Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

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From the Editors | Issue #18

May 2022

From the Editors

Art is truth setting itself to work. —Martin Heidegger

editors suzanne smith, cheryl wilder, and claire guyton pose in fun hats and accessories

All art is one kind of truth or another, fashioned by the individual aiming for the universal. Jocelyn Winn in “Wishes” imagines what a dandelion might tell us about girlhood. In “My Friend Stacy Works in the Emergency Room” by Cortney Davis, a young Pavarotti blesses a pandemic nurse and her patients with his timeless voice. Among many other things, the answer to James Landwehr’s “What Is It?” is poetry wearing camouflage. All written art is one kind of truth or another—phantom images, scents, sounds, and textures fashioned by just-right combinations of words. Our final issue of this second season accomplishes what we always hope to do with our waterwheel; we and our authors move through the unknowable armed with the particular. Always turning and returning. Setting ourselves to work.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl 

Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

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From the Editors | Issue # 17

April 2022

From the Editors

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words
and everything in the world understands it. —Frances Hodgson Burnett

closeup of three women in separate Zoom screenshots

That was not what I meant at all—this line marks the end of the budding romance in “After Uncle Louie Got Me on Some Nights at the Daily News” by Joe Benevento, a piece about laboring in the act of meaning-making, both in a newspaper’s printing press and with a Bic pen on a pad of paper. “A Brother Is” to love, says Nancy Huggett, but also to lead you down paths of loving that have no answer for disconnection. Her exquisite paean to a sister’s love somehow finds the words. Of birdsong and squawking and chattering “feathery discourse,” Jeff Schiff asks in “Bird Say,” Has to be meaning in it / right? We think there is meaning in it, yes, and Jeff made still more. There are so many beautiful things we understand without words. And then there is so much beautiful art that exists only because we can name things.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

By

From the Editors | Issue #16

March 2022

From the Editors

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree. —Martin Luther

Kitten with black and white markings on face peering out from behind architecture books on a shelf.

Too often, these last two years, we’ve felt as though the world might, tomorrow, go to pieces. Issue #16 goes live as once again the world trembles. We offer you three, long, deep breaths. Three small, very different, impressionist journeys. Nate Maxson’s ekphrastic “Winter Solstice 2021” unwinds—marches in a column, in long retreat across the empty spaces—from a scene of a very different time, in a very different Russia. Joy Gaines-Friedler’s narrator in “We Will Not March Back” tells the story of a life moving through gunshot, trying to find a way back, wanting to spin free. The movement in Kristen Roach’s “Last Responder” comes from the reader’s eye over the page, through a collection of text tumbled through space and then settling on two final words. In which we read hope. Spring is coming.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

By

From the Editors | Issue #15

February 2022

From the Editors

It takes courage to lead a life. Any life. —Erica Jong

It takes courage to live even a small, unnoticed life, yes. But we learn to source that courage almost everywhere. Navigating simple pleasures and stark realities is what makes a life. In Issue 15, we connect with such pleasures and realities throughout what feels like a linked collection of hint-stories. We think Ayelet Amittay’s “Taking Me Back” is all about that “hollow open mouth,” but there are other images that inspire different kinds of story. The five bits of narrative in Jeanne Julian’s “Last Chance in 53” are through-and-through stark, yet richly imaged reality. With its series of snapshots over the life of a marriage, Lucy Wilde’s “Release and Hold Harmless,” about the contract we make when we agree to love and lose, completes the collection. Her piece is soaked in heartache but reminds us throughout of why the ache is worth it.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR