Editor’s Note
Once, in a creative writing class, my professor asked us to immerse ourselves in our surroundings, to notice, to observe, and, after everything, to write, pen to paper, like the supposed poets we were. Sitting under the canopy, my attention immediately gravitated to the nearest molding, moss-covered bench, mostly out of a desire to avoid writing about any natural phenomena around me—describing setting has never been my strong suit. I can’t remember what I ended up half-heartedly scribbling in my notebook. Nothing good, I’m sure (in office hours later, my professor challenged me to describe a tree, to which my response was, that tree had many, many green leaves, and she told me, disappointedly, that I could work on this, but perhaps on my own time). But, at that moment, I remember being struck by the symbolic longevity of the bench. How many people had sat on that bench or walked by it? How many winters had it endured, and how much snow had blanketed the sturdy wood? In hindsight, the bench perhaps was not the best object to muse on. Adjacent buildings or trees or even the grass would’ve been better subjects. Most likely, the bench has only been around for twenty years. But, all this to say, forty five years seems long, and it does not. It is only twenty percent of the college’s bicentennial history, but at a place where students stick around for an average of four years, an inconsequential blip really, forty-five years is significant. It signals endurance and, moreover, dedication to the arts and to showcasing student art.
In my stint as editor, I have always been looking back in order to move forward, which is to say, the past five issues I’ve edited have had elements in them inspired by previous Red Weather issues even as I sought to have each issue reflect the cultural/campus “zeitgeist,” so to speak. I’ve spent hours sitting among old Red Weather issues, flipping through the years, noting the aesthetic choices and how, from 1978 to now, the content, with different words and different forms of course, has stayed remarkably similar. Just college students being college students. As Julia Rosenbaum ‘19 said in an interview feature for this issue, “I felt like life was a story that was about me.” Something about being ensconced in this bubble on the Hill makes one want to endeavor to join the autofiction that’s been haunting the literary world. Perhaps nothing better encapsulates this self-assured, invincible, almost ferocious energy than these few lines from Laura Dickerman ‘85’s poem, “Motorcycles”: “Here is youth baring its throat / To the sharpest knife / Fuck you I dare you.”
The cover itself is a collage of one issue from each decade since Red Weather was first founded in 1978, including a would-be cover from this semester. Each is specifically chosen to reflect its decade’s aesthetics. And within these pages, a similar linguistic collage with contributions from both current Hamilton students and Red Weather alumni.
There is a rich abundance to comb through, and a diverse array of topics featuring mothers, mothers, and mothers. I have always felt it to be true that creative written expression has always succeeded in better expressing my own mess of thoughts, so I will allow the following pieces to speak for themselves.
Please, I adjure you, begin.
– Rachel Lu ‘22 & Eva Glassman ‘23