Consider haute couture. The fine suit, the grand dress, bespoke, rich with public commentary and private messages. Certainly not made for the public school-goer. Yet anyone can understand hundreds of hours of design, hand-sewing, fittings and more fittings, details in and out that are easy to respect. Even if you would never wear it.

It is easy to admire virtuosity in a handcrafted object. Even if it is too avant-garde for your wardrobe and you don’t “get” all the decisions and references that went into this insane and gorgeous garment (it is, after all, still a garment, distant cousin to a tube top or a pair of cutoffs), honoring its maker is instinctual. 

Yet what is a poem, but a handcrafted object? Editing Issue #4 deepened our understanding of why we do what we do here at Public School Poetry. We make criticism a practice of solidarity with other poets when we examine the way a poem is made, instead of just enjoying it, or not. This practice of solidarity underlies our mission: when we poets give our careful attention to a poem we would never write, we make a claim that that poem, as evidence of human creation, is worthy of discussion. Through that discussion, we connect across aesthetics, traditions, histories. We sit at a different table in the lunchroom and see what the conversation is like there. Try it.

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                                                     -- Megan Levad, Vice-Principal