Dreaming of You

If I close my eyes and give myself over to my most reliable faculty (imagination), I swear I can hear the poems being thought up and written down. Scratching pencil, tapping keys, and beneath that, the movement of consciousness— picture a susurrating, for instance.

Square Lake is just a venue. Venues are crucial of course and it’s gratifying to be active in a time when "marginalized" voices are making themselves heard or being invited to speak. And naturally we want to publish the most daring, challenging, insightful, heart-centered work of the illuminated mind we can lay our hands on. But what’s really thrilling is knowing that there is so much writing going on, regardless of what Square Lake or anyone else publishes. Every time I glance at a postmark on a submission it’s brought home to me that writing is going on in that place; and the postmarks are from all over. And it’s making this sound. . .

When we first started putting the journal together, I dreamed of a wind-tossed city harbor, a small, barely protected wing of a great sea. From a tower at the shore I looked down at four tall metal pylons that stood out in the choppy water: the four corners of the square lake we had posted in the greater body of water. There were no walls—the water moved as water does and this was very active water. Our designation was just that: a claimed and named location without any real boundaries.

Our writing, while highly individuated at its best, is a collective effort. Work passes into the journal and out to the readers. We’re an abstract shape that allows writing to collect and focus briefly, but none of what we publish has been untouched by what we don’t choose to publish. Perhaps the sound I’m hearing is also the chop and spray of a rich and animated ocean whose shores reach right up to my ears. . .

Carrington MacDuffie
October 2002