Introduction to Issue 42 • The Sea

I was born on an island currently called Manhattan of people who migrated there from the islands of Montserrat and Jamaica, from people who were made captive and taken there from across the sea. Water always surrounded me until now and it has resurged in my consciousness as the anthropocene mars the marvel that is this blue marble.

We are so land-focused that we name this water planet “earth.” We live on slim slivers of dirt on the surface of a globe that is 71.5% water. We are conceived in water, gestate in water and are ourselves are bags of water: 60% entire, our brains and hearts mimicking the globe at 73% water. The sea is that from which we emerged. Its creatures are living lives, we’ve only recently realized, not of darkness, but of brilliant color, imperceptible to us.

I’m grateful to the 263 poets who sent their creations, and to our intrepid and patient secretary, Brian Garrison, who helped me wrangle manuscripts and set up a system for managing and recording the waves of wondrous work. With a tsunami of an estimated 700 poems, it was inordinately hard to choose. There could be Sea II, III and IV given the volume received. I forewent humor for the most part, and focused more on what struck me as ‘cri de coeur.’ The interstitial also was not included—there were tons of by the sea and seaside that were compelling, but I sought immersion.

These poems engage the sea, speculatively, depicting who and what resides below or exists beyond, in the other seas we are just discovering on other planets. The mystery and magic of the sea is evoked in mythic shape shifters and other mysterious beings. In some instances we return to the sea, changed, while other entities return to their true selves in returning.

I hope you are as delighted, enchanted, compelled and moved as I am by these poems.