Hel­lo, friends! It is my great plea­sure to launch the sec­ond annu­al Nation­al Poet­ry Month issue of The Account: A Jour­nal of Poet­ry, Prose, and Thought. I’m very proud of us for pulling it off and mak­ing it a tra­di­tion. Enor­mous grat­i­tude to Sean and Liz for say­ing yes to my pie-in-the-sky ideas.

I don’t know about you, but late­ly I’ve been exist­ing in a pro­longed state of grief and pow­er­less­ness. Nation­al Poet­ry Month is a won­der­ful time, a big beau­ti­ful hur­rah for my favorite art form, but I haven’t exact­ly felt like cel­e­brat­ing. So many forces are clam­or­ing to destroy us—natural dis­as­ters, pan­demics, open­ly vit­ri­olic racism and sex­ism, rolling back LGBTQIA rights. The White House is polit­i­cal­ly per­se­cut­ing uni­ver­si­ties. Greedy, big­ot­ed peo­ple at every lev­el of pow­er are try­ing to turn pub­lic ser­vices into pri­va­tized lux­u­ries, while ICE is dis­ap­pear­ing peo­ple off the street for extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion to a grue­some prison over­seas. And so far, nobody with the polit­i­cal pow­er to do so has man­aged to put up much of a fight.

The anx­i­ety and dread is enough to grind my spir­it to a nub

I don’t know what the com­ing year will hold, but I am try­ing to allow my hope and my anger to out­weigh my fear. As always, my hope lies in us, in you and me. It lies in cre­ation and com­mu­ni­ty and every move we make, how­ev­er small, to take care of each oth­er and for­ti­fy our shared human­i­ty. It’s quite clear there are plen­ty of peo­ple who are eager to steal our sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty, our cre­ative ener­gy, and our joy. The mis­sion is to not let them. You are need­ed as an artist now more than ever. Your poems could be someone’s oasis in the desert, and that is absolute­ly worth celebrating.

The poems you’ll read in this issue are all ones that grabbed my heart or my throat. I found myself recit­ing their lines inside my head for days until I couldn’t imag­ine not know­ing them. More than one of the poems in the issue is about the dif­fi­cult work of choos­ing to love the world, or even choos­ing to stay alive in it. There’s grief, mourn­ing, loss—and also mag­ic, self-accep­tance, love, and faith. Most of the poems come from our open sub­mis­sion peri­od, and for almost all the poets in the issue, this is their very first appear­ance in The Account. I’m proud of that too. These poems embed­ded them­selves in me and became part of my solace. I hope they bring you some­thing good.

The Account mag­a­zine is always meant to be a con­ver­sa­tion and a com­mu­ni­ty. If you like what you read in this issue, please share it with some­one or share it on socials. Maybe even reach out to the poet and let them know—they would love to hear it. We write to con­nect with oth­er peo­ple, so let’s con­nect. Let’s build an end­less bridge.

Christi­na Stoddard

Poet­ry Editor