Introduction

Introduction Jim Hicks I'VE NEVER HAD the patience for careful, comparative analysis, so I don't really know. Finding the word "life" sixty-one times in these 200 pages, though, strikes me as significant, and I'm relieved that "death" is mentioned only twenty. To see that "river" is used sixteen times, that "tree" or "trees" have eighty-one occurrences, and that "wind" appears twenty times might also mean something, even if one of those "winds" is a verb. Quicker than a hiccup, of course, so-called large language models with their so-called deep learning could surely tell us whether having ten histories and fourteen pasts really matters, or only to me. However, as I write these lines, much of the world's population seems content, even enthused, to be led by sociopathic strongmen, as if watching, funding, and fighting wars, as if waging genocide is truly the way of the world. If today does turn out to be a global version of what Jalal Toufic has called a "surpassing disaster," where tradition withdraws and becomes unavailable to artists, writers, and thinkers, what good could possibly come from algorithms based on everything we've said and done till now? Isn't everything what got us here? How could it possibly take us anywhere else? The answer, it seems clear, will not come from computation. Yet it must be created. If the authors in this issue have answers, as I believe they do, those answers come from invention, hidden in figures and sources from the past, or in the natural world, shored and marshaled against our pending ruin. In times like these, one looks for what may last. The End Page 8 verse forms of Patrick Donnelly and Natsume Sōseki have that much in common, as does the wind that blows through the lines of Geffrey Davis and Chard deNiord. Trees are certainly mobilized by Amba Azaad and noam keim to differing effect, yet both are bringing Birnam wood to Dunsinane. Saadi Youssef, as translated by Khaled Mattawa, takes us from England to Palestine, reminding us in all cities some things are forbidden. And when Korey Hurni's brother shoots that buck naked, our fascination is other than that of Katherine Vondy, with her bears feeding at the river, yet for both we do pause and pray for the fire to cease. In the end, perhaps, we must look to performance and art for the way forward, in Virginia Grise's excavations of family and culture or Tariku Shiferaw's explorations in mark-marking, mythology, and erasure. Only in art will we find such exemplary efforts. Just days after the slaughter at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Natalia Ginzburg penned an essay, here translated by Jenny McPhee, the first where Ginzburg would overtly claim her Jewish identity. With the wound still open, she meditated on what political stance might stand in a world where justice can be turned upside down in an instant. Such a moment was clearly a high-wire act, one where no one would ever not fall, yet her courage was breathtaking and inspires still. It had better. Because we'll need it. End Page 9 End Page 10 Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.