what’s with all the lowercase? what’s with the black and white? what’s with the weird subheaders, the typewriter font, the table of contents that doesn’t say “table of contents,” and all that? it’s a statement of simplicity. we will not distract the readers’ attention, which is best focused on the literary content: after all, words are but signifiers regardless of all the flowery conventions we ascribe to them. “table of contents” just means “in this issue,” so that’s what we wrote. “colophon” is just a bad word for “information.” of course, in order to respect the authors’ creative choices, we have left their text unaltered.
this style and the cover pictures reflect the content of the poems, the stories, and the photographs in this issue. everything has perspective. there are feminist poems, stories about smalltown iowa and bigcity anywhere, about running away, about alien-fighting neighborhood boys, about thieves of kids. this stuff talks about good and evil, hate/love, black/white, male/female, sacred/godless, lustful/chaste. things aren’t black or white, but to learn about the extremes is the first step toward appreciating the shades of grey.
i’ll keep the usual acknowledgments to a minimum, but two people deserve recognition. the eversmiling chelsea jensen, who designed a swell front cover and then put up with my obnoxious demands for an equally classy back cover (thanks also to her modelling muses, eboni brown and mary-kate arnold). finally, a big round of applause to amy nolan, who has guided us well in the absence of paul hedeen—so well, in fact, that we hope she stays in the loop.
december 2008 is the castle’s 60th birthday. we have great plans. but for now, this issue right here is our only plan. enjoy the writings of your human brothers and sisters, and think.
claudio d'amato, editor