Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

October 1, 2020 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Editor’s Note Issue #2

October 2020

Editor’s Note

Just after midnight on March 3rd, an EF-3 tornado churned through an East Nashville neighborhood, killing five. The tornado missed the home of close friends, with two young children, by two blocks. A few months later, in my Connecticut home, I strapped bike helmets on my boys as we sheltered under a blanket during an Isaias-spawned tornado warning—my first ever.

As I write, deadly wildfires burn the Pacific Northwest, where two of our October authors live. Tropical storms and hurricanes (so many that we’re into the Greek alphabet) soak the Southeast, where our third author resides.

Why, in times of fire and flood, do we spend an hour hunting for a word, a day inside an idea, a weekend cutting and pasting… only to return to the original. Why make art now?

Recently, I came across the Nashville tornado again, in the beautiful “Specific Air” by Rebecca Titus. Titus writes that after the tornado, a friend, whose property was heavily damaged, sent her a text: Let’s document with art. Whenever there is daylight come. There are side streets.

I read those lines over and over. Three lines in a text by an unnamed friend of an author I don’t know who lives close to people I know well. I noted the lack of comma between “daylight” and “come” and read it like a prayer.

Our authors this month write of torrents and wild flora, fire and a hungry sea. Makers of our companion pieces show storms and middle-of-the-night fear, a flight along cello strings and a flower as seen by my six-year-old son.

Let’s continue to document. When our places are burning and flooding, let’s take the side streets if we have to, and make the art we need.

Suzanne Farrell Smith