Letters from the Editors-in-Chief
Fall 2023 Issue | Grace Marie Liu
Dear Readers,
Writing can be–and often is–a solitary act. Ranging from team sports to performative arts, a great deal of activities necessitate the collaboration of many. In that respect, a writer’s job significantly differs. Of course, writing communities, workshops, and programs are becoming increasingly accessible in the digital age. Nevertheless, as a writer myself, much of my work has been done in solitude: late-night word-vomiting into a Google doc; feverishly cutting, rewriting, and rearranging blocks of text; and poring over a single troublesome line in the wee hours of the morning, one hand buried in a party size bag of shrimp chips. It’s no surprise, then, that loneliness is not uncommon in this particular craft. And the publication world can be incredibly daunting, even as more and more distinct magazines populate the literary scene.
What makes Polyphony Lit one-of-a-kind, then, is how tightly the concepts of craft and togetherness are entwined. In fact, editors and contributors of Polyphony alike discover that each step of the submission process is anything but solitary–rather, the synergy, or combined efforts and opinions of many, are what lay the foundation of Polyphony. Additionally, while maintaining objectivity is something that Polyphony editors keep in mind, the unique voices and perspectives of each editor shine through in their distinct commentaries and endeavors. Many aspects of writing are done alone, but the tight yet heterogeneous community that Polyphony has fostered is extraordinary.
Beyond connecting an eclectic group of writers, editors, and readers, Polyphony provides opportunities for personal growth that are scarce elsewhere–and as the first magazine I’ve edited for, my experiences at Polyphony have been paramount. Like many of my fellow editors, I stumbled upon Polyphony Lit as a reserved, apprehensive freshman. That being said, I didn’t enroll in an editorial training program until the following summer as a rising sophomore. As someone who felt uncomfortable with their writing, the thought of attempting editorial work seemed out of the question. Furthermore, an editor’s job felt clinical and stuffy to me–tighten up the language here; remedy this grammatical error. Just a little over a year later, I’m honored to be an Editor-in-Chief of Polyphony Lit. Similar to how we are ever-changing as individuals, the puzzle pieces that comprise our identities are equally fluid.
Initially, I contemplated describing these pieces with ubiquitous themes: love, loss, beauty, culture, coming of age, change. Such ideas are, of course, present in this issue. Yet attempting to encompass these writers’ words with umbrella themes simply doesn’t seem to suffice. What I will say, though, is this: the pieces you see here are constantly working to detach the body from the self, jigsawing said puzzle pieces into something novel and astonishing. Interweaving anatomy and desire, Ziyi Yan’s “heat lightning triptych” deftly mimics the turbulence of a storm both visually and sonically. Ava Chen’s “PARALLELS: THE STARS OR LACK THEREOF” plays with the negative space of language and fragmentation, its poignant narration underscoring everything that is left unsaid. These are just a few glimpses of this issue: every piece here demands your full attention by championing intricate stories and vibrant images. From “coral-colored / carps [that] outgrow their regular size” (“Lucky Fish”) to “a chinese takeout bag, thank you plastered all over the front” (“auto-eulogy for the perfectly fine”) to “sins … opaque as Minnesota tap water” (“The Temple”), there truly is nothing like Polyphony and its many voices.
Drafting this letter is bittersweet–I’m in my third year of high school and second year at Polyphony, and I’ve crossed the midpoint of both journeys. I’m both thrilled and terrified for what’s to come. As for now, though, whether you’re a returning reader or a new follower of Polyphony Lit, thank you. We invite you to immerse yourself in the effervescence of Polyphony’s newest issue: Volume 19, fall.
Best,
Grace Marie Liu
Winter 2024 Issue | Shaliz M. Bazldjoo
Dear Readers,
The snow is leaving my windowsills. Old flakes of frost slough off the glass, leaves sprout from the branches of trees, and sunlight peeks out from the thinning clouds. In a way, it’s relieving—no more thick jackets, no more power outages, no more ice on the roads. In another way, it highlights the end of an era in crystal clarity.
It’s a new year now. Here at Polyphony, that means new editors, submitters, contests, events, and, most extraordinarily, the dawn of our twentieth anniversary as a literary magazine. We’re on the verge of a rare milestone. I struggle to fathom how an organization that has been such a big part of my life these past few years, that has felt so deeply interwoven with my generation of teen writers, has been functioning and inspiring people for longer than I’ve been alive.
This transition is one of many. For me, the new year also heralds the end of high school, teenagehood, and my tenure at Polyphony Lit. While I’m excited for the future, I can’t help but look back. It’s hard not to get lost in the tangled lattice of memory, as many of our pieces, from Sisi Li’s “hypnopompic confessions” to Kate Choi’s “Still” can attest to. I turn towards the past, and, through the haze, make out my first assignment at Polyphony: the nerves that came with a new opportunity, the frantic reading of example editorial reviews, and the way anxiety osmosed into comfort as I realized what a joy it was to edit pieces—to peek, for a moment, into someone else’s creative process, and to be a tiny part of the wonders inside their mind.
Polyphony, ultimately, is built on that openness; that willingness to share stories, emotions, and lives between writers and readers and make a conversation out of a submission; that enthusiasm in welcoming new students onto the staff and working with them on everything from book clubs to contest ideas to new startup literary magazines. This place, more than any other writing community I’ve bore witness to, meets you where you’re at and lifts you up. It’s empathetic, it’s forgiving, and it listens with genuine care to each voice and story. It encourages questions, embraces suggestions, and always looks for new ways to metamorphose as time goes on and the world grows ever-so-slightly more complex. I believe this is why Polyphony Lit has endured all these years, and why it will continue growing, season after season, winter after winter, year after year of editors like me.
I can’t say high school has been perfect—nothing is, after all. There were times when, even with support systems like Polyphony, I wanted to fade into the blankness of the snowstorm. This issue of Polyphony in particular reconciles that feeling. Many of the pieces herein deal with the intersection of love and grief; how you can care for someone, such as a caregiver in Gia Bharadwaj’s “poem for parents,” a mother in Sandra Nuochen’s “stop,” or a whole country in Jessica Zhang’s “My Country is a Collection of Fires,” and yet fear their wrath or resent their dictations; how intimacy and rage do not run in parallel lines. Something as simple as wintertime, with all its chill and sharpness, falls into this paradox. Reading these pieces, I wondered: why love something that hurts you? How can you take the cold, bitter snow on the ground, and turn it into angels?
Simple: you just do. Like Tina Zeng’s “On Love On Psychedelics” proclaims, despite the mess and confusion of love, “we’re not ready to give up… we’ll fight the wrongness and fight the trauma and fight each other to get someplace where I don’t have to say so many maybe’s.” With tears in our eyes and hope in our hearts, we—like the authors in this issue—bear out the storm, and when it’s over there will always be a warm embrace like Polyphony Lit to return to, as readers, or writers, or artists, or all of the above.
So here’s to looking back while walking forward, to holding the memories close. Here’s to Polyphony Lit, to winter, and to you—three beautiful, complex things anchoring our shared world in place.
Best,
Shaliz M. Bazldjoo
Spring 2024 Issue | Cloris Shi
Dear Readers,
Spring. A season of growth, renewal, and hope. But this year, in particular, I have found it difficult to characterize these past months as rejuvenation. There are wars in Ukraine, Israel, Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Colombia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and more. There are wars closer at home, too: in courtrooms, on the streets, at schools. In a time like this, I feel the urge to distance myself, to wrap a blanket around my shivering shoulders and stay still.
But writing jolts me back to reality. In writing this letter, I find myself thinking back to the devastating heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, the period of mandated isolation during my formative years. It was also spring then, in March of 2020, and I was a lanky seventh-grader, wide-eyed in fear and confusion. I remember feeling powerless in the face of rising cases, street protests, shouts throbbing with anti-Asian hatred, and later, intrusions of the virus into my own home. Perhaps it was this desperation that compelled me to scramble for pen and paper, for some tangible action I could accomplish on the daily. I started writing then, penning down a list of items in my emergency hospital backpack, a poem to the president, a letter to my future self. Writing kept the chaos out of my doors, more than a safe 6-feet away while holding hope ephemerally close.
A couple years later, the summer after my freshman year, I discovered Polyphony Lit. I joined as a contributor to the Around the World of Poetry in 80 Days workshop, pitching my idea of science-inspired poetry using intertidal animals as muses. In this worksop, editors from a global sampling of hometowns teach a lesson on poetry based on their cultural, geographic, or personal specialties. I was intrigued by how Polyphony enables my words to reach across the country, then over borders, over oceans. It’s easy to think of creative writing as a luxury — a distant babble from the rest of the world, clamoring about immediate solutions and concrete change. But it is now more than ever that we need it. It is now more than ever that communication enables understanding, and understanding enables progress.
Spring at Polyphony Lit is bittersweet. On the one hand, spring is the start of the journey for many editors. We are preparing to host our annual Summer Editing Apprenticeship, an online mentorship training budding editors and equipping them with the techniques of professional editors. On the daily, I see new editors asking for submissions to review, blog articles to proofread, contests to read for. There are also many editors, quietly crafting exquisitely detailed commentaries, working behind the scenes of every issue, helping junior editors. As for the submissions to Polyphony Lit, I find in any handful of them pieces that are surprising, hilarious, comforting, and refreshing. There are tear-jerkers and thought-provokers, narratives challenging traditional storylines and poems upturning conventional forms. Countless times, I have been compelled to check the author information, to find more pieces written by our submitters. I am still amazed by how, here at Polyphony Lit, a voice floats through miles and reaches another, imbued with its original meaning and much more. It’s times like these that I feel so lucky to be an Editor-in-Chief here.
At the same time, this Spring Issue is the last of the three installments of volume 19. Soon, we will be bidding goodbye to graduating seniors. Soon, we will be looking forward to the 2025 fall issue. It seems like it was yesterday that I joined Polyphony Lit in 2021, not yet one year through high school, and today, I am counting the 365 days before I graduate high school. This year, Polyphony Lit will turn 20, and I will turn 18. Like the hundreds of editors before me, I am looking back at my time here, awestruck and grateful.
Dear reader, you have before you an issue that is bravely uncertain, proudly hopeful. Maybe this is what spring is: tepid rain splashing on vivid flowers. Here, the speaker in “Lesson on Morning After” asks aloud “What if, hypothetically, we never find ourselves?”; in “The Nightflower,” one ponders “When are you no longer a child?” Here, a meditation on placehood concedes “I have to admit I did not know my body was trying to drive me this wild into the city” (“Cleanness”). Here, a contemplation of belonging is haunted by the Yoruba proverb “Ọmọ tó sọ'l é nù, ó so àpò ìyà kọ́,” translated by the poet as “a snail that jettisons its shell drags itself to the satchel of death” (“SONG OF A BROKEN LANGUAGE”). This issue is a wide-eyed stare into a world that both terrifies us and strikes us as worthwhile to navigate. It comes by no surprise, then, that many pieces in this issue explore one’s identity, how it is defined and redefined. One speaker characterizes themselves as “braised pork, splayed over rice” (“how Taiwanese food was invented”); another, as a “steam engine screaming ceaseless” (“portrait as passenger pigeons”); and a third, as an “ouroboro,” a snake biting its own tail (“How We Mourn”). These writers invite us to observe themselves mid-way, straddling the polyphony of tastes, sounds, and scents, complexities of being both and and. In this way, perhaps this issue does represent spring, in every sense of the word.
So, welcome in; take a seat and make yourself at home. Here in my town, the rose bushes look fuller than last year, and the citrus trees in my garden glow under the unabashed California sun. My grandmother is brewing tea for you, and my mother is preparing a bouquet. And here, in your palms (or at your fingertips), is a collection of writing bursting at its seams with hope. A toast to Volume 19, Spring!
Fondly,
Cloris Shi