Welcome to Pine Row's Spring 2021 issue, and thanks for visiting.

This third issue engages the promise of a new season, a new year. With a brave gaze, poets featured here reflect upon difficult experiences, but not without hope. Even as we look forward to a post-COVID renewal of community, poems in this issue remind us of our struggle and the emotional bonds that keep us connected to one another. As Kevin Burris observes in his poem Redbud, "Beauty redeems the world, they say. / It’s come again to trade / each sin for a new pink blossom."

During the past year, who has not felt at some point like the tree-borne child in David Dixon's poem, "a girl reading herself concentrically / into dogwood rings, / one page at a time"? May we emerge from this isolation a stronger community, kinder to each other, and full of passionate intensity. Another cycle is underway outside my window: the arrival of the 17-year cicadas. Their life above ground is brief; for just a few weeks, they gather in tree tops and make their music. And yet how different is this from us?

Hank Hudepohl

Founder / Editor

May, 2021