Local candidates’ lawn signs are proliferating along the sidewalks and roadsides of town, their clean lines and hopeful symbolism standing in bright contrast to the choke of weeds and exhaust from passing traffic. Here are the names of people who, at their best, want to contribute vast amounts of time and effort toward something larger and more lasting than their own names. It’s easy and often enough justified for us to lean into cynicism when it comes to politics of any kind, but it’s not hard to find the true believers among these candidates, the ones who earnestly desire to work for an ideal—nothing less than a government of, by, and for the people.

Higher education, health sciences, applied math, the arts—it seems every human endeavor with ideals at its core is vulnerable to cynicism and plain old exhaustion. But they also benefit from the best in people, even (or especially) when there’s not much money attached. Scratch the surface of any publishing outfit, for example, and you’ll find people who believe in the transformative and even life-saving power of literature and want to pass it on. New England Review, for one, is the collective effort of such pragmatic idealists, who read, select, design, promote, proofread, pack boxes, and send thousands of emails all year round, people who serve their abstract ideals with concrete acts—a kind of variation on Marianne Moore’s “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”

With this issue, two of our true believers will be moving on from the New England Review, pursuing their literary ideals in other directions. Managing editor Leslie Sainz and poetry editor Jennifer Chang, both of whom joined us in 2021, appear on this masthead with those titles for the last time. While they finished their work in those positions before this issue was complete, and thus are absolved of any errors in the final product, they also put their hands and hearts into much of what’s ahead in these pages.

As Jennnifer Chang noted when she first took on the role of poetry editor, this magazine “signifies a living history, a community of generous effort, and a future collectively envisioned.” As she read and communed with the editorial staff over the past five years, she built on something that already existed, shaping it and moving it forward in her own way, but always working for the progress of poetry more broadly. She stepped back from her own obsessions as a poet and reader to engage with and elevate the work for and by others. With incisiveness, kindness, and a truly Sagittarian deliberativeness, she worked to see what was urgent and singular in a poem, not just from her own point of view but from the views of fellow staff members and imagined readers. She sought out new poems by long-admired writers, and at the same time dedicated much unseen effort to selecting from the unsolicited submissions, reading past the personal connections and professional networks that are a shortcut to discovery and leave out too much. During these years her third book, An Authentic Life, came out, and she was pulled in many directions and won many awards, but she always returned to the submissions queue to find what new ways poetry might reveal us to ourselves.

Moving that new writing from manuscript to finished page, from writer to reader, involves a whole other kind of effort, and it’s that work—the typesetting and proofing, the colors and images, the events and newsletters—that Leslie Sainz devoted herself to, and will be moving on from, after this issue. She will be taking her talents to another part of the literary ecosystem but leaving in place the work she did, and that will remain, both in print and on our website. She approached everything from merch design to her online Staging Style column with a fierce desire to make it the best possible, balancing efficiency, perfectionism, and genuine care. Leslie also published a book during her time at NER, and it too was feted, but throughout that time she stayed devoted to the workaday in service of the ideal. We wish Jen and Leslie fair winds and following seas, knowing that their current roles weren’t their first with New England Review and won’t be their last.

Our masthead won’t be updated until the next issue, but new staff members will already be at work by the time this issue comes out: Matthew Olzmann as poetry editor and Christina Wood as managing editor. Matthew’s love of poetry and its practitioners has already led him from student to teacher, Detroit to Dartmouth, reader to proselytizer, and we know he’ll embrace this editorial role with the same radiant energy he is known for in these other realms. And Christina—an accomplished writer of prose, beloved graduate editor at The Georgia Review, editorial operative at Brink Books and Dorothy publishing, and recent literature PhD—is more than ready to move with NER into the unknown next phase.

In the end it’s the poems, stories, essays, and translations that have the staying power here, but once in a while it seems right to step out and recognize the movements behind the scenes. Because without the people who are excited to do the work there’d be no lit mag, no publisher, no books—no literature by the humans and for the humans. We need them just as we need those people whose names are popping up all over town—for high bailiff, for sheriff, for legislator, for governor, so that the better part of our government will not perish from the earth.

Soon enough all the endorsing and speechifying will be over, and we can get back to focusing on consequences rather than on names and faces. To borrow from Moore again, “There are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.” In our case, the things that are important are right here in the next pages. We hope you’ll find something useful there.

—CK