For This Winter of Violent Weather …

For this winter of treacherous politics, incurable war, un-certain economics, and violent weather, Caveat Lector offers a small attempt to appease the wrath of the elements and the lunacies of our species with the one elite that republics of old have delighted in: that of the mind. Do I hear a few readers goggle at what I’ve just said? But surely they remember Athens, Rome, Florence, Venice, France….
A personal (if not exactly a humble) opinion alert: “Demo-cratic elitism” is, I believe, one of the few positive justifications for a democracy. I define “democratic elitism” as the allowance for the best ––– the most intellectually, morally and culturally alert ––– to rise in any field despite accidents of origin, and the republic of the mind as the purest instance of such “elitism.” For us Americans, other elites –– of power and money, of vulgarity, self-deception, and fear (the eternal political pusillanimity and pious hypocrisies of the “American dream”) –– often trump other elites, whatever we pretend to honor, like fairness, honesty and love. But this begs the question: have we ever been a democracy in anything but name? Are we not rather a plutocracy of peculiar and broad-based efficiency?
I keep waking up in the middle of the night, hearing a hissing sound, as of the sharpening of a guillotine’s blade. A dream – and therefore, alas, wishful thinking. 
For the time being, followers of the mind’s republic must console themselves with the reminders of the wild hope of an earthly paradise provided by art, literature, poetry, music, eloquence, insight, knowledge; turning the trash of the world into fascination and delight, a reminder of what it is our chance, possibly our responsibility, to turn “reality” into: a palace of beauty at the heart of truth’s harsh empire. We can at least serenade one another on the banks of the rising seas as the glaciers melt and the continents fry to deserts, even if no one else listens.

A certain elegiac strain pervades many of the poems in this issue, from Phil Fried’s evocation of the ghost of Kenneth Burke to Eric Swedberg’s X-rays of failed romance, from Deanne Bayer’s search for “amber afternoons stroked/with summer’s honeyed sun” to the opening installment of Ho Lin’s new novella, in which a “would-be warrior” broods over his missed vocation and compensates for his regrets with a romantic and tragic fantasy set in a China that seems both ancient and new. Not least of these are three poems by Anna Sears, our new poetry editor, whom we warmly welcome with this issue. 
	A sharp edge appears in work by Khrynn Yvonne McManus, who combines an enchanting morbidity with a little sardonic snarl, and E.M. Schorb’s prose poems on love as disenchanted magician and fettered locksmith.
To lighten the mix, we offer Jesse Freeman’s brief riff on the meaning of a French April Fool’s Day. 
Our issue opens with a very special section: the brilliant winner of Caveat Lector’s 2005 Poetry Contest, “How to Steal the Color Blue (1973),” by Sandra Beasley, followed by the three eloquent and haunting runners up
	Did I mention Matt Damsker’s review of A Spy in the Ruins, the novel I thrust before the public last year? It’s good to see that somebody in the print media understands the value of that book!  

-- Christopher Bernard