Editor’s Note, October 2025

Being an editor who is also a practicing poet can be a complicated thing for many of us. When done with the right tenacity, all the work—whether generating or editing—comes from the same place of psychic or emotional investment. To make things even muddier, writing and editing are conjoined actions, but they work in opposite directions: one is weaving language from the ether while the other is affirming that those words have reasonable meaning for others. This dichotomy doesn’t always lend itself to harmony or ease. Anyone who has tried to write and edit their own poems knows what I’m talking about.

I first recognized this tension in the late nineties while working at Crab Orchard Review. The magazine was founded by two poets, Allison Joseph and Jon Tribble, and they were the whole show, handling every aspect of production from content selection to layout to copy editing and fact checking. During that time, Jon published several reviews and encouraged those of us on the editorial team to do the same. Criticism was, for me, the place where the creative and editorial brains came together. Jon saw criticism as an act of community building and support, which I believe are essential to an ethical editorial or creative practice. Reading and writing about new books for COR is how I first encountered Terrance Hayes, A. Van Jordan, and our 2025 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoree, Rigoberto González.

González’s poems are as sumptuous and rich in their curiosities and carnalities today as they were in his collection I wrote about back then, So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks. There is wonder abounding, but not at the expense of clarity. At the same time, González is an accomplished critic and space maker. He served on the executive board of the National Book Critic’s Circle and has written scores of essays and articles about other poets. Years ago, when he was focused primarily on writing poems, Rigoberto told me he aspired to write in every genre. In the past three decades, he has done so to critical acclaim, adding memoir, fiction, and books for children to his bibliography. Rigoberto embodies the editorial ethos I learned from Allison and Jon so long ago; he is a poet who manages to move seamlessly between being an editor and being a writer.

There are other writers in this October issue who have managed this balance just as elegantly. Kevin Prufer curates the Unsung Masters Series while Reed Turchi is the founding editor of The Swannanoa Review. Anthologies edited by Cynthia Cruz and Kimiko Hahn range from Latina poetry to magic. They, like Rigoberto González, are not just exceptional examples of poets at work; they are testaments to what must be done in service of our art and fellow practitioners. They model what it means to have a full creative practice.