3 minutes reading time Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter: As North Americans, when we think about current-day Crimea, our first, and perhaps only, association may be with war. In her haunting essay in Issue 21.1, “Gone Are the Blackberries, the Alycha, the Asters, and the Rusty Spigot,” Yekaterina Droog pays tribute to her grandfather’s lost …
“Encountering Shepherd’s essay as a younger poet, I recall being eager to wrestle with the unspoken challenge asserted by this sharp, studied elder. How do I write the city?”
“Not everyone will walk away from a computer into the vast outdoors and find help from a hawk. But over time, these ‘focused walkaways,’ which were first unexpected distractions, have become a scheduled part of my practice, my discipline.”