chaparral

summer 2010

“The ocean, I am thinking about the poor massive ocean…” writes Athena Fliakos in “Confessions Of a Beautiful Little Fool.” In fact, many of the writers in Chaparral’s summer issue are thinking of the ocean. For these writers, the ocean is a place where the simple act of change makes a kind of beautiful music. Some of the works here, like Keith Onstad’s “Grand Theft Jerusalem,” make formal gestures resembling the wild sea. Others, like Jessica Piazza’s sonnets and Charles Kraszewski’s epic, take up the ocean as image or metaphor. In both cases, the writings in this issue inhabit an untamable and oceanic spirit. What’s more, the writers here—many of whom are educators, community organizers, translators, letterpress printers, editors, social workers—serve a spirit of transformation, both in their poems and prose and in what they do everyday in the world. Let Chaparral’s summer issue be a small testament to our poor massive ocean, to what we must do and undo, to the necessity of transformation.