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Editors' Note

This issue of The Fairfield Review is dedicated to the Words and Music event held at St. Francis' Episcopal Church. on February 2, 1997, in North Stamford, Connecticut. (Please see the Words and Music program.) The Fairfield Review Inc. sponsored the publication of the chapbook of poetry submitted by four Fairfield County area poets for this event. The chapbook is reproduced in its entirety in this issue. The following is the editors' introduction.


These poems are presented in celebration of the third biannual Words and Music event at St. Francis' Church in North Stamford, Connecticut held on February 2, 1997. This year we invited selected poets in the Fairfield County area to read poems they have written which center on the theme of personal epiphanies. Though sponsored by an Episcopal parish, the Words and Music events are non-denominational and do not assume a specific religious heritage.

We asked each poet to submit up to six poems to be considered for the program. A program committee, led by Ms. Margery Irish of North Stamford, made the final selections for the event. With assistance from Dr. Kristin Sponheim, Margie designed the program, interspersing the poetry readings with appropriate music. Not all of the poems submitted were read by the poets at the event. However, we have reproduced all of the poems submitted in this chapbook.

Since this program follows the Feast of the Epiphany on the Christian Church calendar, we are drawing upon that celebration for the theme, namely the epiphanies we experience in our faith, as well as in the poet's experience and writing. As the Magi, or wise men, followed the star, so too poets follow the muse. This is both revelation and celebration, in the same way the prophets and apostles likely experienced ecstasy and understanding as God revealed Himself to them. In hearing their stories, and the poet's work, we too--as modern day Magi--have the opportunity to share in this experience when the essence of life becomes manifest.

Two definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary provide food for thought:

    epiphany: 3a. "A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something." b. "A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization." from the Greek epiphaneia: appearance, epiphainein: to manifest.

    ecstasy: 1. "A state of intense joy or delight." 2. "A state of emotion so intense that one is carried beyond rational thought and self-control: an ecstasy of anger." 3. "A trance or rapture of mystic or prophetic exaltation." From the Greek existanai: to drive out of one's senses.
The last definition of the Greek root existanai is priceless! The implication is that of the paradox of having a heightened sense of feeling and emotion, and yet looking through these, beyond the face value of sensory perception. For poets, this is often the experience of first feeling, then writing a poem, in which some new insight is revealed--both to the author and the reader--precisely in the moment of the doing and the hearing.

William Stafford's poem Listening provides an excellent example of hearing the poetic word. This was the meditation piece included the invitation to the poets who contributed to this chapbook.

Listening by William Stafford 1

      My father could hear a little animal step,
      or a moth in the dark against the screen,
      and every far sound called the listening out
      into places where the rest of us had never been.

      More spoke to him from the soft wild night
      than came to our porch for us on the wind;
      we would watch him look up and his face go keen
      till the walls of the world flared, widened.

      My father heard so much that we still stand
      inviting the quiet by turning the face,
      waiting for a time when something in the night
      will touch us too from that other place.
We hope you enjoy this collection of poetry.

The Editors
The Fairfield Review Inc.,
(an on-line literary magazine)


Also see the Introduction to the Words and Music event presented by Gordon Edwards, poet from North Stamford.
___________________________________

1 William Stafford, The Darkness Around Us Is Deep, New York: HarperPerennial, 1993, p. 74




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Document last modified on: 04/19/1997

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