Volume 2

Editor’s Note

The United Nations International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World has quietly run its course.  Without ceremony or retrospection, the UN has moved on: Welcome to The Decade for Deserts and the Fight against Desertification.  We wish the UN well.  We don’t anticipate a General Assembly subcommittee to audit the success of the last ten years.

A culture of peace will be a long time coming.  It’s unfair, but only a little, to take a swing at good intentions.  Where, if not to ourselves, should we look for the doers and problem solvers? Cultural attitudes can change, but not without the critical mass needed to halt the momentum of powerful forces.  We’ve got work to do.  CONSEQUENCE magazine exists because poetry does make something happen, because art and literature inspire us to look askance at the world and our assumptions.

The works of our contributors challenge us to question everything we know and think about war. We’re fortunate to be able to present provocative work by artists, poets and writers deeply concerned about the consequences of war.  We are also delighted that a few of these distinguished writers have given us some lighter subjects to think about—a welcome counterpoint.

In this issue we present a new section—Discourse—to stimulate discussions of war, society and the arts.  We want you to rethink these subjects in the context of our young but wounded century, and we invite you to write to the address on our masthead, or send email responses to editor@consequencemagazine.org. We will post on our website letters selected for their engagement with the work appearing in Discourse, and the author will respond to them online. We hope that you will follow this exchange of ideas at www.consequencemagazine.org.

In 2009 we inaugurated the Consequence Prize in Poetry, an annual award given for an outstanding poem on the subject of war.  Kevin Bowen selected the winning poem and presented the award at War and Poetry, an event sponsored by CONSEQUENCE, at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Andreas Morgner’s winning poem, “N’Djamena Chad,” and those of our seven finalists are published in this issue.  Entry guidelines for the 2010 contest can be found on our website.

As CONSEQUENCE enters its second year, I’m pleased to welcome Catherine Parnell, our new Associate Editor, and Contributing Editors Kevin Bowen, Martha Collins, Askold Melnyczuk, and Fred Marchant, who need no introductions. All of them have work in this issue.

—George Kovach