Talk Talk Talk

Introduction by Susan Terris

Our lives often seem to be one continuous conversation. We have conversations, for instance, with friends, lovers, children, strangers, our animals, and, of course, with ourselves. Here, in In Posse Review, you'll find a sampling of some of these colloquies. I like to think of a journal edition as being a mini anthology. That's why you won't find the poets' names listed alphabetically. Instead consider this a conversational listing.

Thus, the poetry begins with Sharon Dolin's poem—a duet between a tree house and rain. Then Sean Patrick Hill talks to his wife, and Betsy Rosenberg with a friend/lover. In one of George Wallace's poems, a man and a woman misunderstand one another in New York in the winter. Erin Bealmear begins a poem, "Whenever we talk, I feel/like I'm trapped/in a Beckett play." Kenneth Pobo stuffs fries in his mouth in a bar while strangers discuss Marlo Thomas in That Girl. For Jeffrey Ethan Lee, a man and a woman speak simultaneously and at cross purposes. A.D. Winans declares in a poem that his "words are empty as a tramp's pockets." Reid Mitchell addresses a phoenix, while Simon Zonenblick talks to an urban fox, and Steven Schutzman speaks in the language of crows. Moving into more surreal territory, Richard Schiffman voices an interior monologue about his sunglasses, just before Richard Feins takes on a jinni and the last potato farmer in Brooklyn. G.C. Waldrep conjures up Bob Hass in a prose poem about a surrogate toothbrush. Lynne Thompson poses an important question to her dead mother, followed by Bryan Reid asking "deadalus—where yo baby boy at?" Amber Flora Thomas has part of an on-going conversation with her sculptor father, followed by Candace Pearson who speaks to Oscar Levant. For CB Follett, it's a discussion about how spam mail finds her; and Melanie Maier tries to bargain directly with God. All of the voices cited above are finally silenced and encompassed as Jeanette Clough moves into the realm of the existential where she speaks to Chance and then, at last, to Sky.

Hope you enjoy this poetic journey of words with its multiplicity of voices. Isn't that, after all, what poetry is all about? Enjoy!

Susan Terris
Poetry Editor

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