Anna Lena Phillips Bell

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the U. S. Postal Service. Sending and receiving letters is one of the things I love most. Here at Ecotone we’re about to have one more reason for writing letters, and for going out with hope to check our mailboxes.

1. The people whose work we read, and those whose work we edit, are our companions on this path. Their writing deserves our attention and care, our love—the same we wish to receive for our own writing.

How do editors learn to edit? It’s a question I think about a lot. And it includes an assumption I fear is threatened in these lean times, as publishers lay off staff and streamline processes: editing is a craft.

April—every day a new flower scent to try to identify; every day warmer—and I’m thinking yet again about a perennial conundrum. Amid distraction, and amid so much information, how to hold in mind the many present threats to ecological balance?

A few years back I realized that I’d crossed a boundary, and not one I’d hoped to be crossing: I had lived longer in town than in the woods.

During the past nearly three years, we at Ecotone experienced some great luck—the company of Jason Bradford, our coeditor for poetry, and of his mother, Shirley Niedermann. Early this year, just after the semester’s first meeting of the graduate practicum that supports Ecotone, Jason went into the hospital. Six days later, he passed away.

Lying in my tent before falling asleep, the sight of the festival grounds neatly zipped away, I still hear the layers of music filtering in.

This year Ecotone celebrates its tenth anniversary. A decade—the word carries some weight. A milestone, a monolith. But the way we’ll experience this new decade is one year, one day, one moment at a time. It is a new year whenever we say it is. It’s a new year every minute.