamiliarity lasts only until we see ourselves, come face to face with our own humanity, and so leave the new world, the story, with a touch, a milligram more of understanding.  The best writing does it in spite of us, catches us unaware—perhaps the way a Meramec River undertow can—grabs us, sucks us in, spins us around, and tosses us out.  It can be just that draining, just that emotional.  Each of the stories, essays, and poems in Natural Bridge, Number Four, grabbed me on the first reading, and they continue to spin and toss me again and again, pull me down deeper with each reading.  This, I have discovered, is what unifies this issue: the reality of each created world, unfamiliar only on the surface, and the pull, the power of that reality.

In her essay, “Survivor Notes,” Kathryn Gessner shows us family bonds that for good or ill are strained but not broken, not even by suicide.  In “A Story of Water You Could Never Tell,” Ian MacMillan takes us on a journey of loneliness, confusion, and guilt, that leads finally to connection.  Altruism and hope clash with cynicism and self-hatred in Lizabeth Carpenter’s story, “Goes Like A Bird,” and a physicist discovers and confronts nothingness in Tom Whalen’s story, “Quantum Surge In O Central.”  In her poem “Selfish” Sheri Steininger lets self-centeredness and guilt co-exist, balance momentarily, and Richard Newman’s poem, “Stripper Pits,” shows us a man trying to understand emotional connections, but giving up too easily, content to accept the unfathomable.

Donna Vitucci in “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” and John Neilsen in “Clean Time” show us how easily we can be ruined by our desires, and Hawk Madrone in “Transgenderized” and Mimi Seydel in “He Could Be Blind” show us how who we are depends upon who’s looking.  Catherine Brady in “Light, Air, Water,” shows us the regret of a self-reliant life, and in her essay “Coyote’s Friend Fox,” Bette Lynch Husted writes from the position of one who is an outsider from almost every angle.  Todd Davis’ poem, “Fear of Flying,” mixes fear with loneliness and then offers hope, while Jeffrey Thompson gives us two powerful poems that let us know what and why we fear.  Form usually fits theme here, as in the rambling turtle-like construction of Charles Wyatt’s “Turtles,” and the slow, feeling-his-way-along approach of Mark Kahrhoff in his coming of age story, “Monkey Drum.”  Many of the writers in here make us laugh out loud; John Griswold, Sally Longhorn and Ed Miller are just three of them; in “Hotel Carnival, ” Ryan Stone surprises us immediately with a wart so noticeable it has a name—Furry.

All the writers here, not just those I have space to mention, are masters of unity, adept at weaving character and plot together, connoisseurs of the apt detail, the right word, the mood.  Some, like MacMillan, CarolAnn Russell, and Mark Spencer, are well-published and well-known.  Others are emerging, some publishing their first work here.  Two of the writers, Spencer and Robert Haynes, are already making repeat appearances in Natural Bridge.

The editorial assistants for this issue were especially brilliant readers who worked hard, far beyond deadlines and long after the class was over.  They are listed on the cover page, but deserve to be mentioned here, too.  If I ever guest-edit again—a truly humbling yet thrilling experience—I want to work with Amy Branch, Deborah Burns, Linda DiMeo Lowman, Janet Goddard, Laura Hamlett, Ron Hughes, Matt Schmeer, and Mike Schroeder.  We are all proud of this issue of Natural Bridge.
 

—Mary Troy