What’s in a Theme? A Theme by Any Other Name. . .

Introduction by Susan Terris

Mask and mirror, mirror and mask: how we move through a life.  What would we do without the mirrors to show us who we are or show the half-reality of who we think we might be?  Ever since Lewis Carroll and Alice, the permeable mirror has been the archetypal world of dream and dreaming, a world not altogether benign, a place of wonder yet also of threat and consequence.   So why, you may ask, the mask and the mirror?  The mask is what most of us use to get from day to day.  Most of us have many masks or a whole collection of interchangeable ones to protect and console us in front of the fun house mirrors (permeable or not) of our days.

When you read through this all-poetry issue of In Posse Review, I hope you will enjoy its variety of voices. Here you will find some literal mirrors and masks but many metaphorical ones. Some poems are narrative, some associative (or disassociative), some surreal or hyper-real.  I will not even begin to describe the 20 poets included in this issue or their poems. These are for you to discover yourself.  Please note: the poets are not listed alphabetically.  Instead, they are presented as part of a mini-anthology where each poem, I hope, leads more or less logically into the next.  Consider, then, starting at the beginning with Steve Longfellow’s poem about shaving and his sly piece about the one-legged man and read through to Peycho Kanev’s poem about shaving (yes, another. . .) and his poem of meditation on watches and time and momentary epiphanies.

The only poems I select for In Posse are ones that I truly admire and love.  A poem needs to leap from the typed page and grab or surprise me in some unforgettable way.  I hope you will feel the same—not necessarily about all the poems—but about many of them.  May the words of the poets represented here help you to drop some of your masks, at least for a while, and pass by a few more mirrors without needing to turn and gaze or glare into them.

Susan Terris
Poetry Editor

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