Editor’s Note, April 2026

Last May, my friend Youssef Daoudi published a graphic novel about the filmmaker Orson Welles called The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow. One of the many things Daoudi’s fascinating work highlights is how difficult it can be for artists to grow when their first public offering is considered a classic. Welles went on to have a long career, but nothing he did was as well regarded as Citizen Kane. He’s not the only artist to experience this. Ralph Ellison never published a novel after Invisible Man and Harper Lee never wanted the follow-up to To Kill a Mockingbird in the world. Lauryn Hill and Jeff Buckley each only recorded one solo album. Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting to someone who wasn’t a relative while he was alive. There is a beautiful museum in Amsterdam dedicated to his art now, but during his lifetime, he was also a member of this list.

We don’t need to think of these masterful debuts as negative. I mean, who wouldn’t want that kind of success? These exceptional artists tantalized us with their talents and showed us that the point of art is possibility. The April issue you are holding is populated exclusively by poets making their first appearance in Poetry, and I want to be clear about the comparison I’m trying to make. There are no poets on my list of groundbreaking firsts as a nod to poetry’s construction. Poetry moves differently from every other art. Painters and musicians often find their voice through a single, sustained project: one canvas, one album, one performance that announces a new direction. Poetry, on the other hand, is an accumulation of drumbeats and heartfelt ideas. It takes writing hundreds of poems to locate your pitch, and then hundreds more before most of us have enough material to see what that pitch might actually do.

Except for Ann Z. Lombardi, whose gorgeous poem “Orbit” folds out next to Lo Naylor’s staggering “The Patient Line,” Poetry isn’t the first publication for the artists in these pages. This is simply our first opportunity to share their work with you. The masterful historical, ekphrastic poems by Matthew Shenoda that begin the issue are from his fourth collection of poems.  JoAnna Novak has written seven books of poetry and prose. Our folio on Linda Gregg, curated by David Semanki, highlights a poet whose entire life was lived through poetry. Gregg inspired generations of poets, but never appeared in the magazine while she was alive.

All the poets in this issue, and those in the issues of Poetry yet to come, discover their voices through habit and worry, astonishment and pleasure, with basic pencil-to-paper tenacity. We are lucky to receive the music and the revolution of their words. Like the first audience to watch the “no trespassing” sign and ominous brass that begins Citizen Kane, we know that we are witnessing the poetic future in these pages and others.