Editors' Note ~
A New Dance for
a New Year
Welcome to the first anniversary issue of Cezanne’s Carrot! It's been a year of discovery and motion for us individually, as well as for the magazine.
We began this venture knowing much about what it takes to put out a successful journal, but still we encountered lessons and situations that asked us to make adjustments—sometimes requiring that we pirouette in mid-air and land gracefully on our feet. It's been a challenge at times, but each adjustment, each new dance step, has brought us closer to the core of what we are aiming to accomplish with Cezanne's Carrot, and for those changes and opportunities, we are profoundly grateful.
Perhaps the biggest shift is our editorial focus—this is the last issue in which we'll publish poetry. It wasn't a planned change; rather, in August, our dear friend and poetry maven, Editor Lori Romero, made the difficult decision to leave the magazine she helped found in order to pursue the path her life was taking. Lori stayed on to help with the Fall Equinox edition and to select some of the poetry for this issue. But after Lori's departure, we felt the magazine's energy shift, and rather than try to control its direction, we decided to flow with it. And, as always seems to happen, once we relinquished our need to control, we got the answers we were looking for. It became clear that we needed to become a prose journal, at least for the time being. We also recognize that change is an ongoing process, and we don't truly know where the energy of the magazine will take us in the future.
Synchronistically, change and beginnings are themes you'll find in many of the excellent works in this issue of Cezanne's Carrot. In her nonfiction story "Berkley Pond," Linda Simone examines the meaning of her own life-changing decisions. Charles Ries, in his short story "Albino Prunes," gives us a narrator whose life begins to change when he embraces his "inner armchair." (You never know where change will come from!) Look for a profound, haunting shift in "Myths from Caves," a short story by A. Alan Beck, and in Hope Payson's poem "Chasing the Archer," which explores how a single change in focus can make all the difference. And consider the transformations represented in this issue's visual art—for example, the radical shift portrayed in Laura Slapikoff's "Through the Looking Glass." Beck's and Slapikoff's works both evoke Plato's cave myth, a well-known story, true. Yet, among the relatively small selection of writings in this issue, two other stories explore aspects of that myth—"Platonic," by Kathryn Kulpa, and "The Secret Is," by Kay Jordan.
Change through birth—not just human birth, but the birth of ideas, of worlds—is prominent in three of our poems: "Conception," by Jim Doss; "Dreaming Through Spooky Distances," by Richard Fein; and "Serpent Mound, Locust Grove, Ohio," by Mary Grimm.
We're often amazed—and delighted—by such thematic synchronicities that show up unplanned in a given issue. We don't look for them; we don't need to. It's enough for us to observe how the various works of individual poets, writers, and artists weave their own distinct thematic tapestry. And in this, our first anniversary issue, that tapestry richly represents the journal itself! We hope you enjoy reading this special issue as much as we have editing it.
During our first year, we've been thrilled to welcome an incredible number of talented, wonderful writers and artists to the Cezanne's Carrot family. In the year to come, we hope to bring you more work from favorite writers and artists, as well as introduce you to newcomers whose work will awaken something wonderful inside you. In the year to come, we also look forward to more opportunities, adventures, and changes—and we wouldn't have it any other way.
Copyright 2006 by Cezanne's Carrot
