From the Editor…

The tenth issue of Socrates on the Beach is a solid crew/crossing of styles, languages, and concerns that seeks to ask questions even more than answering them. The essays are sterling, starting with Rebecca Ariel Porte’s inimitable piece on C.P. Cavafy and his short poem “Hidden Things,” which begins with an exegesis of the unrequited life before pouring into the carefully chosen words of the poem with a bounty of artful prose. Christina Tudor-Sideri’s stark “Archival Bodies” broaches the topics of how to write the body—the body in death and many other fragmentations and dream-like states. It is a subcutaneous essay unlike many others, burrowing into hard to reach places, into nooks that house the unsaid. Finally, William Wellman’s intricate essay “To Fling Out Broad Its Name” concerns a kayak trip with a disquisition on kingfishers and poems on kingfishers, overlaid with personal challenges to create a vibrant fresco of moods.  

On the fiction side Chapman Caddell’s sparkling, uncanny “On Goya” is most like one of Guy Davenport’s “assemblages,” with a history lesson submerged in an adventure story. Then we have over 12,000 words of Robert Musil’s “notes” for a project called Spies, which would eventually become The Man Without Qualities, but these “notes” are lyrical bursts and philosophical points that touch on his methods and ideas through certain characters—all wonderfully translated by Genese Grill. Lastly, there is Rod Moody-Corbett’s solid slow-burn of a fiction, “Who Is Good to Me, Whom I Revile,” which concerns a man’s disgust for his daughter’s husband. Moody-Corbett utilizes his lyrical descriptive powers to evoke wilderness country and a man’s frenetic narration.

Certain spellings from across the ocean have been retained.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoy these works.

Greg Gerke

*There may be an essay on Guy Davenport added in some days or weeks time to Issue 10.