Introduction

This issue marks a transition for Ploughshares -- a small but not insignificant change in editorial policy, one of several that have occurred over twenty-three years of publication.

Originally, Ploughshares was edited by a committee of writers who had founded the journal: Harvard graduate students, Irish expatriates, Iowa Workshop refugees, New York School and Bowery veterans, and experimental Black Mountain poets. Predictably, reaching a consensus proved difficult, and the editors eventually agreed to adopt a rotation, with each taking a turn at the helm for an issue. Later, prominent writers outside of the founding circle were invited to serve as guest editors of Ploughshares, and these guest editors were then encouraged to structure their issues around explicit themes, topics, or aesthetics -- a policy that has been extant for the last five years.

Without question, focusing on different themes, trying to lend some coherence to the work selected for an issue, has made Ploughshares a more interesting reading experience. But it has also encumbered the submissions process for writers and editors alike. A wonderful story or poem might arrive, but not be appropriate for the next few issues. Or, even if a piece is thematically relevant, questions about balancing the contents of an issue might come into play -- subject, style, tone, gender, diversity. Consequently, we always have a surplus of good work at the end of the year -- material we love, but are unable to publish for one reason or another -- and the process sometimes breaks everyone's heart.

We knew the focus of the Spring and Fall 1994 issues -- the first concentrating on tribes, the second featuring personal essays -- would exclude the majority of submissions during our most recent reading period, so we decided to close out the year with this open, staff-edited issue. We established a theme of not having a theme, not being bound by any organizing principle or political agenda other than our judgments of literary quality. We just took the best poems and stories that we received.

This is, we've concluded, the way Ploughshares should proceed (although we cannot rule out the occasional exception). We will still appoint guest editors, and no doubt they will unconsciously thread together a motif of some kind. That is, after all, what makes having guest editors appealing -- learning about their personal visions and obsessions. But we'll let these motifs evolve on their own, without any preconceptions. Only after the final selection for an issue has been made will we attach a theme, or merely a generic title. In the end, our regular readers will probably not notice a difference. But writers will. No longer asked to conform to announced themes, the door will be open a little wider for those who wish to submit their work to us. And for us, as editors, the process will be more inviting as well. We will simply look forward to what comes in.

This issue is dedicated to all of our manuscript
readers, past and present. Thanks also
to David Rivard for his assistance
and guidance in selecting
the poems in this issue.