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.

Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

By

Editor’s Note Issue #6

February 2021

Editor’s Note

cheryl wilder smiling outside closeup

Our February authors have me thinking of water.

Water is supple and strong. Nourishing and precarious. Its constant movement erodes—snowmelt in spring, ocean waves breaking on shoreline, or the downpour we see in CG Miller’s writing—where beauty and friction meet.

A watershed helps to direct water, a ridge of land that separates the flow of groundwater into creeks, basins, or oceans. Bill Vernon speaks to the mysteries of water luring a young boy to dream and discover. A place where hopping, slithering, and swimming thrive. Where a night chorus of insects and amphibians remind us there is magic in the world.

I’m also thinking of the transformative power of a watershed moment, like the long-awaited return of a loved one in Stephanie Friedman’s piece—a crossroads where a woman is steadfast in what she wants.

This journal’s name derives from “The Waterwheel” by Rumi, a thirteenth-century Sufi poet. When I first read the poem back in 2015, the lines, “Stay here, quivering with each moment / like a drop of mercury” explained what I wanted readers to experience.

I read Rumi’s poem differently today, after eleven months of the unbelievable stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty endured by so many of us. There’s a greater responsibility to his words, “The waterwheel accepts water / and turns and gives it away, / weeping.”

I speak for all of us at Waterwheel Review when I say, “We accept. We give away. We weep.”

Cheryl Wilder