Odd as it may seem, even when I select a dozen poems by a dozen different poets, they become a mini-anthology. That’s why you will not find the poets listed here in alphabetical order. As I was selecting these poems and beginning to put them into a sequence where each poem seemed to me to relate in some way to the poem before or after it (no matter how tenuously), I was also rereading Thomas Mann’s epic The Magic Mountain. What’s this book about? Time—the way time can become elastic or even meaningless, the way the present and past intertwine. So, as I made my way through 840-something dense pages of poetic and philosophical meditations on time, I found I was selecting poems with this as a theme. The group of twelve poems I’ve chosen begins with David St. John’s “Past Regards” and moves towards Moira Magneson’s “Praise,” a lyric epithalamium on the idea that love abides (which not all the poets represented here would agree with).

           I hope you’ll enjoy this time-travel issue of Pedestal where Bridget Bell’s goldfish are offered a chance to breathe after death, where Tammy Ho Lai-Ming deconstructs a former love as “splattered ink on paper,” where Keith Brabender has a sassy, sexy Krishna appear on Valentine’s Day. Don’t miss Franz Liszt’s snore through time in Brianna Noll’s poem or the wild turkeys of C.E. Chaffin that manage to seem like Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Sonya Taaffe explores time as a mythic dog, while Gail Wronsky considers it as defining a relationship. Hadaa Sendoo, Jacob Russell, and Mark Thalman explore losses in time, but losses with surprising moments of joy that seem to lead more-or-less logically into that final poem “Praise.” Because I have rather eclectic taste, you’ll find a wide variety of poetic styles in these poems. I hope, however, you will see that I’m always looking for originality in thought, subject matter, or presentation as well as for the musicality of the line. With any luck, I’ve managed to find some of these things.

          The title above is taken from Chapter 7 of The Magic Mountain. The complete sentence reads: “Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.” I hope reading these twelve poems will, in some small way, alter your world, your vision and understanding during the hour or hours you my choose to spend with them.