Summer Issue

The writers in this edition of CV2 capture many truths: that the seasons do not often finish on their designated end dates, nor begin when we are ready for them to; and that the emotions elicited by the fickle tools we use to measure our lives can always seep from one compartment to the next, and the next.

There is a yearning to this issue, and a reckoning, as well. Claire Brnjac evokes for us the fleeting nature of relationships, human or otherwise, writing, “All hymns have been stammered, the well of blood has dried. It’s almost like / you are the night sky, and I have sung all the songs I know.” Meanwhile, Daniel Scott Tysdal summons the tragedy of Colten Boushie’s death to remind us never to forget the events of past seasons, even and especially as the cycle comes full circle once again, and the earth that hosted an August killing — covered, for a time, with winter’s blanketing snows — emerges once more, deceptively clean and dry.

We visit the minds of our poets in more explicit terms, as well. Interviews with Lori Cayer, Dallas Hunt, and Benjamin Hertwig — each accompanied by poetry from the writers — highlight the process of writing a subject that is part human and part myth, uncover quests for understanding and for language, and dive into the transmutable nature of experience. Later on, our Young Buck Poetry Prize winners provide further insights into events that bleed into the collective consciousness of a people or a place; in “Garbage Takeout,” contest winner Joseph Kidney evokes the effects of a “hand-me-down catastrophe” that glides across space and time, permeating the poet’s home, and his writing.