We want to thank all the poets who took time to submit poems for the Place & Displacement issue of Switched-on Gutenberg! After long deliberation we chose poems that we felt most closely fit the theme and/or were crafted with the theme in mind.

          Given the opportunity, twelve different editors would surely sequence these twenty-eight poems of place/displacement a dozen different ways. Like the paradox of this issue's theme, each of those twelve editor's arrangements would be both exact, with certain, arguable coordinates, and imprecise, with nebulous, confused topographics. Upon reading these poems as a collection five distinct sections seemed to emerge.

          Some poems like “Deer Isle Winter” by Norma Voorhees Sheard spoke directly of specific places. Other poems took their inspiration from places portrayed in art, such as Carol Frith’s “Softly from the Brick” or art, literature, and the evening news, as in Steve Hellyard Swartz’s “She spoke of.” Still other poems captured us with their wry humor like “On the Midwest Poet” by Casey Fuller or their otherworldliness like Mike White’s “Tentacled Motherfucker.”

          A small group of poems in this issue speak in somber tones to places and times remembered, such as Dave Setter’s poem, “The Wakeful,” and Melissa M. Lewis’ “Water Street”. And, lastly, three poems and an essay express the yearning and discontentment we feel when places we know change, as in “Where I Come From,” by Gerard Wozek and “The Other America” by our own Jana Harris.

          Although these pieces, at least typographically, are placed in a certain and definite order, feel free to land wherever you wish. While you’re here, we invite you to peruse the Place and Displacement issue (click “Next”), to take a look at past issues (see “Archives”), and to think about submitting a poem (starting December 1, 2007) for our next issue (see “Guidelines”).

          Again, thank you for your curiosity, your attention, but, most of all, for sharing your inner and outer lives with the editors and, ultimately, with the readers of Switched-on Gutenberg.

          --Linda Malnack, Roberta Feins, and Janée Baugher, Co-editors